Today’s Thursday throwback features me and my beloved little sports car, taken about 10 years ago. The story behind the MX-5 goes back to when I was 21 years old and receiving 20 fractions of radiotherapy for my first lot of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. At the beginning of my treatment, I had been feeling lousy. I remember halfway through my 20 fractions, lying on the table with the machine rotating around me and zapping me with invisible rays, and thinking that when I finally got better, or even cured, from all of this, I would buy a wee sports car to celebrate.
Well, although the radiotherapy worked initially, my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma recurred again four years later. However, I still maintained, during my chemo, that I would buy a wee sports car if or when I was finally cured. It was like a little pipe-dream to hold onto. A carrot in front of a bunny. A motivation to keep going. I would live a fun life when all of this was over, and not take things for granted any more.
In 2007, ten years after I finished my chemo, I was discharged from the hospital’s haematology department as I was cured from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. And I got my little car. He was old (an old W reg) but he was my pride and joy. I washed him every week, and went out for spins in him every day. I even got a personalised number plate to claim outright ownership of him, in my mind. I used to love driving home from nursing shifts in the summer, along the country roads which connected the hospital to my home, with the roof down. We had such fun, my little Zoomzoom and me. Sadly, in 2015, we had to sell him as he was getting too expensive to maintain, but somebody else subsequently bought him and looked after him. I’m glad he didn’t get sold for scrap.
I miss that wee car, but am so happy that in the years I had him, I was able to fulfil the dream I’d had 15 years before. Will there be another Zoomzoom to celebrate being cured of breast cancer? Time will tell…..
June's Jottings 