Looking back over the past few years, I wonder how I got through. There have been times I thought I wouldn’t, get through I mean. That I would break. Even times when I felt broken, like a broken china doll. Not that I was fragile, well not before 2013. I was strong. I had my own Private Practice, ran the home, ‘here on the farm’. Had 7 ponies and 1 horse and enjoyed my life to the full. 2012 was a bad year, at least most of it. My beloved Evening Star, my horse for 24 years, died leaving me bereft. The following day, the day of the Queens Jubilee, I received an email that changed my direction and I became entrenched in a nasty online hoax that took me back to places I never wanted to revisit. It came to an end when the hoaxer was taken to court and punished. But there was a positive, in the guise of a new arrival, a baby girl, Hannah, whom my eldest daughter wanted to adopt. Most of you reading this know what happened next. So even that itself, although it began as a good, ended as a bad. Since then, early 2013, parts of my life have spiraled out of control. Events happened and my whole life changed. Collapsed like a pack of playing cards. But life is not a game, we don’t always have choices and sometimes have to just work with the life cards dealt us. The Carol Ann who had always been so strong, went missing.
I began blogging a year ago. My first blog was ‘To Air My Thoughts’. This was personal and the only way I had of defending myself from libelous lies being spread about me. ‘The Truth about Family’ was an open honest account of something that has been lied about in the most horrendous manner by my daughter Lisa and her aunt Trisha. Maybe that was wrong. But I have always done the right thing, all of my life, always been honest and it had resulted in my losing so much. This was the only way. I had been so badly hurt and re reading it brought everything back. It was a very personal blog but I felt so vulnerable and sad at that time. Beaten down by ‘family’.
I am trying to paint the picture of ‘where’ I found myself after these recent events, why I was in such a weak, low place. At a time when my strength had ebbed away and I felt at rock bottom, David was diagnosed with PC, my world was turned on its head and I was full of terror and pain. Reading over my blog, I am reminded of my fragility, my fear and my helplessness. My beloved husband had cancer and I was falling apart. Not David but me, his wife.
I had no one to talk to, living so far from family who are still in my life and so, taking the advice that I give to my clients, I wrote it all down, to offload. Hence ‘The Journey’ here, in my blog. After the biopsy I was in shock, as I said last week. I wasn’t prepared. How could I be? How can any of us be prepared? Any of you beginning your journey as the wife or partner of a man with PC might find yourself on my pages. Recognise the terrors I felt initially. You may see yourself struggling like I did trying hard to make sense of things since the diagnosis turned your world upside down.
It is said that life is what you make it. I don’t believe that. You have to make your life with what you have, what you are given. Life is like a pack of cards, sometimes you are dealt a good hand and sometimes you are not. Sometimes you can lay all the cards out in sequence and then someone leaves the door open and the wind blows them all in the air. They fall, out of sequence. No order. Muddled. Starting again, retrieving those blown away, you try to continue. You have to work hard with whatever hand you are next dealt, to make the best as good as you can. At other times you can lay your cards out, spend time putting them in order and feel good that the whole pack is complete. But someone or something will come along and steal one and like losing a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, you can’t rest until you find it. Sometimes the card is lost forever and you need to either find another pack or find another game. Life is never the same with one card missing. Other times you may stack them feeling good at what you have achieved, cleverly making a tower as children do. Then suddenly, wallop they all come crashing down. For no apparent reason. Nothing you did caused it, life just made it happen.
But. If you are clever, you can rebuild, using just the cards you have left. Yes the finished effect may be different, minus any missing, but it can still be good.
That’s life.
As a child I always felt I was not in the ‘pack’ at home. I was different. Didn’t belong. The ‘Joker’ perhaps. As I grew up, I was determined to make a life where I was part of something. School was good, I was always happy and again at college but not at home, outside of my ‘family’, where I found myself. Married and with children, I tried to teach them that they shouldn’t try to ‘fit in’, it never works, but try and fit life around themselves, with whatever it has given them. To be honest, caring and show others kindness at all times. That way, they would always belong. I also made sure my children felt loved and wanted, something I never had. The hand life had dealt me was not a good one and try as I did, over and over, I always lost the game. I didn’t want this for my daughters.
