Moorfields #2

I’m back into Moorfields tomorrow for surgery. A procedure to straighten the only uncut muscle left in my eye and hopefully alleviate the double vision I’ve had since the plaque radiotherapy was inserted some eight months ago. I haven’t been back on that ward since I was radioactive in the run up to Christmas last year, and I have mixed and strange feelings to be honest. I was a very different person eight months ago, and OM was still something unknown and new to me and my family. I wish I still didn’t know anything about it and had never heard of it, but, because of it, I have met some of the most incredible people and have also come to love and accept the person that I am now. Cancer changes you, no doubt about it, and it changes the people around you too. Some find it really really hard to communicate and others grow with you on the journey and path it takes you down. I often feel like I have a whole line of people to the left and right of me, holding my hand and each other’s hands, stretching really wide. It may sound funny, but I can envisage this image in my mind and it’s comforting. My children are excited to all be going off on their own adventures tomorrow, bags packed for sleep overs, even my Alannah is off to a hotel and conference for a couple of days. They are all very much aware of where I’m going and why and I’m sure each of them has a dragging sense of nervousness within them. ‘Mum’s dodgy eye means she’s having more surgery!’ It’s the slap in the face reminder that none of them need. I, like fellow OMies, carry on as normal a life as we can. Fitted around an endless stream of appointments,tests and results, but for me, the journey to Moorfields, nil by mouth, and prepped for surgery, holds a distinct mark in my mind.