Life Begins...

Although it's a lie that it starts at 40 - unless the next 6 months see some kind of miraculous rebirth. Or some kind of end to the Hormonal Civil War... .
I guess what they meant when that phrase was coined was something to do with being a woman, well over your childbearing years and looking forward to the kiddies leaving home - so that you could spend the next 20 years weaning yourself off the valium and working out what to do with your beard/garden/life and wondering if you'd be happy working in the local charity shop.
Life is different now. I had my kids at 30 and 35 (pause to smile and reflect on whether that classifies me as a 'young mum' in today's world) and so by the time I hit 40 although my second child will be leaving home, it will be to start Reception, not college. Therefore my Life will Begin at around 55. Which means that hopefully I'll have a good few years before the Alzheimer's/osteoporosis/arthritis kicks in to Get Out There and Do My Thing. Perhaps I'll be able to have a Gap year (never did that in my 20s) and head forth into the great beyond to compare beards with Indian Yogis.

Anyway, on a lighter note, the Lump has been checked and all is fine. Fine being the kind of loose word you employ when you mean it's not cancer, but it's not going away either. Please don't get me wrong - I'm ecstatic there's nothing untoward with Lump, and profoundly grateful that I'm lucky not to be facing the Big C, but all the same I'm not wildly pleased to know that Lump is now a bit of a permament fixture.
Apparently, at My Age, these things tend to be 'cyclical', which means that it will let itself be known every time my breasts react to a bit of pre-menstrual hormonal flow - so for about two weeks of every month, my left boob will feel as if someone's set about it with a baseball bat. Great. An attention-seeking Lump to go with the crippling ovulation pains, insomnia, night sweats and acne that already predate a period at My Age. (I apologise to the women out there of My Age who don't suffer any of this stuff and who think that women like me have it all going on in our heads. I'm really, truly sorry you haven't got a bloody clue what it's like. I SO wish you did.)

Still, having spent yesterday morning at the GPs (my yeast issue is now so prevalent I'm contemplating changing my name to Candida) and another entire morning at the hospital, at least maybe now this particular 'medical' phase of my life will stop and I can get on with other issues. Like normality, how to earn some money again, and getting back to the writing I so loved before my life became about waiting rooms, squidgy plastic chairs and scones.
You know you've spent too much time in medical institutions when you leaf through the pile of mags on the 'coffee table', realise you've read all the Hello's, Good Housekeeping's and Best's from this year AND 2006 and actually feel excited to see the Woman and Home you started but had to put down in a hospital in Cambridge. Worse, as time ticks on and you've finished that, flicked idly through a 2005 Country Living and nodded off with a couple of National Geographics, you actually find yourself picking up a Saga Magazine. And enjoying bits of it. Trust me, it is possible to lose the will to live in a hospital without actually being remotely ill.

There are, at this precise moment in time, no imminent medical institution visits. Arthritic Son has two checks in August, Recovering Husband has one at the end of May and I have a follow-up with my GP in June. By my reckoning, that means I should be able to go a whole month - maybe, dare I even think it, LONGER - without setting eyes on latex gloves, signs for prostrate checks, hideously patterned curtains or photos of La Beckham's latest haircut or horribly dessicated limbs. Yippee! Bring it on!