I’m really looking forward to this. Several group members have dropped out, a couple because they’re having chemo and aren’t up to the trip, W can’t come because although she’s out of hospital, she’s not feeling well enough. This is crap because the trip was HER idea and a fair amount of the planning was done by her too.
I’m due to meet 2 of the group members at the station in Newcastle. I recognise M1 from my first NEBB lunch. M2 has booked the tickets. We wait for a bit but then I notice it’s only 15 mins before our train leaves. M1 checks her phone and sees she’s had a missed call from M2. She calls her back. M2 has missed her metro and is going to be late. Argh! I hate the tension of worrying about missing a train.
She sends M1 the booking reference so we go to the ticket office to ask if there is any other way to get the tickets. Not without the card they were booked on. Bugger! M1 checks her phone again. M2 has texted her to say she’s just coming into the station. We watch the door. M2 skids through, pushes her card into the machine. Nothing. She tries another card. Still nothing. OMG. My heart is pounding. I wish I hadn’t bothered to do this! Back to the ticket office. The tickets print and we DASH through the turnstiles (my ticket doesn’t work FFS!) and over the bridge. I really shouldn’t have worn those bloody high heeled boots!
We make the train with 2 minutes to spare.
3 of us get on at Newcastle. 2 get on at Durham. 3 at Darlington. 1 got the train that went 10 minutes before us. 1 arrives by car.
Lunch first. It’s great catching up with everyone again. I’m sitting next to M2. I met her for the first time at my first NEBB lunch. She’s lovely. I remember her telling me about her 1st cancer, 12 years before her 2nd one. It made a great impression on me; gave me hope. She’s lovely, gentle, quiet, thoughtful. Opposite me are E and A. E also had triple negative cancer, has had a hysterectomy and has, 5 weeks before, had her double mastectomy and reconstruction; a 15 hour operation. She’s bubbly, cheerful and a mum of 2 despite being only 30. A is 24 and has bone mets. She’s lovely although somewhat quieter than E. As usual, there is the usual cancer talk and at some point, A says that she doesn’t really like discussing it all the time because her condition is so serious. Fair bloody point. And frankly, the group spend too much time talking about the C word anyway. So we drop it for a bit.
We spend the day in small groups, wandering, shopping. I go off on my own for a bit because my heads getting too full. I find it really hard to do full on, in company performing, over a long period of time. Nothing to do with the cancer, just me.
When I find the girls again, they’re in Ann Summers, being raucous, letching at the underwear and perusing the dildos and vibrators. If anyone reading this is in any doubt about whether or not women who have had breast cancer have sex, the answer is obviously a resounding yes! Boobless, one boobed or delumped, we’re clearly all shagging for England and ho-bloody-ray for it!
We try to do Betty’s Tea Room but its too full so we decide to save it for when our missing partner in crime, W, can come too. At this point, most of the day girls leave and the rest of us wander quietly off to our hotel. We loll in the room for a bit and have a bit of low key conversation and then head down to the bar while A has a nap.
Showered, changed and remade up we go out to dinner, in a restaurant very close to the hotel. E has shown us her new boobs, made from her stomach. They’re AMAZING! They do have large almond shaped patches where her nipples once were but they are firm and pert. While we’re in the restaurant, she shows us pics of her old boobs, which were large ‘real woman’s breasts’ as M2 puts it. The waiter seems to find the 'before' photo very attractive too, much to E’s horror!
We don’t have a terribly late night. I’m tired, A is in pain, M1 and M2 were fairly tiddly fairly early, so we go back to the hotel. I’m asleep before the girls are in bed.
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