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Taking my finger off the self-destruct button

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Comments

  • VegGrower
    VegGrower Posts: 38 Forumite
    Hi Wordsmith, just wanted to add to the comments hoping you are ok and sending you warm wishes and good luck! Hope to see more posts from you if and when you feel up to it, will keep checking back :-). Xx
  • I hope you are ok? Thinking of you xx
    Mortgage Overpayments 2024/25 - September-December, £152.46. J- £103.27, F- £115, M- £91.50, A- £100, M- £200, J- £200. J- £200. A-£200, S- £221.34. O-£200
    Total- £1783.67
    Goal pay off 1% of current mortgage in 1 year. £1650
    EF- £642.41/500
  • Wordsmith
    Wordsmith Posts: 1,164 Forumite
    edited 1 May 2013 at 12:55PM
    Hello – I’m back! Sans hair, sans money, sans job, but most importantly sans tumour.

    Thank you all for your very kind comments. I have barely looked at the site for the last eight months and I am afraid I have no idea how you are all doing – I have some serious catching up to do (but not yet) – but I hope you are all OK. I’m sorry to have been hibernating, but it has just been my way of dealing with things. (Bury my head in the sand and maybe it will all go away ...)

    What can I say about the last eight months? Four of them were utter pants, and the other four were merely panties. I won’t bore you with the trauma – the low was the 48 hours I couldn’t make it off the sofa even to go to bed, the high was being told the treatment was successful and the tumour (which covered an area of 17cm by 12cm – begging the question, how did I not know it was there?) has been shrunk to oblivion and now I just have to have regular visits to outpatients to check the pesky devil stays away. Everything in between the low and the high was a roller-coaster of peaks and troughs. The peaks were feeling well, having my sister visit, favoured friend visiting, making new friends in the village, and finding that people I hardly know can be extraordinarily kind.


    My life has revolved around books. I have read over 200, proofread 7 and written two halves. How I would have loved the end of that sentence to read “written one”. However, I am nothing if not consistent and my plans haven’t yet reached maturity - but they will (I just hope I don’t have to wait for another life-threatening illness again to push me into it!).

    Funnily enough, my life hasn’t revolved around lack of money, even though I have even less of it than I have for many years. I haven’t really worked during the last eight months, and have got next to nothing from the Irish government, which does little to help the self-employed. I have re-maxed out my overdrafts and credit cards just on living expenses, and so have slid a long way back down the getting myself out of debt scale. Am I worried about this? Actually, no. Although the better I feel, the more worried I become. A plan is needed. But not today.

    I am back working a bit. It was a culture shock going from 13+ hours a day, seven days a week to absolute nothing. I want very much to get back to work, but no way am I going back to the crazy hours of my previous life. So what if it takes longer to get out of debt? So what if I have to live very basically?

    With my new-found spare time, I even did some baking yesterday. The first baking I have done for many a year. And the doing felt good. I burnt it, of course.

    Everyone at the shop was really great while I was ill. Unfortunately, the office work I did there was done by someone else while I was ill, and when I told my boss I was ready to come back to work he said that he wanted the other person to stay on (it’s family – I’m saying nothing). That really pee’d me off, but what could I do? I am still working in the shop, but only at weekends, and I am not yet able to do the whole two days (12 hours each day) – as it is I need to loll on the sofa all day Monday to recover. I am doing a small amount of proofreading, but there’s not much about at the moment. I have not yet gone back to my editing publishers as that tends to be full-on work, long days and nights, and I am certainly not up for that at the moment. So jobwise and moneywise I am not in a good place, but I am not in despair. At least, I wasn’t, until I put it in black and white … put those blinkers back on right now!

    The animals are all fine. The tart had to have some teeth out and a lump removed from under her arm, but she is very well. What would I have done without her these past months? She and I have rarely been apart from each other in that time. The cats have enjoyed having me home more. Dinny (the black cat – he didn’t have a name last time I was on here, and although all your suggestions were lovely, Dinny he has become) is as annoying as ever – he has a great character, but drives us all to distraction.

    The donkeys (and again your suggestions for names were thoughtful and wonderful, but …) are now known as Sid and Colin (or Sid and Colleen –it’s an in-joke). Perhaps not names you would immediately think of for donkeys, and they will mean something only if you frequent a certain cider house in Somerset.

    The rabbits … er … let’s just say that rabbit sexing is yet another item I can add to the ever-growing list of skills I haven’t mastered, and there are a few more hoppity beings than there used to be. Having proven to be poor at the sexing lark, I asked a couple of neighbours (a German lady and Frenchman) who used to have rabbits to come round to give their opinion. They turned up on a freezing cold winter’s night and we were outside holding baby bunnies upside down looking at their nether regions with torches, the conversation going along the lines of: “Vat ist dat bit there?” “I sink it is a peenees.”

