Covid Vaccination and Mum Guilt

Just two days after my diagnosis I got a text message inviting me to have my Covid Vaccination. I had mixed feelings about this, I knew I wanted it…why wouldn’t you? Although I’m not prepared to get into that debate. However, I was seriously worried about it making me ill and I wasn’t sure that I could cope with that and everything else that was going on.

Still, I was feeling sociable and I had arranged to meet two friends for breakfast and a catch up, followed by my usual Friday routine of cleaning and then I’d go and get my vaccine.  I am still wondering if having cancer will mean that we can now get a cleaner, I’m not sure Janne is convinced but I still like to give him the hard stare whilst I’m hoovering the house “Look at me…I have cancer…and I’m vacing the stairs!”  

I sat with my friends catching up, the sun was shining…I had coffee and breakfast and I was feeling great! After I went home, I cleaned up and bounced down to school to collect Lily “Still keeping it real!!” I shouted at the Head, thumbs in the air as I walked past…actually no I didn’t do this at all…I avoid eye contact now just in case I do actually do this at her. Lily and I drove to a lovely, little bookstore in the nearby village and picked out some new books for bedtime and then we came home, and I went for my vaccine.  I was surprisingly upbeat and quite excited to be visiting the local vaccination centre in my village, they have been so amazing vaccinating the community that these wonderful people even made the news! 

I started to get nervous when I noticed the vaccine was AstraZeneca but the Doctor was so lovely; she was wearing a smart shirt covered in tiny little Disney Dalmatians and for some reason this made me feel better...I have no idea why. She chatted to me for ages and reassured me that the vaccine was safe and then gave me all the statistics, we also talked about my thyroid cancer and it just so happened that she used to work on the radio-iodine ward. She was very excited that I would be undergoing this treatment and reassured me some more by discussing how amazing it is and how I was going to be absolutely fine. 

As I walked home after I felt really good and relieved that I’d had my vaccine. The whole experience had been positive and the chat I’d had with the Doctor had made me feel so much more positive. It had been a good day. Until the next morning when I woke up and felt like I’d been hit by a bus! Everything hurt, my arm was sore, my head hurt and I remembered when I’d felt this ill before...when I had Covid! The whole weekend was written off and I could do nothing but sleep; occasionally I’d emerge to eat and whinge before lying on the settee or going back to bed. But alongside the horrible covid symptoms of the vaccine came unbearable, overpowering Mum guilt. With Janne still suffering from long covid we had ended up having to rely on the technological babysitter...a constant cycle of CBeebies and tablet time. We watched “Bluey" for 2 days solid that by the end of the weekend we nearly all had Australian accents and Lily insisted we call her Bingo! I felt like a bad Mum, she’d had a whole weekend of TV and I’d hardly seen her before she was back at school again.

Finally weeks of staying positive and upbeat came crashing down and I had my first meltdown. It was all too much, I hadn’t slept, I felt weak and completely overwhelmed. By now everyone knew about my cancer diagnosis when I accidentally shared my blog before I intended to. For the first time I felt like I couldn’t cope and began to catastrophise. What if there was still cancer and it was spreading? I hadn’t heard about my next surgery, what if they had forgotten? What if my friends were going to treat me differently now I had Cancer? Everything got too much so it was time to focus on my mental health, forget cancer for a bit and get my head back on track.