Sweating the small stuff....

I always believed I was a little fish swimming with the tide; an amenable, adaptable 'go with the flow' type of person........it now appears I am a secret control freak!

I could blame cancer of course; as ultimately, when you are diagnosed, you take  that leap of faith and put your life in the capable hands of specialists. ... But actually I think it is definitely 'third child syndrome'.

I left the chemo unit after my first cycle of FEC ( 'fecking chemo', as it came to be known as) thinking ' that wasn't so bad, I can do this'; and eating sushi in the car on the trip home .... 5 hours later I was throwing up constantly, unable to keep down the back up anti sickness meds.
 Vomiting  first rice and fish, then water, and finally bright green bile for 10 hours straight is an edifying experience for all the wrong reasons. Looking back we refer to it as my 'Exorcist' moment, but in reality it was terrifying. Your body is no longer your own, and for all the bravado and 'Tank Girl' exterior in the face of an extremely worried husband and shell shocked son, all you really want to do is curl up and die quietly in a corner. I didn't, of course; the wonderful staff at A and E rehydrated me; finding the one vein in my arm that hadn't been burnt out, and sent me on my way still queazy, but with anti sickness meds that stood the test.

When you lose control in such a spectacular fashion, you fight to regain it in other ways; choosing when to have your head shaved, learning to inject yourself , eating healthy nutritious food and most of all ignoring the pain, nausea and fatigue to ensure a veneer of normality is maintained.
It becomes second nature to hold things together, keep things close and  become all things to all people. Without realising it, you begin to 'sweat the small stuff' and it becomes harder to let go.

Walking away from my job is scary; in doing so I have relinquished control, and am floundering, like Alice down the rabbit hole; trying to make sense of the new order of things. Do I need to 'sweat the small stuff' or is this a chance to be like the little fish I always imagined myself to be? Like Alice, only time will tell......