    I hoped that a handy by-product of being ill would be that I would drop about ten dress sizes, but I was given dire warnings about losing weight and was told that if I did start to lose it I had to lash the butter on to my potatoes and do all sorts of other naughty things. How I would have loved to have heard that when I wasn’t ill, but when you have no appetite whatsoever nothing tastes good when you are force-feeding yourself. Now my appetite is back, of course, I have to watch what I eat again. Life can be so unfair. I did lose some weight, but hardly the super-model shape I expected. Maybe “expected” is a bit of an over-statement.

    My tastes changed somewhat while I was having chemotherapy. I went off chocolate completely. Completely! Me! It didn’t last. I started drinking coffee, which I haven’t done for years, and I got cravings for things like spaghetti hoops, which I haven’t had since I was a child. And I drank no alcohol. Worst of all, having been a committed vegetarian for thirty years, there were times when I would have ripped my right arm off for a plate of sausages or roast chicken. I resisted, but mainly because it was at times the shops were closed.

    I have, however, saved money on shampoo, what with becoming a baldy. I loved my hair – it was thick, and long, and wavy, and a sort of reddy colour. It was my only redeeming feature, and it is no more. But what a small price to pay, so I am not weeping and wailing about its loss. I am, however, most unimpressed that what is growing back is completely grey. At least it is growing back – I have to say that bald was not my best ever look. And it was so cold! I even wore a hat to bed, it was so chilly.

    I didn’t do anything about selling the house. Thankfully my tenants are still there – the thought of having to pay the UK mortgage while no earning was not a happy one. I will still be in dire straits if they decide to move, but I at least feel a little stronger to be able to cope. Oh, my God … no I don’t! Well, I’ll just have to cross that bridge when it comes to it.

    Well, that’s my last eight months in a rather long nutshell. Clearly I haven’t lost the ability to waffle. Now I am back here, I will have to apply myself to the money problems. Maybe that’s why I was subconsciously avoiding being here. I need a plan …
    "Green pastures are before me,
    Which yet I have not seen;"
    I'd love to be a good example - instead, I am a horrible warning.
  • Fortune_Smiles
    Fortune_Smiles Posts: 5,148 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Hello Wordsmith. I hope you don't mind me popping in. I read your diary from the very start and was so shocked to read the final entry. It was lovely to see you pop up in my subscriptions today and hear that you are through the worst. I will look forward to hearing about your further adventures.

    Best wishes for health, wealth and happiness in the coming months.

    Fortune x
  • cazmanian_minx
    cazmanian_minx Posts: 4,048 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Debt-free and Proud!
    Welcome back and that's FABULOUS news that the tumour is gone :j:j:j:j:beer::beer::beer::beer::j:j:j:j
  • beanielou
    beanielou Posts: 96,645 Ambassador
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Academoney Grad Mortgage-free Glee!
    Good to hear the news that the tumour is no more :)
    I am a Forum Ambassador and I support the Forum Team on Mortgage Free Wannabe & Local Money Saving Scotland & Disability Money Matters. If you need any help on those boards, do let me know.Please note that Ambassadors are not moderators. Any post you spot in breach of the Forum Rules should be reported via the report button , or by emailing forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com. All views are my own & not the official line of Money Saving Expert.

    Lou~ Debt free Wanabe No 55 DF 03/14.**Credit card debt free 30/06/10~** MFW. Finally mortgage free O2/ 2021****
    "A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of" Jane Austen in Mansfield Park.

    ***Fall down seven times,stand up eight*** ~~Japanese proverb.
    ***Keep plodding*** Out of debt, out of danger. ***Be the difference.***
    One debt remaining. Home improvement loan.
  • sophieschoice
    sophieschoice Posts: 903 Forumite
    I am beyond delighted for you!! x
  • RosaBernicia
    RosaBernicia Posts: 4,909 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Lovely to hear from you Wordsmith, and glad you're better :T

    Rosa xx
    Debt free May 2016... DFW#2 in progress
    Campervan paid off summer '21... MFW progress tbc
  • moo2moo
    moo2moo Posts: 4,694 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Fabulous news :)
    Saving for a Spinning Wheel and other random splurges : £183.50
  • Radish72
    Radish72 Posts: 2,075 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    I was more of a lurker than a poster but welcome back

    Glad to hear that the tumour has gone and you are recovering

    Here's to many more waffley posts :)
    Mortgage Aug 12 £165K, Aug 19 £0
    ISA challenge start 2019 £3000/£1500 (50%)
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