Bodies are amazing. It’s  two months since I popped the last pill following my last chemotherapy session. Since then I’ve slowly been getting better and better. Right now I feel about 80-90% normal.

I write these pieces as much for me as for you. I have a loving family and many dear friends who want to hear how I’m doing, but I also need to order my own thoughts and check my opinions of things. meanwhile, please keep sending those positive waves, I loves you all.

Last month we went to FantasyCon, a weekend convention for fantasy, SF, and horror writers, publishers, and fans. It was great. It was also a bit overwhelming. It has been a long time since I was in a room with hundreds of people. So many people! Man, that did me good.

While I was there I was asked if chemo was still as tough as it had been in the past. A difficult question to answer beacuse I wasn’t there and I can only speak for myself. All I can say is that I was supposed to have ten treatment cycles but my consultant stopped it after nine because the side-effects were becoming dangerous. For me, that’s a definite ‘yes’. Chemo was brutal.

It’s hard now to list all those side-effects in my mind, but here goes:

Hair loss? It’s a given, no big deal.

My finger and toe nails fell off. Blood pressure would sometimes crash and I would faint or feel horribly sick, or even pass out. I lost feeling in my fingertips and toes (peripheral neuropathy). I was so fatigued I could not think or move. (FYI fatigue is not tiredness, sleep does not help.) One day I puked until I could puke no more, and then I puked again. Loss of taste! Partial hearing loss! (Hopefully temporary.) Visual migraines! Fungal infections! One of my eyes filled up with blood!

Oh yes, no fingerprints! If only I wasn’t so fagged out I could have done some perfect crimes. Maybe next time.

I put on 22 lb/10 Kg. Most of this was water retention (edema) in my legs. My knees looked like giant, soft dumplings, my calves were wider than my thighs. At its peak it rose into my chest and breathing started to get difficult. Walking was more than hard, every step hurt, I could just about pull myself up one flight of stairs. Because it affected my mobility so drastically, because it lasted so long, because it hurt, because it had such a big effect on my mental health, of all the side-effects this was the worst.

Somehow I managed to keep writing. Ten minutes here, twenty there. Not every day, not even every week. Some days just thinking about writing was all I could do, and on those days it was a small triumph to achieve that, and that was how I saw it.

Bodies are amazing. Take the pressure off and they bounce back.  My hair is growing back – I have eyebrows and eyelashes again. Finger and toenails are slowly recovering. The neuropathy is fading, the edema is mostly gone. I can put on my own socks.

Regaining your sense of taste is amazing. Everything smells so wonderful, everything tastes so good.

I had lost a huge amount of fitness and strength in those six and a half months of chemo, and my long-term medication causes muscle-wastage anyway. Once I was through it I was determined to get as strong and fit as I could, as soon as possible. Mostly, this was just for me, to prove to myself I could in fact recover to live my life, walk without pain, garden, open jars. I also need to be in good shape for whatever the next treatment might be. I’m heading towards the place where treatments can become more experimental, more radical. They won’t be offered if you’re physically incapable of, as my doctor says, tolerating the insult.

I’m swimming, rowing, using weights, and starting to jog. My first exercise sessions were very short but I proved something. My first time on the rowing machine lasted 5 minutes and I was so exhausted it took almost as long to get up. Now, at 20 minutes plus, I’m holding myself back from doing more as I follow my incremental plan. Six weeks ago I did my first Parkrun, 5K in 67 minutes of pure hard slog. My fifth run took just over 50 minutes. So far it’s been a PB every single time. Yes, I’m slow, slow, slow, but never as slow as the week before. It’s incredibly motivating.

The garden is coming back under control because I can now (mostly) help as I used to. This year in the house and garden, in everything, Gaie shouldered everything from housework to shopping, washing, cooking, planting and weeding. It was impossible for her to do everything, but she worked incredibly hard to make my time easier.  I’m so sorry she had to go through this, I’m so glad she was there.

Late summer, I planted late crops of purple beans, pak choi, lettuce and herbs. They are all flourishing. To see that makes me happy, that I could simply do it makes me happier still.

I have to unlearn a lot of things chemo taught me – that what I could do last month, or last week, was no longer possible. I’m running up against this all the time, it feels like it’s everywhere, every aspect of my life. Each time I push myself and discover that I can now do that thing I’d given up on it’s a small victory, a step to recovery, and somewhere inside me something heals.

I’m writing this in the garden, in mid-October. The sky is blue, the air fresh, and the sun is beautifully warm on the back of my neck. It feels like the year is having one final burst of high summer and I can’t help but wonder if it’s the same for me.

Yet for the first time in three years I’m not dreading the winter and the bad news it has brought in the past. If this winter is going to be the same, so be it. I accept.

Also, I have a plan. It’s quite cunning, it’s based on science and it might even work. If it does, I’ll let you know.

I can’t help but feel optimistic.

Just a little.