Living with Molly: Here We Go Again!

🎵 She’s a Star – James (https://youtu.be/21LGZPuKnHI?si=kKgv1MGna4281jKC)

I’ve loved this song for years, but watching James sing it the other night, the first verse suddenly had a completely different meaning.

Whenever she’s feeling empty
Whenever she’s feeling insecure
Whenever her face is frozen
Unable to fake it anymore
Her shadow is always with her
Her shadow could always keep her small
So frightened that he won’t love her
She builds up a wall

Because cancer does funny things to how you see yourself – I suddenly saw the shadow as my cancer and thought that whole verse summed up how i felt last weekend.

Last weekend the wigs weren’t funny. They weren’t exciting new hairstyles or an opportunity to reinvent myself as a mysterious brunette. They were just another very visible reminder of what cancer and chemo might be about to take away from me, and I felt pretty shit about the whole thing.

And maybe, underneath all of that, there’s a little bit of wondering whether the person who has loved you all these years will still look at you in quite the same way when bits of you have disappeared and your hair potentially has too.

Turns out I needn’t have worried. He’s far too busy stealing my wigs.

What felt shit last weekend has somehow become great fun this week because the husband has taken it upon himself to help me model them. And frankly, I think we may have discovered his calling.

We’ve had blonde. We’ve had brunette. We’ve had red. There have been looks that nobody asked for and poses that nobody needed.

The absolute pinnacle has to be the blonde hair teamed with the red top, which my sister immediately christened “Baywatch on crack!”

I mean… she’s not wrong.

And somewhere amongst all the ridiculousness, he managed to completely change how I felt about the wigs. They stopped being something I was dreading and became something we could laugh about.

We’ve had some tough times over the years, as most couples who’ve been together forever have, but when the really tough stuff happens, he is always by my side (there’s a joke in there somewhere)! Also quite poignantly today is the anniversary of him losing his mum to breast cancer when he was just 17 years old. He’s been through a lot too 💔

It’s also made me think a lot this week about how hard it is for the person standing beside someone going through cancer. I get to talk about how I’m feeling, what hurts, what I’m frightened of, whether today is a good day or a crappy one. But the people who love us are on this roller coaster too, watching someone they love go through surgery, chemo, injections, aches, tears, wobbles and the endless uncertainty of what tomorrow might bring – they can’t fix it so they do what they can do.

They sit beside you; they pick you up, they make you laugh when you really don’t feel like laughing and they’re there with the big hugs whenever you need one ❤️

As for chemo round two, so far so good. No side effects yet and I’ve been drinking loads of juice which seems to be helping because there’s none of that horrible dry mouth I had last week. I’ve been busy lino tiling the utility end of the garage and keeping busy while i have energy!

I’m expecting the aches to arrive once the injections properly kick in, probably tomorrow… although possibly Friday because I was late doing my first injection last night. Oops!

Anyway, for now I feel good, I’m hydrated, and i have a great choice of wigs already – ans more to come! Could be worse. So, important question now: which one’s your favourite?! 😂