I’ve been busy steering good ship Lawley and whilst I’ve been meaning to write a post I haven’t found the time. Happily, today I woke at 3:33am after not sleeping well at all, so rather than fight it I thought I’d get up and do something until tireness comes back and I can sleep some more. The good things are a) that’s not normal, I usually sleep well and b) we’re all going on holiday to Center Parcs in a few hours. The Lawley family are ridiculously excited about this! Before that though, I think it’s high time to digest whats been happening over the last few weeks.

Julia has been off the chemotherapy for a while now and she is bouncing back. She’s been getting frustrated, as with less fatigue comes the will to do more and then she tires herself out and feels bad about it. What she doesn’t realise is how much more she is doing now compared to a month ago. It’s encouraging but this is a long haul journey and the fact there is another round of chemo on the horizon isn’t too far from our thoughts.

The big news of the week has been the genetic test. It came back with a hit and I wasn’t surprised, it helps explains what before was unexplainable - why Julia? The operation will now be bigger, but there are upsides, we won’t be living in fear that the cancer will appear in the other breast and when reconstruction happens Julia will have a matching pair of new knockers!

Julia took the news hard and saw it as another bad thing to happen to her. Which is understandable, especially as it might have repercussions for the children but the future is a way away and we must live in the present and deal with the here and now.

I tried to highlight some of the positives to come out of this all (you have to choose your moments for doing this as part of being supportive is just listening but part of being a man is trying to fix all the things™).

The big positive is there is treatment, drugs, therapies and years of experience in this field. It is accounting for something and that collective medical expertise will kill Julia’s cancer. In just a couple of weeks time Julia should be cancer free the rest of the treatment will be the final clean up operation to ensure that.

Second chances. Not everyone gets one but in a way Julia has. It’s awful whats happened and I can’t deny that but as awful and traumatic as it has been the treatment will finish and a new normal will occur. That’s the second chance. I’ve been encouraging Julia to focus on what she wants to get out of life and then to go for it. The future isn’t written and no one knows how long their own might be so

Choose your future, choose life, fuck cancer.