Last week we started the supportive sessions at our local Hospice.
When I was first diagnosed although deemed curable due to being young they allowed me the use of counselling and their complimentary therapy session, meaning they gave me some space to go up and talk to some one about my feelings, as well as have reflexology the day before a chemotherapy…truly amazing and something that made a huge difference to how a treatment went the following day… an added bonus was my sister law also a reflexologist would see me a few days after treatment to help me as well.
The second time I was diagnosed again under a very hazy diagnosis of uncertainty and only time would tell, I felt I’d talked all I could and put to bed a lot of cancer related stuff so I didn’t feel the need to visit the hospice however went through occupational health where I was offered bereavement counselling….strange hey…that’s how I felt to start with but it was explained to me I was grieving the life I thought I was going to have, the energy I once had and relationship changes I’d had with people around me…. so 5 sessions in a little room on an industrial estate proved the best hours spent in many years!.
There I was talking to a man I’d never met, getting through boxes of tissues getting angry, crying, laughing, putting together Plans, ideas, working through probably the past 20 years of muddled thoughts and coming out each week noticeably calmer as if my brain had been in for a massage! .
So my needs this time after my diagnosis that my cancers back and its not budging only growing… Everything feels very different…. I have no time for people around me who cause me troubles nor do I have time to spend with those people making amends…luckily there’s not a long list of those any more really now a-days.
we just have need to be around our immediate family.
So both Rob and I are visiting the hospice together this time and working together on how we are going to manage what’s going to come our way.
We have started with a how to talk to your children session, we’ve only gone to one so far and we came out feeling pretty good that over the last 5 years from the start of all this we’ve done pretty good with no guidance on the matter…. the big thing they spoke of is how we complicate matters as adults and basically honesty is best… I’m not saying we’ve blurted out mummy’s going to die of cancer as we don’t know when that will be and time is a funny thing for a child…I don’t want Stanley a few years down the line to have had this on his soldiers but also don’t want it creeping up on him that he felt he didn’t know what was going on so we need to judge as parents when the time is right, but for now he does need to know mummy is poorly again and that this time they can’t get rid of the cancer and that’s why mummy is sleeping a bit more than usual and daddy may be sad sometimes or nanny may be here more to help if mummy and daddy have a hospital appointment….why our lovely friends keep dropping around to visit us with gifts and food etc etc…
We also attended a mindfulness session but both unsure at this point if this is for us or not… that’s the great thing about the hospice, you can pick up these sessions as and when you feel they are right for you.
Today we went for a memory making session, something we were both keen todo… and together… it felt incredibly productive and therapeutic.
I was concerned as we were sat around a large table with others something I know rob may have struggled with, but once told what we were going to be doing rob blurted out how he was ready to crack on and really loved doing stuff like this, we then even got told to rejoin the room as we quickly discussed what we thought we would both like to do….ooooooopps but felt great to be back in conversation with each other so freely and excitedly about something we were going to be doing! .
So what was it I hear you ask… Our finger prints…
We printed one of our fingers, we decided to both use our wedding finger as that finger means a lot to us both, we made vows over that finger to look after each other until the end!
This then got enlarged and we could decorate how we wished.
I went on to do some writing I wanted to put on mine.
Then decided I needed to become familiar with my lines on my print so used all the colours from my favourite film “The little mermaid”.
I then got this printed again and was able to write over it easier with the words I wanted to use…..
I started with thinking of my first childhood memory and working through all the happy thoughts and people who popped into my head that made an impact in my life, it really made me smile….Rob had a sneaky peek at my work and decided he’d do the same…we chatted about how lovely and funny it is all the little one words you find to cover a huge memory.
I’m yet to make this finger print as I decided I wanted to start with putting our wedding song on my engagement finger print first.
It was lovely to read the words from it and after repeating it 6 or so times around my print certain words began to stand out and I felt so calm and lost in the activity.
Coming back into the room from the zone I entered we listened to what others had done and for the 
first time in 3 months I heard other people’s sadness apart from my own…I found an ounce of myself return!
We came out excited for next week…another first for a while!
