Forget and move on, but always remember….

So, last week I walked the Cancer Research Shine night time marathon walk – well in reality I only walked 20 of the 26 miles, it was too much for me!  Not enough training (or any training really!) coupled with some blisters meant that at 4.30 am, after 8 1/2 hours walking I got in a cab!  I was doing it with a group of work colleagues who at various times questioned out loud why on earth we had signed up to do it.  The reason we had signed up was because a few months ago, in the warm comfort of sitting at our desks, just as I returned to work, we thought it would be a good thing to do in celebration of me beating cancer and to raise money for Cancer Research.  I remembered the conversations well, but they clearly didn’t as there were discussions about whose idea it had been and questioning why we didn’t do the half marathon instead ( to be fair a very valid question with hindsight!).  Now it’s fine that they had forgotten, what was interesting was I didn’t want to remind them.   I realised I’d reached a point where I didn’t want to fill in the back sign that said “I’m shining for….” with ‘me’ (I did when I ran the race for life in May though and was proud to). Something was different, I wanted to move on from it all, I didn’t want people asking me how I was getting on, when my next appointment was etc etc.  I finally felt I wanted to move on and forget

But then……..

the exhaust pipe fell off my car today (yes seriously, no idea how, one minute it’s there, the next minute it’s dragging along the ground!). I waited for the Green Flag man to find me (not helped by the fact that I gave him the wrong road name – oops!), while waiting I was getting more and more annoyed about how this exhaust pipe was going to ruin my afternoon plans!  Apparently you can’t really drive a car without an exhaust pipe so I then spent some time this afternoon getting my car to the garage and phoning friends to ask for a lift and to rearrange plans.  Add to this the cat being sick 3 (yes 3!) times on the dining room carpet and i found myself being more than slightly annoyed!

But then……..

I remembered the friend who is giving me a lift tomorrow morning is the same amazing friend who used to pick me up at 7.00 every Tuesday to take me to chemo.  Exactly a year ago tomorrow was my first chemo, this time last year I had packed my bag for hospital and was trying to sleep before the first session, I failed to sleep and was just really scared all night!  When my friend picks me up at 7.30 tomorrow we will be heading in a completely different direction, without the fears, nerves and dreads that I had when she picked me up exactly a year ago, and without cancer!

That put an exhaust pipe and sick cat into perspective!  This time last year I would have given anything to be facing a day without a car over facing a day of chemo – and I still would.

its great to forget and move on, but I never want to forget how lucky I am to be able to move on, and to have all those day to day frustrations and annoyances!  Funny how they can become so precious!