Oh my goodness!

Among the symptoms of anaemia are lack of concentration and forgetfulness. I was extremely anaemic for the best part of 15 months, though this wasn't identified as an issue for quite some time. Given that my mother had severe anaemia in the last few months of her life, you would have thought that I would have recognised the symptoms in myself, wouldn't you? This seems to be particularly likely since my source of bleeding was obvious and constant. I think it must have been a question of the mote in my own eye; I had no idea until recently how much anaemia had been affecting my behaviour. Today, this was brought home to me rather forcefully...

I had gone to the bank to discuss my finances and the best way of managing them. All went well and we sorted things out to my satisfaction. As I was leaving, my "personal banker" (as we have to call them these days) asked me why I'd cancelled my house insurance policy with the bank. Had I found another provider? This question came as a surprise. As far as I knew, my house insurance policy had been arranged with the bank, and I hadn't cancelled it. So, we explored this a bit more. It turned out that I had had no buildings or content insurance since October 2005 (which was roughly when my anaemia really kicked in!) The only reason I can think of for this is that I paid off my mortgage at that time and the insurance that went with that was probably automatically cancelled. Normally, I would have noticed this and done something about it. However, my thinking was obviously muddled, and I hadn't realised. So, I have been happily going about my business for more than a year, thinking that my house was insured against fire, flood and other horrors when, all the time, it most certainly was not! It is now.

My lesson this time? Some of the symptoms related to having cancer can lead to stupid oversights in other areas of your life. My advice? Check, double-check and check again; just because you don't feel capable of dealing with finances, insurances and so on is no excuse for letting things slide..

The other thing I've had reinforced today is how much different my life is from how it was for the last two or three years! Each day, something happens that makes me appreciate how very much better I am both physically and mentally.