I am still in Belgium, recovering from my surgery. I am back home now. I have to say that i am surprised how my head is healing well from the surgery. Last fridag they removed the staples out of my head. The wound is already healed so well, only a part of it need some special care as it didn’t heal well like the rest. The doctor wanted to give me homecare for that but I just need to put something on it everyday to keep it grassy. Because it is on the back of my head my doctor told me to take a nurse to come every day to take care of this. .

I have the experience with nurses coming at my home, it means i need to be home every day at a certain time for this , and as i like the feeling of being free, i told the doctor i can do it myself with enough mirrors around me😉. So she took a picture for me how i have to do this. So for everything there is a solution😉. They shaved a little piece of hair away during surgery but when my hair is lose you can’t see anything, i am gratefull they did this carefully during the surgery as i don’t like that people see all of this (i think this is part of me trying to not be the ‘sick’ person).

It feels amazing the little steps you take after recovering from a surgery. First i am able to pee again by myself🙈 than they removed all the wires in hospital so i could sleep without all the beeping sounds. I had to wake up the first days, every 2hours, so they could shine a light in my eyes and i had to squeeze in there hands, it felt great after a bit to not be woken up anymore to do this. After i started walking around and the headach came less and less. These things are things we take for granted a lot of time. Be able to walk around, having no headach but fysicaly feeling ok, taking care of ourself…. experiencing things like this helping me to be gratefull again for little victories in life. Now i finally am also allowed to shower again after 2,3 weeks, that feels really amazing. So all of that are the ‘ nice side ‘ of experiencing cancer.

The part that sucks is the moment i went back home and i was ‘that sick person at home’. In hospital it is more easy to accept being sick but at home i had to learn again to be ok to sit still…this is a big challenge for me. Jumping from a bridge, travelling everywhere, adapting to situations, getting surgerys…many other things i have done don’t feel as challenging for me as sitting alone with my feelings.

So the first days at home i was recovering from the headsurgery but the eatingdisorder became very loud again. I stayed at my brother and his girlfriend there home. I am so thankful for all they did for me. The first days i was home they were busy and i was mostly of the time alone. I was not able to do many things so to much time alone in my head. When i look back i see how i was trying to have controlle about the food again and i started to eat ‘very’healthy again. Untill at some point i saw what i was doing, i just come back from South Africa and worked a lot again on putting this eatingdisorder on the background . So i see how the work i did there helped me passing this without the eatingdisorder taking over again. I saw how i was doing this thing again like in the past when i felt bad and i challenged myself taking other less ‘healthy’ things.

For the eatingdisorder i have a lot of support around me. A sponsor, dietician, psychologist and friends in recovery. So even i felt alone sitting home i didn’t had to do this alone. I worked so hard the last months to get this good again and i don’t want to go back again to were i was coming from so even i didn’t feel like having energy for this i kept myself on the good road. I did some things wrong after the surgery but i always put myself back on the right track after. I think it is normal after passing this that feelings come up. Bad feelings like anger and disappointment…i just need to deal with them in a healthy way.

I am still working on how to deal with all kind of feelings. That is why i am following this 12stepprogramme that has meetings online all around the world. I talked about this programme before . In this programme you should surrender and let go, believe that something bigger than you will make decisions. Follow this 12 steps and work on them. You should not be doing this the whole day but take every day a bit of time for this. It might sound weird but i experienced already a lot that if i surrender and let go of trying to controll nice things are happing. So this programme is really working for me.

Another part of the behaviour that triggers my eatingdisorder, i need to work on, is to learn to set enough boundries. Sometimes i am doing things to make people happy because i am not good at listening to my own feeling so the things i do then are maybe not always things that are feeling good for me or that i really want but because i block feelings i don’t notice this. Only when i like a person and the connection becomes tronger and longer,and after i keep having this wrong behavior to do things for this person , even it doesn’t match with what i want or need at that moment to feel good. If i continue this behavior with 1 person to longue i finally notice i am not feeling good and i start to take distance from this person. I know this is not good and instead i shpuld talk on that moment, but i can’t share what is happening on that moment with that person because i don’t know myself in the moment this is happening. The distance is a protection i think i do without realising to stop pleasing others and try to take care of myself as it doesn’t do good for me. Than i know i have to start putting more boundries but that person don’t understand why i am changing while i start to try to put more boundaries to protect myself. I think if i try this, setting my boundries, it is a good thing, but than people are not used i am doing this suddenly so then they are confused, at the same time i also take the distance and this is no healthy behavior. But i know all of this from myself i learn in this stepprogramme what my paterns are in live. Where i need to work on change in my behavior. And i am working hard on this. Little by little the change is also happening but i notice this takes a lot of time. I love people and i have a lot of love to give, i also love to give. But first i know i need to give more to myself , more respect. i know, i will give that respect to myself when i set boundries and do the things that are feeling good for me. But to do that i need to be very aware of my feeling. It’s a lot of practice as i lived like this for many years. I think it might be related to losing my mother on very young age. Of course sometimes in some situations, we also need to compromise with people and not only think about our own feeling. I only need to keep this in mind, as i always go in extremes. It is all about balance…finding balance is the biggest challenge in my life.