So like a pack of cards, the game of life can deal us a good hand or a bad hand. PC was definitely a bad hand. Try as I might, in the beginning it seemed to be a futile attempt at winning and I feared the game would be over far too soon. There were many times in the early part of My Journey, I felt like throwing the cards out of the window and running for the hills, I felt life had dealt me every bad hand it could, this was the last one I could handle. And handle it I wasn’t. Childhood, full of cruelty and abuse. The wicked hoax. Nasty cruel family stuff for 3 years previous to this and lots and lots of loss. Now the worst hand of all. PC. and the threat of losing my beloved husband. Sometimes it became just too much. But I didn’t, run for the hills I mean. I love David and with the support from the PC groups on social media I am still here to tell the tale and hopefully encourage others, to either play the hand you are dealt, even if it means cheating, Yes, cheating, as playing fair in a fight with cancer with a little ’c’, is no game at all.
Joining the PC groups when I was feeling isolated by ‘family’ at a time I needed them, was the best thing I had done at that time. I had felt terrified of where I found myself and unburdened these fears, on the pages and here, in my blog. I thought I had been rendered weak, that I was the only wife falling apart. Helpless, angry, sad and different. Other members soon replied to my comments. They wrote offering support, re-assurance and advice. Although it was a group none of us wanted to be part of I felt I belonged. I wasn’t alone. A good feeling at a not so good time in my life. I have gained so much, learned so much and will be forever grateful.
So ultimately, I believe that life isn’t what you make it, it depends on outside forces, other people’s actions and the cards Fate deals us. If we are dealt a bad hand, perhaps we can turn it around and make the game different, somehow better.
PC taught me, more than any other ‘nasty’ in my life, that even though it is horrid, cruel and scary. Even though it can change us, change how we react to things, change how we are with each other, how we cope; we do cope.
Life is complex and can deal you bad hand after bad hand, blow after blow and so consequently, things change. We change. Life changes. After David’s surgery, our life changed. It will never be the same again. David has changed, but he is still the man I married, the man I love. My friend and my rock. Have I changed? I was doing so in the few years prior to the cancer, but not for the better. The pain inflicted, the betrayal and hurt, courtesy of my eldest daughter had changed me, almost beyond recognition. Brought the worst out in me. When she hurt my brother in such a wicked way, my own self esteem dropped to rock bottom with shame. The hurt and pain had stolen my self-confidence and sense of self. I felt a shell of the woman I had been. She was my daughter and behaving in way alien to me. But David’s recovery from PC has restored me to the strong woman I used to be. It happened slowly and without my knowledge. The fear of losing him was the worst thing ever. He is my life. He says he couldn’t have got through any of it without me, without my support and encouragement but most of all my love. This warms my heart and makes me feel better about the woman I am. Better about Carol Ann and growing stronger every day.
Life is different yes but still good. We are different but we are good. Whatever hand life deals us, even a bad one, with self-belief and strength we can turn it into winning hand. Yes it will be hard sometimes, but oh so worth it. This game called life will, from now on, be enjoyed and faced with a ferocity never seen from us before.
In most games we get to choose the part we play but life doesn’t give us that option. But even at the worst of times, we can use the cards dealt us and make something out of them. Even if some are missing. We can do that. We do that all the time, in some way or another. Just because it isn’t the hand we would have chosen, it doesn’t have to be a bad one. Life always throws something at us, good or bad and somehow we manage to stay here, making the most of what we have. Sometimes happy, sometimes not so. Belonging is good, so join things. Being supported is good, so Share in a group. Being loved is essential, so appreciate that. Loving ,caring and giving, is even better than receiving. Make sure you do that at every opportunity. Life itself is a good hand so play it. Beginning today.
Thank you for reading.x
carolannwright 
May I ask for the title of your best selling book?
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Hi. If you can pm me on Facebook or email me privately, I can give you the title. I wrote under a pseudonym for legal reasons but am happy to give you the title Thanks for the question.
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