Amazing Ability To Forget

I had a lovely appointment with Gordon today, it was very relaxed and we spent quite a bit of time just chatting about where I'm hoping to go from this point on this journey. He asked me how my cycles have been and I told him that they are all over the place and I'm pretty sure I've not been ovulating. I told him that I couldn't understand why my cycles are so messed up for the past few months because they have always been so regular.

Gordon's response: "Anne-Marie, you have this amazing ability to forget".
I had to ask him what he was talking about.... which prompted him to remind me of the major surgery I had been through just 4 months ago... I guess I must have blocked it out to some degree, but I would have to agree with Gordon about the amazing ability that I have to forget past pain or perhaps block it out.
Its quite strange for me when I read back through this blog and read about all the things I have been through on this journey... every procedure, every cycle, everything that went right... and then ultimately... went wrong. Sometimes it feels to me like I am reading somebody else's story, I feel almost parallel to it, like I'm watching it happening to myself as if it were happening to someone else.

Gordon placed needles in my right arm and wrist today and then left me for a bit. When he returned, he placed needles in my forehead and temples and once again left me alone for a short time. While I was laying on the bed with needles in my face and arms, I heard a lady come in to the waiting room. It was clearly this lady's first appointment with Gordon because I overheard her tell Gordon that she had finally found the place. She sounded very bubbly, very confident...... it made me think about my first appointment with Gordon... and I believe 'I finally found the place' were my first words to him too. I remember having trouble finding the clinic, but once I did... I didn't go in straight away. I sat in the car trying to psyche myself up for yet another appointment at yet another clinic. I remember trying to summon up the strength to feign confidence and bubbliness and somehow give the impression that I was ok and I was in control. I had been through so much even up to that point, I was really struggling with it.... but I wasn't going to let him see that.... at that point, he was nothing to me but yet another appointment at yet another clinic. I thought today about the sadness that I tried so hard to hide at that first appointment, the grief that I didn't want him to see and how I had entered Gordon's clinic back in 2011 in pretty much the exact same way that this lady entered his clinic today. It made me wonder if perhaps she had sat in her car for a few minutes trying to 'pull herself together', if maybe she was feigning confidence and bubbliness too, did she stop outside the door and take a deep breath before entering, as I had done, did she have the same feelings of entering into yet another world of uncertainty that I had  over 2 years ago.

When Gordon returned to the room I was in, I mentioned to him that I could sense the vibes of sadness from the lady in the waiting room.... (I guess I don't know if I could actually sense them, or perhaps I was just recalling them from my own experiences). Ever the professional... he responded by telling me that there are a few ladies out there :-)

My appointment finished shortly after that and I left the clinic... completely oblivious to the fact that I had brought my mother to Cork with me and dropped her off at the shopping centre on my way to Gordon's clinic...... I was back on the motorway before I even remembered that I had abandoned her in Cork! I returned to the shopping centre and picked her up and then we were on the way home again. The whole way home, I couldn't stop thinking about that lady who had come into the waiting room. I have no idea who she was or what she even looked like, all I knew was that I felt such a strong connection to her. I felt like I was two years down a road that she was just embarking on. I could be completely wrong about all of this and I guess... in all honesty... I will never truly know because it is unlikely that our paths will ever cross again (not that they really even crossed this time), its just interesting how something so simple can raise so many memories and so many questions.

I bet no matter how she was feeling when she entered that clinic.... she was feeling a million times better by the time she left........