This afternoon I was up at church doing my weekly walk around, and happened to take a few moments to look at the bubls that had managed to survive some vandalism a few weeks back.  Now there are daffodils in bloom and more waiting to burst forth.  This is a wonderful sign of hope and brought a smile to my face on a rather wet and dreich afternoon!

(So that's the 'look away now' hint for anyone who doesn't want to know!)

Yesterday I had my one month drug review with a locum GP who was very nice, and very young and very kind.  As I began to reel off my side effects, she called up the information on the drug I was on and conceded yes, they were linked to it (I am that boring patient who reads the leaflet, so I already knew that, but hey ho, she was only doing her job).  In a slightly odd conversation, I was offered three choices... increase the dose of the drug I was on (really not keen to do that), try another drug for the next six weeks (which I chose) or come off the drugs altogether (highly tempting but I don't want to revert to menopausal monster minister).

Although in the same class of drugs, the way this one is absorbed by the body seems to be different and there appear to be less interactions with my other drugs than the other one, which I hope is a good thing.  A little bit of research suggests that it's not a safe drug for me to be on long term as it can undermine the effects of Tamoxifen, but short term to get back onto an even keel hormonally, it sounds like a small enough risk to accept.

I continue to reflect on what I am learning about myself through all of this, and what purpose (other then telling the world!) it might serve in naming and normalising the experiences of some woman.  I've always been of the 'nothing is wasted' viewpoint, just sometimes it takes a while to work out what is the good learning!

Yesterday, the poem for the day was 'Maps' by Holly Ordway, and I think it's just wonderful.  See what you think

Maps

Antique maps, with curlicues of ink

As borders, framing what we know, like pages

From a book of travelers’ tales: look,

Here in the margin, tiny ships at sail.

No-nonsense maps from family trips: each state

Traced out in color-coded numbered highways,

A web of roads with labeled city-dots

Punctuating the route and its slow stories.

Now GPS puts me right at the center,

A Ptolemaic shift in my perspective.

Pinned where I am, right now, somewhere, I turn

And turn to orient myself. I have

Directions calculated, maps at hand:

Hopelessly lost till I look up at last.

The writer is an academic who journeyed from atheism to Christainity, finding a home in Roman Catholicism, and I am intrigued and excited at the prospect of reading her memoire of this in 'Not God's Type, An Atheist Academic Lays Down her Arms'