Spring will heal me

Bleuch.  The lurgy has arrived.  It's no great surprise: my husband was home all last week with fever in the high thirties and this weekend I've been nursing my daughter with the same symptoms.  I guess I was kidding myself when I thought I could hold it at bay.

Even so, it is ironic to fall sick now after my body's marvelous resilience during the chemo days when my white blood cell count hit an impressive low of 200 and yet I didn't get so much as a cold.  Now I am starting to run a temperature, my chest hurts and I am coughing.

The good news: I don't have to race to casualty as I would have in the chemo days.  I checked today and I can go ahead with radiotherapy even with a low grade fever and if I have to miss a day, it isn't a problem.

The not so good news: I somehow have to not cough and remain motionless for twenty minutes of therapy every day.  And even though my limbs are crying out for a long soak in a hot bath...baths are forbidden during radiotherapy and a shower just isn't going to have the same therapeutic effect.

I have faith that my incredible body will see this wretched virus off though.  Okay, my body did let me down a bit by letting the cancer fester in the first place but an immune system that still operates with a white blood cell count of 200 is something to be proud of.  And there are signs of returning vitality everywhere: two months after my last chemo and my hair is a good centimetre long and as soft as ducks' down.  A five o'clock shadow marks my returning eyebrows and (at last!) my embarrassing itch is a thing of the past.  Hot flushes and the occasional night sweat remain but I wait to see if this is my hormones recovering or signs of them heading off the next journey a bit ahead of schedule, is this an early menopause?

As the snowdrops bloom and daffs push up through last year's fallen leaves - it feels as if my body is responding to springtime and will surely ward off a winter virus as surely as the morning sunshine banishes the last frosts.