Well, my worst fears having been realised: giving up work has resulted in an embarrassing and acute case of laziness!
In my defence, the first week I told myself I was just ‘winding down’. The second week I spent in Scotland with friends; celebrating my birthday, watching the football but also largely sitting around drinking wine and eating cream cakes.
The third week, this week, I have been forced to recognise my innate (and well practised) ability to waste entire days in my dressing gown and achieve absolutely naff all.
Well, that’s not strictly true. I have been to the hospital this week for my post-hysterectomy check-up. It was the first time I’d seen my surgeon since late March and he gave me the womb cancer diagnosis. He just wanted to check that everything has healed properly inside (it mostly has) and to see how I was doing.
It was all very positive. The only issue the scan identified was some tissue granulation at the seam/scar where my cervix used to be. This isn’t common but it’s not unusual either. It sometimes happens on internal wounds as they aren’t dry and scar tissue starts to form over an unhealed area and prevents/slows true healing.
The treatment is either to cut it out or, more commonly, to cauterise it with silver nitrate. So I said ‘fine, yes, stick some silver nitrate on it …’
Yeesh. What was I thinking?! The procedure itself was fine but, of course, scars are not normal tissue in terms of their sensitivity. When it was over and drops of silver nitrate made contact with the surrounding flesh, it felt like someone had scorched the inside of my lady-parts with a match … The walk back to the Tube station was a very, very slow one.
Anyway, hopefully that’s done the trick. If it hasn’t and he wants to do it again in four months, I’ll tell him to just cut it off. While it’ll be even more painful, I’d rather have a permanent fix.
That also wasn’t the biggest drama of this week: Phoebe-the-cat has been ill. For such a sociable affectionate cat to stop eating and start hiding all the time was really very upsetting. She became completely listless and I was genuinely concerned that her body was shutting down. She’s about 10 years old.
But no, turns out it was a virus and she’d had a breakout of cat acne and herpes! Who knew that was even a thing? I certainly didn’t. Poor little thing … but all sorted now: painkillers with a puréed pouch and my little mate has bounced right back.
So, with a clean bill of health for us both, here’s hoping the second half of 2021 will be much better than the first. And, of course, this weekend we also have the much anticipated Euro 2020 final. Is football finally ‘coming home’? I certainly hope so.
I’ll be keeping everything crossed for the England team on Sunday and - whatever the result - look hopefully forward to the much touted heatwave they reckon will be with us in time for 19 July and a return to ‘normality’, however that may ultimately manifest.
Game on!
