A Bitter Pill to Swallow, Figuratively Speaking

Hi All,

Having a really weird week this week. Not sure if it’s all the steroids I’m on or what but I have been nonstop teary for a lot of reasons. Went up to the hospital on Tuesday with Stephen and everything is going really well for me, my bloods are fine and my doctor is happy with how things are going. But as we were waiting to see her we heard someone getting bad news and it was horrible. The girl was just screaming crying and was ushered into a quiet room, a room I was taken to the day of my diagnosis. We just sat there in silence listening to this poor person crying her eyes out. It just brings you right back to when I found out and it’s just so unbelievable it’s hard to think about because I literally have no idea how I coped initially. I don’t even remember crying I just remember saying ok.


Stephen decided to bring me for lunch after the hospital because I’m doing really well and we have to celebrate that so we went for chicken wings. It was my first time in a restaurant and it was very exciting, I was wrecked after!

I woke up another day and as silly as this sounds I felt like crap. I couldn’t even recognise myself in the mirror. I think I look well some days and I do, for someone who has leukaemia, and that’s a bitter pill to swallow some days. I look well for someone with pretty much no hair, a tube in my chest and a fat face from all the medication. I ended up just going downstairs to my mom in floods of tears, who thought something serious was wrong and got a fright herself, and I just sobbed “I look like a boy”. I have a small amount of hair but it’s not the same as before and I look grand, but again it’s not the same as before I got sick. It’s just very hard not recognising yourself in the mirror, literally staring at yourself and not really seeing anything recognisable of the person you used to look like.

I don’t really know what I’m trying to say or get across. I’m not writing this looking for sympathy at all, I really don’t want that. I just wanted to write this down and explain what some days are genuinely like. I am really positive most days and I am so grateful for how things are going but some days are just tough.

Love,

Mairéad
xx