#loveyourselfmore – today is me day…. music therapy, psychologist, manicure due to the fact that cutting nails is not one of my best one armed skills, free head and scalp massage, I buy myself a pot of flowers for the balcony and some clothes …. without trying them on… and a Poke bowl!

I started the day in a miserable mood, but now I feel stronger, positive and I look forward to picking up my kids and doing something fun with them ❤️…. probably at home…. the beautiful day decided to be a rainy one.

Today I ignore the paperwork, do just a minimum of calls and try to be more in the here and now!

Enjoy your life – live the moment!

#karneval #loveoflife #yolo #mutanker #brustkrebsfreundin #grussansleben

#nomorewordsneeded – join the #unfollowme movement! Show your colours… zero tolerance for racism!

Thumbs up – I sit in ER to get my bandage renewed… pathetic, but my fingers thank me, as they can slowly shrink back to normal size!

#throwbackthursday – a year ago tomorrow I had finished 4 EC chemos and started chemo 1/12 Taxol ….yesterday I finished 7/8 Xeloda… this is the very final countdown 🎉

Due to my right hand being bandaged, there won’t be long posts for a while, but a few more stories on Instagram 😉

No sleep due to a wrongly bandaged hand on one side and a kid on the other, but a quick stop at the hospital and a lunchdate with Hannah works magic for handicapped me, who takes ages for everything now…. take care, peeps!

Next Thursday I get a smaller bandage and early January they will remove the metal … thank goodness I have household aids 😉

Operation ticked off!

Today I am at St. Vincent’s Hospital for what I thought was just a little operation on my finger… Little did I know that I had to get completely changed, even get a room and wake up with a massive bandage around my arm. The poor male nurse, who had to help me get dressed, is a bit helpless with closing bras, but hey….

I am home at lunchtime and arrange my follow-up appointment. I have to see an orthopedic doctor next week to get the bandage removed and get a little smaller support instead for another seven weeks, then they remove the metal…. whooohooo!

Chemo cycle 7/8 is over tomorrow – yet another milestone and hopefully I can go straight to rehab, when the metal is out!

Flashbacks…. but good ones! I am in St. Vinzenz Hospital for the preparations for my operation tomorrow and the ambulant treatment center is in fact the former maternity ward, which closed down last year!

This is where I had Leo and Mia, the bench I am sitting on, I was last sitting with contractions before having Leo – when nobody thought I had any and I had the regular pre anaestetic talks for a c-section a few day later …. and that evening I had my first baby!

I bump into nurse Esmeralda… she is still here…. and I am full of nostalgia, when I realize that it is actually the palliative ward though which I am strolling casually. I choke and there it is again – my cancer world…. I think about bone metas and quickly push that thought away! It is just a torn tendon and a shattered bone…. that’s it!

Four hours later I leave the hospital with the information that they will put screws in my finger…. Oups…. that is something I did not expect and yes, the need to be removed in December… I guess I underestimated the whole thing, but hey, at least it did not spoil my cruise!

The treatment treadmill has me back though…. I need to schedule physio therapy and lymph drainage, need to see the alternative practitioner, go to therapy, my onchologist and the gynecologist …. and the dentist, while there is a pile of paperwork waiting…. that will do 😉

Highlight of my day – the lantern procession in Kindergarten for St. Martin’s day… with horse, music and excited kids, who cannot wait to show me the lanterns they made (yes, I have seen them already, but who cares)…. I want the smell of fire, Glühwein and horses, the bras music that somehow always brings tears to my eyes, kids with cold noses and all smiles, while the lanterns swing in the wind. We used to have real candles, when I was a child with at least a couple of lanterns on fire and crying kids … we still have torches though for the smell and therefore there are no sentimental feelings having electric lights, but rather a relief that I don’t have to deal with fire dramas today…. I certainly hope so…. and I realize that I still need to get winter boots for the kids 🤦‍♀️

Next highlight?!? I loooove Christmas and the next weeks will be decoration blasts, cookie baking orgies, singing, drinking, making calendars…. I love it! End of the month the Christmas markets open …. whooohooo and since I spent last year in hospital, I will live it up this year and then I can recover in rehab with Paula… oh, wait…. not really 😂

I am on the bus from Southampton to Heathrow, it is a grey rainy day and the county is imbedded in fog. I see the Victorian brick buildings framed in the autumn foliage pass by and my head and heart are overflowing with happy memories from my trip down memory lane.

Tracy, Ruud and Peter – Ex QE2 and now head office – come to see us during breakfast…. I am overwhelmed… the time is too short. As we say our good byes in the midship lobby, it seems like we just arrived and at the same time it could have easily been 10 days…. thank goodness for social medial that we are all in touch and the next reunion is on the horizon!

Yvonne and Phil – also Ex QE2 – pick us up from the ship for a coffee, more catching up…. I am tired! And I drift off as the bus hits the M3…. bye bye Southampton I need to come back to properly catch up with everyone here ❤️ and I need to do that transatlantic I wanted to do for years!

We stop in Winchester and the Irish guy Fergus pops-up on my mind, who boarded this bus in autumn of 1999, as I was going from the ship to Ealing to pick up my last stuff, pack my 2CV and drive it back to Germany to joint the QE2 for another contract, as my summer job onboard had finished and they wanted me to return as a permanent crew member… he also lived in Ealing, we chatted the entire way on the bus, basically spend the weekend together and he helped me pack the car…. I wish I had met him earlier, when still living in Ealing…. we promised to stay in touch, but email just started and being onboard for years, we just lost touch…. I wonder what he is doing now!

Tomorrow I am back in Cancerville, getting prepared for my operation on Tuesday, but for now, I am strolling along memory lane for just a little bit longer ❤️

In Bruges…. is a great movie, but means so much more to me.

Matthieu passed away two years ago…. metastatic cancer….. and I never managed to visit him in Bruges… why not?! I don’t know. Setting priorities wrongly, I guess, never having enough time, constantly running behind schedule?

For five years, I knew he would probably die, but he did not and I maybe did not want to realize that this could actually happen. He came to see me regularly in Cologne, I visited him in Brussels, we met in Italy to spend wonderful days in the countryside. I loved that guy and from one day to the other he was gone…. and I could not go to the funeral.

But today I meet his brother Vincent and he takes Muriel and myself to his grave… I could just constantly cry, but try my best to pull myself together. I miss him, his humor and teasing… I feel close to him being with his brother though and meet Cecile and her husband – family friends, who Matthieu lived with most of the time before he passed away. There is Matthieu’s baseball cap in the hallway on the little side table and I get all choked up…

I am exhausted when we return onboard… it is so emotional, but I feel good and a bit closer to him, but my heart hurts….

We will enjoy our last night onboard now – off we go to afternoon tea, enjoy each other’s company and live the moment!