One of the things about being a rule-follower, a girly-swat and apparently a good patient, is that thus far, my recovery from surgery is progressing really well.  My wound is healing beautifully, I have no pain to speak of (just an odd niggle if I twist or move a bit too quickly) and although I get tired very quickly in the evenings, my energy levels are improving day by day.

According to what I refer to as the "How to Get Better" leaflet, I am to take a daily walk, rain or shine, and aim to increase the time/distance steadily over a period of four to six weeks.  So, I began the first day I was home with doing five laps of my kitchen table (roughly 40m, or so I calculated), soon progressing to 10, 15 and then 30 laps.  Once I'd got that far, it was time to venture outdoors for a ten minute stroll, accompanied by a friend, just to be on the safe side.  A couple more days and I was doing that little circuit alone and starting to add on little bits to increase the duration/distance.

By two weeks I had achieved my personal goal, being able to walk to a nearby cafe, sit down for an hour with a cup of tea and chat to a friend, and then walk home again.

Yesterday I had two shorter walks but together they totalled almost 2.5 miles, with another tea and chat stop in the second one.

This morning I braved a longer, single walk - the target according to "How to get Better" being 30 - 45 minutes.  I had slightly underestimated the distance, and the walk ended up as 50 minutes and 2.25 miles.  It was fine, but I was quite glad when I got home to sit down with a cup of tea and the "pink jammie" doughnut I bought at the bakers I passed on my way home.  After all, I need to keep up my energy reserves!!

Recuperation is a funny old thing, seeming to demand far more energy than activity levels suggest.  But it's also really important to do properly, in a girly-swat, rule-follower kind of way.  For which reason, once I've had my lunch it will be nap time before I spend the rest of the day doing nothing more taxing than colouring, stroking cats and watching TV.

We in the west seem to have a bit of an obsession with significant dates - birthdays and wedding anniversaries being the most obvious, but any number of others, often those of personal significance that no-one else on the planet will recall.  I'm not sure there is a whole lot of rhyme or reason to what is significant for a given individual... things that seem to me inconsequential are to others hugely significant and vice versa.  And some of it is about personality quirks -  for some people dates, times and places just 'stick' in the mind or a triggered by such diverse means as hearing a particular piece of music, smelling a certain scent, or even eating a specific food.

My own canon of significant dates includes some happy/positive occasions, such as my baptism, my sense of call and my ordination, and some not so lovely... my "cancerversary", the dates I started chemo and had my initial surgery are graven on my memory (though interestingly not the date I started rads but the day I finished them!).  Some are actual calendar dates, others are linked to liturgical dates (so, for example, I recall my Dad's death on the Wednesday after Easter rather than the actual date; my first sense of call on the second Sunday in Advent)

Yesterday was a milestone day - a marker that made official what already was (and which coincided neatly with the anniversary of going into hospital for my initial surgery, five years ago!)...

The officical assertion that I am now five years NED is a significant milestone in some ways, hence why I felt so unexpectedly happy about it, yet it is at the same totally artificial: due to an admin mix up my appointment had been delayed by a week, so I could have reached it a week earlier or a fortnight later, just dependent on when the appointment landed.  The marker doesn't actually change anything, at least not in terms of hard facts.  But it does change something inner, more nebulous, less precise.

The friend who five and half years ago said, "nothing has changed except now you know" may rue those words, given how deeply rooted they are in my psyche, yet they remain as true and as untrue as they were then.  Being told you have cancer does not change anything physically, but it totally changes your world, it is, in my opinion, an irreversible paradigm shift.  Being told you are still NED not only doesn't change anything, it is inherently imprecise, unproven, yet it makes a huge difference inside.  Reaching five years is a significant milestone, it is a figure that carries an air of mystique, and that is sometimes, unhelpfully, equated with cure.  This isn't a pardigm shift, there remains a level of uncertainty; a real, if diminished and diminishing, risk that something as yet undetected and undetectable may yet arise.  As others have said, the day you know you are cured of breast cancer is the day that you died at a ripe old age and something else appears on your death certificate!!

I think what I have learned, at a generic level, is to value my own milestones and markers, not to be embarrassed that for me 23rd August and 2nd/3rd February are hugely important dates, right up there with 5th October, 6th December and the Second Sunday in Advent, even if for very different reasons.

Most of these milestones and markers are not paradigm shifts, which is a good thing!  Most of them will become less significant with time, will pass unobserved, if not unremembered, and that is a healthy thing too, I think.

Five years of NED means the risk of recurrence has significantly diminished, that the risk of a new primary is falling closer to the societal average (and will reach that at around ten years from diagnosis).  Nothing dramatic has changed or will change, but as a personal marker, a date I genuinely feared I'd never see, it has personal significance - which I guess is good enough!

Five years ago to the date, I was admitted to hospital for my mastectomy and immediate reconstruction... I was tired from six cycles of chemotherapy and fearful of what the future might hold.

Since then I have learned to live with side effects, come to terms with living with a degree of uncertainty, made some amazing friends, done some wonderful things and been subject to ongoing care and support.

This morning was my five year post surgery check-up... I was pretty confident all would be well, but even so not counting any chickens.

I could not have imagined how happy I would feel to leave my appointment officially Five Years NED (No Evidence of Disease).  I still have another five years of follow-up.  Another five years of taking Tamoxifen.  And two-yearly mammograms (so years 6,8,10) for the balance of the decade.

Five years is a recognised milestone, not a 'now you are cured' but a real sense that 'now the risks start to diminish the longer you stay well.'

Had I been able to jump for joy without hurting my abdominal scar, I would have done.  Indeed, I would have danced my way out of the hospital and all the way down the road.

Chastened optimism, humble hopefulness, eternal gratitude... being a Five Year NED is just an amazing place to be.

Thank you God

Thank you everyone who has supported me

Thank you NHS Scotland.

When I spotted this page in my 'holy colouring book', I immediately called to mind one of my longest-standing minister friends, the one who on here is sometimes referred to as my bestest minister friend in the whole world ever.

She and I trained together, met the Regional Minister who would oversee our settlement together, wound up ministering just six miles apart for six years, went through NAM and final interview together, were handshaked together...and then dispersed, one to Scotland the other to Wales.

During our final year at college, this text was one that was hugely significant for her, and which she interpretted in some wonderful artwork - alas this scan which I did at the time doesn't really do it justice.

As I coloured, I found myself recalling many of the times we've spent together - college retreats, long journeys to or from Manchester, Ministers' Conferences, each other's ordinations and inductions, the 'Make Poverty History' march... and the times we met for coffee and cake at Staunton Harold sitting in a courtyard in the sunshine telling it as it is.  I remember her travelling to Glasgow to visit me at the start of my chemo, as well as the hugely personal things we have shared about our families over the years.

Whether any of this is really 'praying' I don't know.  What I do know is that it reminded me how blessed I am to have this friend - and how much I hope to take up the invitation to visit her in Anglesey before I return to work.

Thank you God, for D, and for the time and space to recall why I am so grateful for her.