Recovering from cancer treatment is a gradual process. Hair comes millimetre by wished-for millimetre. Breathlessness hits at the third step of a flight of stairs, then the fourth, then the fifth. Cramp makes you scream and cry, then just scream, then gibber, then you’re saying ‘Ow! cramp again!’ and turning over and going back to sleep.
All of these processes take months. And I know that in some respects I will never be back where I was pre-diagnosis, although I try to remember that my body would have aged and altered even if I hadn’t taken a couple of years out of my life to have a little boogie with cancer.
A major feature of last year was swollen feet and ankles. I wore trousers and Birkenstocks all summer, and found flat smart boots for work, and flat less-smart boots for casualwear, in spring and autumn. In shoes, my feet looked hideous: my leg appeared to go straight down from my knee and then have the ball of my foot and my toes stuck on. (This, obviously, was my perspective. I don’t suppose people who met me when I was wearing shoes paid that much attention, really.) Heels exacerbated everything, so I stopped wearing them altogether.
But gradually, gradually, my feet have got less swollen – although they remain a whole size larger than they were before my dance with cancer began, a 9 rather than an 8. And gradually my ability to feel comfortable in heels has returned.
Here I am on the morning of New Year’s Eve, a principal boy in search of a panto:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
And here I am in the evening, ready to go out to play:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Everything passes. everything changes. Life moves along and, if you move along with it, you never know quite what will happen.
I might be in 18 inch platforms by Easter.
