Rejuvenation

I've posted photos of spring flowers here many times before. I love this time of the year and often head outside with my camera. You can read more about the various places  where I have taken  photos here and here. But this post isn't actually about flowers (my photos of flowers are far prettier than what I am going to write about). This post is a rather personal post about my life over the last few months. I haven't mentioned it here till now, but the last few months have been rather tough ones. You see, apart from making my handmade cards and albums, I have also been dealing with breast cancer.

Towards the end of October last year I went for my annual mammogram. Official Israeli policy for early detection of breast cancer recommends that every woman between the ages of 50 and 74 be tested at least once every two years. I am not yet 50 but was already going for regular check ups, having chosen to do so a number of years earlier. My grannie had breast cancer at the age of 44, though she lived to a grand old age, so I was cautious but never particularly worried about the test.

I wasn't even that worried when my doctor suggested I go back a week later for a biopsy. She thought she might have seen something during the ultrasound, but not to worry about it. I was so unconcerned that I met a friend for coffee after my Jerusalem based appointment and we chatted about everything but what the doctor had just told me!
One week later I was back there again for a very uncomfortable hour-long biopsy. And one week after that, on my eldest son's 18th birthday, they called me back in once again, this time to tell me that I had breast cancer.
I went home and baked him a birthday cake.

I have discovered that the Israeli medical system provides wonderful care. A date was set just three weeks later for a lumpectomy. However, arranging all the appointments and filling in the paperwork in the meantime was a nightmare! We visited so many different hospitals for the various tests and scans I needed to do pre-op, made so many phone calls, and answered so many questions over and over again. I am grateful that Mister Handmade in Israel and I can both speak Hebrew, can navigate the web and can drive. I cannot imagine what those few weeks would have been like without those skills.

At the end of November I had a lumpectomy. I recovered very quickly and very soon went back to photographing flowers and creating. I even managed to fit in a couple of wonderful exhibitions, including the marvelous David Rubinger one at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, though I do acknowledge that most people wouldn't have pushed themselves quite as hard as I did to get there! The weeks that followed involved physiotherapy on my arm, needed because I had a lymph node removed, and still more phone calls to arrange the next stage of treatment, radiotherapy.

I finished radiotherapy a couple of weeks ago. There isn't a hospital in the relatively new city where I live, so that meant I needed to go to Tel Aviv every day for quite some weeks. It wasn't a fun time! Whilst my friends were amazing and arranged a timetable so that most days someone was able to drive me and keep me company, I found the treatment itself very cold and impersonal. Of course I was fortunate that my cancer had been found early, had not spread and therefore, for those and other reasons, I did not need chemotherapy. However, as horrible as chemotherapy is, I gather that great care is taken of you and someone is with you all of the time.

My radiation experience was quite different. I was given a time to arrive, waited, often for quite some time, in a large waiting room until my number was called, then it was in and out. No time for any small talk, no time to see how I felt, no time to check I was comfortable. The staff just wanted to keep things moving.

I was very glad when it was over.

And that's where I am today. I dealt with some rather horrible radiation burns and was sore, but I am cancer-free and hope to stay that way! I am grateful that I was organised enough to go for regular check ups, and appreciate the early detection and the overall good medical care that I received.

We recently marked the first day of spring and will soon put the clocks ahead one hour and watch as nature comes out of hibernation. During the cold, wet winter, I often find it hard to believe that trees will ever get their leaves back or that flowers will ever bloom again, but sure enough, every year they do and, as you have seen from my photos, they do it in a magnificent way! Spring is also a time for personal change, rejuvenation and new ideas. For my part I am looking forward to a few nice days out that don't involve hospital appointments, some new creative projects and some interesting orders. Can't wait to hear from you soon!

* This post has been shared on All Seasons, The Good. The Random. The Fun., Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday), Our World Tuesday, Pictorial Tuesday, Tuesdays with a Twist, The Happy Now Blog Link-Up, My Corner of the World, Wordless Wednesday, Thankful Thursday, Friday Bliss and Floral Friday Fotos.