Feeling the fear.

 "Feel the fear-and do it anyway" I believe that's the title of a book my dad once gave me, I never read it but the title has been running through my head lately.

After writing recently about how I felt that fear had held me back from doing things over the years, it made me think a lot, and I decided to take those thoughts on board and start doing some things that scare me.
The first has been to get over my fear of 'medical' stuff. I'm usually one of those people who has to look away during any medical and surgical scenes on TV, even talking about surgical things would make me feel faint-and the fear of needles kind of goes with the territory.

Obviously if I want to become a Veterinary nurse I'm going to have to get over this fear, and also with everything that mum is going through I need to get over it for that reason too. On Friday last week mum had her last remaining drain removed from her breast-it drains all the extra fluid etc out of there. But she had a bit of trouble with leakage from that area once it was removed. I was the only one home with her, and it was on her side so she couldn't dress it properly herself- so I did it, I removed the soaked dressing,actually LOOKED at the little hole where the drain had been removed, and re-dressed it for her-and I was fine. Felt the fear and did it anyway.
Since then I've also sat in and watched as she had her dressings changed by a nurse and for the first time actually looked properly at her bruising and scars. And I think it's important for me to have done that-it made me really appreciate what she has been through in the past few weeks.

The second fear I conquered was this weekend. I left G at home and drove up to Auckland with mum and dad to see family and friends, we all went out on a boat on the Sunday with my my Uncle ,cousins, and grandma(mum's mother) and my 2 sisters drove up for the day too.
The boat was anchored off an island, and a few hundred metres from shore, it was beautiful!
 First fear- swimming in deep water, SHARKS. But I did it, that one wasn't too difficult, it was hot and there were lots of other boats around so I felt safe.Second fear-jumping from a height, my cousins started jumping off the very top of the boat and it's quite high, then my dad and my sister joined in, and after thinking about it for half an hour- I thought about my post the other week, and I thought about how my fear was stopping me from doing something exciting and fun. So I climbed up there, looked down, and definitely felt the fear! Everyone below 'helpfully' called out things to me like "just imagine there's a vet emergency-look there's a sick puppy in the water'  um yeah....not helping guys! Anyway I took a big breath and did it, and it was awesome, and I felt like I had done something quite amazing for myself.

Now there's a new fear on the horizon, but not just for me. You see, yesterday my dad phoned, the results from mum's lymph nodes had come back and it's not good. The 3 that they removed all tested positive for cancer. This means she'll be in for more surgery to remove all lymph nodes, and then chemotherapy.
I had kind of lulled myself into a false sense of security once she'd had the surgery, thinking it would be okay now, and that the tests would come back negative, so I was a little shocked. The whole thing is still just so surreal to me and it's hard to get used to. I hate the thought of mum having to go through all of that stuff.
But I do still feel like she will be okay. and in a away I feel like at least the chemo will hopefully zap the cancer properly and stop it spreading any more.

So I'm still feeling the fear, I'm fearful of the next few weeks with my mum, and I'm fearful of trying to cope with that, and my FET-especially if we have bad news. I'm feeling the fear -but I'm going to do it anyway, and whatever happens we'll keep going.
I'm on Day 11 today, and we'll know next Monday after my Blood test whether we can go ahead with the embryo transfer, so send me some good vibes peeps- because I could sure do with some good news next week!