Literally on this day last year I was picking my wife up from hospital after she had had her mastectomy and cancerous lump removed. She is 42 and looked about 62 on the short journey home in the car from London Bridge.
As a family, me and my boys (they were 8 at the time) spent Christmas Day in the living room on our own trying to make the best of things. When my wife could make it downstairs throughout the day we had to be so careful around her (she had a blood drain hanging out of her side amongst other stuff) as all they wanted to do was give her a hug.
Prior to that operation and with all manner of happy and sad endings running through my mind I told myself that I would work like I have never worked before for this family.
We're now a year further on.
My boys are now 9. My wife has had 3 further operations throughout the year (breast reconstruction from fat they managed to get from somewhere off of her, lymph node removal and lymphoedema connection). 6 rounds of chemotherapy including the one they call the red devil, managed to retain 50% of her hair, and then a further 8 bouts of radiotherapy.
Since September she has had an induced Menopause through medication and is 3 months into a fricking mad combination of hormone suppressant drugs and 3 or 4 others. As well as a number of scheduled injections every other week.
Generally speaking she hasn't had many side effects, which the Consultants are surprised about, and I believe this is because she helped herself.
Never a smoker. A regular gym goer. And only drank socially at a function or party, but has gone teetotal now. Diet wise as a family we cleaned up our act and now eat nothing processed where possible, cook all our meals fresh and generally eat whole foods.
The woman is inspirational to be honest. She's dying to get back to the gym but needs sign off from the physio first. She'll be first in the queue on January 2nd I reckon.
Back to my promise about working hard and working smart for this family. How could I not give it my all this year and probably forever after my wife has gone through all that for this family.
Not that I'm a shirker, never have been and never will, I've always worked hard but as I've cut away the crap and focused on my plan things have become clearer, I'm working less but for more money, I've manoeuvred myself into a very tidy position and my boys haven't missed a single day of school or appointment that needed to be kept. I've also been alongside my wife at every single treatment appointment and I wouldn't have had it any other way.
As the saying goes. The harder I work the luckier I get. But I would say the SMARTER I work the luckier I get.
Anyway this is a total outpouring of emotion. I came to bed about an hour ago and thought I'd log on to review some new registrations.
I can't even remember what this thread was meant to be about.
