Hope and Ironman

As most people do, I often start my emails with ‘I hope you are well.’ Although I know that no one is going to come back to me baring their soul about everything that is happening with their lives, I genuinely do hope that everything is ok and they are coping with whatever life has to throw at them.

I haven’t written for a while, one reason is that life became super busy again with a cheeky trip to Australia to visit my brother, the impending Ironman and training as much as I could for it and because for a while, I think that I was losing a bit of hope and I didn’t really know how to deal with it…it was almost like, if I wrote it all down it would become too real.

When I started with the Chemosaturation last August, the hope was that it was going to blast all the tumours, send them to sleep if you like, for a period of time so I could forget that I had incurable cancer. I went further than hoping, I went all in, I fully expected an absolute positive result. Aside from the relatively short side effects from the treatment and the awful anaemia which I seemed to get a handle on with the help of iron and blood transfusions, I was able to physically carry on with everything and get back to relative normality and most importantly, Ironman training! So as my final scans loomed after my last treatment, I felt confident and I had started to imagine life without constantly thinking about the cancer spreading and dying imminently. We had purposely planned an adventure to Oz with my parents to spend time with my brother and his family just after my scan results as a celebration and to almost act as a new beginning as it had been quite a stressful 9 or so months.

So I was knocked for six when, in my scan consultation with Dr Knows -His-Shit, he announced that there was good news and bad news. The good news was that the original tumours had responded to the treatment, the bad news was that there was evidence of a new main lesion and several smaller ones that appeared to have a resistance to the treatment. This is NOT what was in my plan but in true ‘Hannah’ style, I decided to crack on with our trip to Australia and hope that we would have other options when we got back. Australia was everything that we wanted it to be. Time as a family, time with my brother and parents and time to fill the kids with the sense of adventure that I had when I was younger. I showed them the places that I went when I went backpacking, we visited the rainforest, the Barrier Reef, the Great Ocean Road and saw some of the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets that I had ever seen. A quick stop in Singapore on the way home and before we knew it the month was over and we were back facing the reality.

So what is the reality? The outlook and options are certainly looking slimmer. I had to start a course of Immunotherapy literally the day after we got back from Oz, to be eligible for a potential trial but it was obvious that the main tumour was growing rapidly and my symptoms have started to get more intense and constant. I’m not quite as sunny first thing in a morning (much to Mr Me-Myself-And-Eyes delight!) and I have constant pain, BUT as I keep saying to the kids, we have to find joy in every single day, even on the worst days – on those days where grief and pain overwhelm, we must always find a pocket of joy.

Above everything else, I have an IRONMAN start line to get to. The time has gone so fast and I know that my training has been far from ideal but when I started the journey to Ironman my hope always was just to make the start line and now my hope is about to come true as it is THIS SUNDAY! I am going to be on the start line, soaking up absolutely everything and enjoying whatever the day brings, whether that is finishing or not. The excitement in Leeds is Palpable (even from those people complaining about the road closures!) and I am beyond proud to have raised nearly £15,000 for Ocular Melanoma UK – the only charity in the UK that supports those with Uveal melanoma and the devastating consequences.

So there we are, a mixture of big emotions at the moment, full of hope of getting through the weekend, of being able to get on the trial and hoping to live long enough to enjoy more of this wonderful and crazy life.

Hx