The cracks are showing

I'm tired.  I can't keep on keeping on.  The outward facade that everything is ok is just that, a facade.  And I can't keep it up anymore. 

There is no alternative.

At the beginning of July something awful happened.  It didn't happen to me or my family, but it may as well have.  My best friend, the one I turn to in times of crisis, in time of joy, was diagnosed with leukemia.  She rang me the day before she got the diagnosis, telling me she had been for a blood test, the GP had rung four hours later saying she needed to come in, that there were some anomalies in her white blood cell count.  We didn't know at that point what was wrong and already we cried and cried.  Andrea floating all these horrible possibilites and me denying all these notions as even possibilities, while inside my stomach was twisted, my mouth was dry, my eyes were wet and I was imagining the same things all the while my mouth belied it.

The next day she went to see her doctor.  It was leukemia.

The tears and anguish as we spoke on the phone,  Not acute, thank god, not acute.  But still, that awful word.  Cancer.

After all the horror and all the tears of the first few frantic days had passed, Wikipedia gave me some information and some understanding.  It is Chronic Myeloid Leukemia.  It is treatable and the prognosis is good - if you are going to get cancer, this is the kind that you want!  She has had oral chemotherapy and will then take medication, probably indefinitely, to inhibit the CML and allow the regrowth of normal bone marrow.  While I was researching this there was one sentence that lodged inside me, and which I look to whenever I start to worry about her

"CML is the first cancer in which a medical treatment (imatinib) can give to the treated patients a normal life expectancy"

There are many reasons why this awful word, this cancer, was such a devastating diagnosis.  She is the only child of wonderful parents who live across the world.  She is an amazing wife to a man who would be lost without her.  She is an awesome mother to 4 wonderful kids, the youngest of whom is only 1 year old.  She is a loving, generous, funny and wise friend to an army of friends who would happily march in support of her. 

But I wasn't thinking about any of these people when she first told me.  I was selfish.  I only thought of me, of my loss.  Of how unbearable it would be if something happened to this woman who is my rock.  Who is my person.  My turn to.  I did soon start to think of them, but I have to confess that my first thoughts were concerned with how necessary she is to me.

She has so many people who love her, who will carry her when she needs it and will rejoice with her when she's feeling strong.  Who will work hard to make sure that she is physically and mentally in a good place.

Andrea will be one of the ones who has a normal life expectancy.  There is no alternative.

HLI

A while back we got involved with playing host family to an Italian student who would be in Newcastle for a week while she was involved in a drama festival.  We did it on a voluntary basis to help out a neighbour who was helping out someone from work.  Anyway long story short, we had 19 year old Silvia Pallotti staying with us for one week, where we provided bed, breakfast and a packed lunch and that was it.  The boys loved having her here, they loved sharing their lives with her, and finding out about where she came from and learning a little bit of Italian as well.

Having her with us had been no problem at all, it hadn't impacted negatively on our family, and if anything, we had all grown from the experience.  This made Steve and I think about doing it as a source of income, and we talked about it off and on for a while, until I saw an advert in our local paper.  It said if you were a graduate, or a qualified teacher, you could host foreign students and get paid to teach them english. 
I rang up, we got interviewed, the house was assessed, out references were checked and the next thing we knew, we had our first student booked in!  It all happened very quickly and despite some serious worries on my part about whether or not I was actually going to be able to teach English, we were set on going through with it.

We turned Jen's room into our 'room for hire', painting it, moving furniture around and buying a desk and new soft furnishings - and it looked pretty good. We were ready for our first student to arrive on the 15th of July... until we got a call to say that there was a 16 year old Italian girl wanting to come on the 2nd of July for 2 weeks, could we take her?

We said yes and that was how we came to have the lively, lovely Margherita staying with us.  She was wonderful, keen to learn and happy to try anything. The boys were both completely besotted with her and she was happy to spend time with them, eagerly recounting to me how they had taught her to play Hide n Seek!

It has been three weeks since I started writing this post, leaving it in limbo, telling myself I had too much to do, busy, busy.... but the I realised last night that the truth was different.  Yes I was busy, but the reason I hadn't got round to finishing it was because I was BORING myself.  I was avoiding it because it was like walking through sinking sand trying to make this sound interesting.  This blog is not meant to be a tedious day by day recounting of the mundane and the ordinary and it is not meant to BORE ME. 

We take in foreign students, provide food, accommodation, company and lessons.  Sometimes it's great, sometimes it is bloody hard work.  The money is good, but erratic. 

Steve and I are both currently unemployed and we will both be attending the Jobcentre on Friday to start claiming Jobseekers Allowance - the horror that I feel about this is for another time. 

Boring stuff up to date, and over!!!