So, the smug Superwoman status I granted myself last week for remaining fighting fit in a house full of sick children has well and truly gone. I’ve slipped to the bottom of the I can do it all just watch me charts and on the emotional scale am languishing somewhere between an unconvincing fine thanks and thoroughly fed up.
It probably was a little optimistic to think that after ten days of breathing in the germ-ridden air of my beloved four and not holding back on the endless dribbly kisses and constant cuddles that I wouldn’t succumb to the unpleasant virus they’d passed to each other but I was so determined not to! I feel like I’ve failed. And so, as my glands swell and temperature rises my mood plummets. I feel angry. Angry with myself for not taking my vitamins and eating my greens. Frustrated that even after cancer I still seem to think that two cups of tea and a digestive biscuit constitutes a decent breakfast. I remember when I was diagnosed and stumbling around in a terrified daze. Food was way down on the list of things to think about. Hardly surprising. It took every ounce of strength to carry on functioning as a mum. Still feeding the triplets round the clock at three hourly intervals the last thing on my mind was nutrition. But that was okay because I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by an army of angels who regularly placed delicious, rainbow coloured meals down in front of me, put a knife in one hand, fork in the other and stood over me as I ate. In those very early days between biopsies, bone scans and the start of chemo I ate more berries, oily fish and green food than I ever had before and vowed to myself that this would be the way forward. It felt so right. So bloody obvious. I would nourish my ailing body, heal it from within and fight those wayward cells with more anti-oxidants than they’d know what to do with. Those good intentions didn’t last. Left to my own devices and no longer under the watchful eye of loved ones to quite the same degree it wasn’t long before I was back to my old, chocolate covered ways. I’m worse than the children. Veg – do I have to? Fruit – if I want to bite into something crunchy can it not come in a shiny gold wrapper? And it’s not ignorance. I know exactly what I should and shouldn’t be eating, we all do. I use exhaustion and a tiny, cluttered kitchen as an excuse not to cook properly but really it’s laziness and a set of totally skewed priorities. What’s the point in having a shelf full of Jamie’s books if the freezer is full of turkey twizzlers? Forget the kids, I’m the one who needs a reward chart.
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