Goodness me, what a busy time! While I'm frantically getting ready to fly out on Sunday - to Australia, since people have been asking! - various things have happened that have been hanging around for weeks, if not months. Like buses, it seems, there's nothing for ages and then several arrive together.
It gave me rather a lot of pleasure today to phone my local health authority's psychiatric services to tell them no, I didn't want the appointment they were offering me in 5 months time, 18 months after my GP referred me... Mental health issues? Well, in fact, no, according to various oncology professionals I've talked to. The symptoms that had been diagnosed as depression - hence the referral - were almost certainly not depression; rather, they were side effects of severe anaemia caused by my cancer and, of course, by the cancer itself. Since surgery and treatment, I have had no symptoms of anything that bears even the faintest resemblance to depression, so, as I say, it gave me enormous joy to cancel everything today!
It just shows how much cancer can colour your life, doesn't it? There were times leading up to diagnosis when waking up in the morning was the last thing I wanted to do. How times change... My experience certainly demonstrates that doctors don't know everything (well, we knew that, didn't we?!) and that cancer can affect your mental as well as your physical health; I wish I'd known that sooner.
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