New Year's Eve

I’m not a fan of New Year, it’s not been the same since I can legally buy alcohol. Gone are the days of my Mum buying my friend and I a four pack of Babysham whilst we hid a cheap version of 20/20 under the bed and watered down the Bacardi in the drinks cabinet. I find it depressing, being a big fan of Christmas it marks the end of my favourite season and then I’m left with a bit of a mess to tidy up and another long year stretching ahead, not knowing what’s going to be thrown at us.

This year I was feeling pretty anxious. My friend had posted on Facebook that she had been diagnosed with Lymphoma and she talked about her symptoms. That post really bothered me, it was a shock to hear she’d been going through this but also to read the symptoms, some made sense. I didn’t sleep that night and over Christmas I just had this constant anxious niggle, I knew I needed to go back to the GP. The swelling in my neck was still there, sometimes I could feel it when I turned my head or if I lay down and I felt exhausted all the time. I made an appointment with my GP and New Year’s Eve he fast-tracked me to ENT and took some bloods the same day. He was reassuring, it was all precautionary and he was sure it would be fine. I still felt anxious despite his reassurance. As the day progressed my anxiety worsened as I imagined being diagnosed with the same illness as my friend. I couldn’t cope, we wouldn’t manage, Lily needed her Mum. I lost my Mum at 33, she couldn’t lose her Mum at 4!! 

That night we had a party, for Lily’s benefit. We got dressed up, made lots of food and I drank a fair bit of fizz. The only way to deal with the anxiety was to try and suppress it so I drank and DJ'd the night with nineties classics...interspersed with a bit of Disney! Lily wasn’t impressed with my attempt to demonstrate “the running man!” She flagged at 9pm and by midnight I too was tucked up in bed listening to the fireworks. My best New Year was back in 2011 when Janne was in Finland and I went to stay at my parent’s...even they had a better social life than me and they went out leaving me alone with my M&S dinner, a bottle of fizz...(which I took in a bubble bath) and the Whip It DVD! By midnight I was tucked up in my tiny old bedroom listening to the fireworks and asleep by the time my parents came home at a shocking 2am! It was their last  New Year’s Eve together as a year later Dad passed away and the year after Mum had joined him. I wished I’d gone with them that night in some way.

8 days later I would be heading to ENT. It was fast...I’d had numerous meltdowns and developed reflux, which made me more anxious. I stopped drinking alcohol and eating chocolate (well kind of) and reduced my caffeine intake. My GP gave me a talking to and tried to calm me down when I rang him in tears one day because I wasn't coping. He prescribed Omeprazole for my reflux, which if you suffer from reflux Omeprazole is golden, it switched it off and settled me down. My dear friend Caroline told me to take it all one step at a time, focus on the here and now not what might be. By Monday the 8th January I’d know and we could move on...right?