Day 7. A Day of Rest

 

Yesterday, Susan, a friend who has been travelling and walking with in the past week went home to Nottingham and Rachel, another friend, who'll be joining me for the second week, won't arrive until tomorrow. So today I have the cottage on Budle Bay to myself.

I woke early, about 4.30am, the view across the bay to Lindisfarne is so beautiful I can't bring myself to draw the blind in my bedroom, so |I wake with the dawn. Early waking has become a bit of a routine for me anyway, five or six hours sleep the norm, I don't know why, and mostly I don't fuss about it. 

In true Hobbit tradition, I may have 'first breakfast' in bed, then fall back to sleep, before getting up for 'second breakfast' and starting the day. But, here on Budle Bay I'm out of the cottage by five, without breakfast. The tide is right in, filling the bay with water, and I cut through the dunes walking through head high ferns, the morning air full of the scent of wild roses and voluptuously sweet honeysuckle, before dropping down to the beach.

I head home for breakfast and overwhelmed by tiredness go back to bed and sleep until after 10am. Afterwards I try to catch up with the blog, but the brain is too tired to concentrate. In the afternoon I walk the beach again, this time in the direction of Waren Point. Waren being the name for a dragon's lair. There be dragons here.

A day of rest, that's what my body needed today, and she has been so good to me, how could I deny her. She was quite fit before I got ill with cancer, but she has been through so much since; two surgeries and rounds and rounds of poisonous chemotherapy and still she tries her best to look after me. The Doctors tell me I look unbelievably well for someone who has had so much treatment. I don't know why that is. Perhaps it's the walking. 

Throughout my treatment I have tried to walk most days, unless incapacitated by chemotherapy or surgery, it's my time to meditate and process stuff, be restored by nature and just be. I have a regular route I walk from home that takes me out into the countryside, about two miles there and back. I have walked when I have hardly been able to breathe or my heart has been beating out of my chest due to side effects from the drugs; walking at a snails pace, with frequent stops to rest, but I walk. 

I was out one morning when Kate, my specialist oncology nurse phoned, I needed to go into hospital for a platelet transfusion, she told me, the chemotherapy had wiped out my supply, my platelet count was down to four, very, very low! 

'Where are you?' she asked.

'Out for my walk,' I told her.

'Walk home very carefully, don't trip or fall. If you feel unwell call an ambulance.' she said.

Platelets are the cells that help our blood to clot, I had very few and was at risk of bleeding to death from something as simple as a nosebleed or internal bleeding if I fell. 

I know I have pushed my body to the limit at times. So on this slightly cloudy day in Northumberland I let her rest. we both rest, and we're treated to a marvellous sunset for which we have to do absolutely nothing but be grateful.