Than that person don’t understand why i am changing while i start to try to put more boundaries to protect myself. I think if i try this, setting my boundries, it is a good thing, but than people are not used i am doing this suddenly so then they are confused, at the same time i also take the distance and this is no healthy behavior. But i know all of this from myself i learn in this stepprogramme what my paterns are in live. Where i need to work on change in my behavior. And i am working hard on this. Little by little the change is also happening but i notice this takes a lot of time. I love people and i have a lot of love to give, i also love to give. But first i know i need to give more to myself , more respect. This i know, i can do when i set boundries and do the things that are feeling good for me. But to do that i need to be very aware of my feeling. It’s a lot of practice as i lived like this for many years. I think it might be related to losing my mother on very young age. Of course sometimes in some situations, we also need to compromise with people and not only think about our own feeling. I only need to keep this in mind, as i always go in extremes. It is all about balance…finding balance is the biggest challenge in my life.

Back to the headtumor 😃. We are already around 3 weeks later after surgery now. And i continue writing in this post. I moved back to Ghent, i can drive the car again, bike,.. i also have more energy again. My head is healing well. The only thing that i have is when i feel nerveus or i go to sleep and lay down there is a sound in my ears like a havy wind and sometimes there is a weird tikking noisse in my head somewhere i don’t know where it is exactly coming from, but i hope this will go away with time. Also this morning when i woke up i noticed my hand was trambling ,my hand on the right side where i got surgery didn’t had a lot of strength. This was temporary but not nice, i hope this things wil disappear with time. I have to be honest , i am very unpatient and people are sometimes surprised how fast i am recovering but i know i need to be honest with myself and still give my body enough rest because i feel my immunesystem is pretty low for the moment as i get easily little infections again and then it becomes something bigger than it normally should.

The next week that is coming, the week of 20june, i will see my oncologist to hear more about the tumor they took at. They already told me 90% chance it is another tumor because of my breascancer if not it would be a new cancer what means probably new treatments or medications so hopefully, even this might sound weird, it is my breastcancer so i can continue the hormontreatment i get for that and not again new medication. I will also see the doctor back who will give my radiations, because i will need some radiations to make sure all bad cells are removed in my head. Another doctor i need to see is the neurologist who did the surgery to check how the healing is going. And a psychologist from the hospital also asked me if i wanted to talk about the cancer, i don’t know if i have a need for that but i want to try because i know i sometimes ignore i have cancer instead of accepting.

I hope the radiations can start soon so i can go on a little trip trough france and spain, visiting some friends and doingg some meditation on the way because i don’t want to run but i think i really need to do a bit of what gives me energy, travelling and meditation😍.

I wanted to add that today Monday the 20th i saw my oncologist. She confirmed the tumor is a metastasis from the breastcancer. She told me we will need to take a scan of my head every 3 months to keep checking nothing new will come up as the medication i take is working well everywhere in my body but is working less in my head because there is some protection in the head for the brain that makes that my medication can’t pass very well. I will get radiotherapy on my head what will damage that protection a little. What will not give me any problems but infact this would help to let the medication i get go a bit more easily to my head also. It still not give assurance that i don’t get new tumors anymore. But the scans every 3months will help to be there even more early so it will be less big if something new comes.

I talked with a lady in the waitingroom that lives 20 year with breastcancer now. She also get new problems now and then but they also always managed to help here so she can continue. This motivates me somewhere but also makes me see that i might live with this kind of struggles, cancer . After coming from the hospital i felt a lot of anger and sadness inside. I don’t like this feelings and i am still learning what to do with them. But i can already feel them much more and accept they are there what is already a big progress for me instead of ignoring🙈.