This last week has been super busy for me. For the most part, I try not to jam pack my weeks and weekends because I know I’m going to pay for it after in spades! But sometimes you just have to go with the flow and enjoy it!
Like this week for example – We were guests at an epic 2-day wedding of one of our friends. Two days of lols with some of my favourite people. Then I went to see P!NK in concert with another friend and yes, I am tired, yes, I could do with a week of nothing-ness, but you also have to grab life by ‘proverbials’ and run with it! I find that I struggle with the want to live life to the fullest but also to relax and do nothing. It is like there are two Niamh’s inside of me and it’s something I have to constantly work on and be aware of to balance the two!
It was also at this time last year I had just taken part in Hell and Back in Kilruddery Gardens. It was something I had set my sights on once my treatment was over because the previous year I had been in the middle of chemo, just finished my 2nd round, when it was happening. I had been all set to take part in it but obviously the big c got in the way! It was because of that, I was so adamant that I was going to do it in 2018. 14km of muck, dirt and emotions. The good and the bad! I felt happiness, gratitude and just elation for being there, able to do this both physically and mentally! On the few occasions I did struggle, I had Jonny and Julie helping me through (along with the 20+ people in the Nikafit Family who all signed up to do it with me to help raise money for the Greystones Cancer Support!) Jonny physically pulling me up the side of a mountain when my legs felt like the couldn’t go any further, and Julie helping me overcome the mental block of being able to jump off a height into freezing cold water – her exact words were – “You have beaten Cancer, you can do anything!! Don’t be a baby ? “And she was right! I had beaten cancer – I was indestructible. And I leapt off that ledge and didn’t look back!
I catch myself sometimes looking back at this time of 2017 when I was in the middle of treatment and I get a knot in my stomach. Just remembering how tough it was and what it took from me to overcome it all. But then I get weekends like the 2 above and you just have to smile and be so thankful for what you have, and the feeling of appreciation is something else. I still get to make these amazing memories with my friends and replace those bad, frightening memories with new happy ones! It is that kick I sometimes have to give myself to take a minute and look around at what an incredible life I have now and it is something that I accredit to cancer – a silver lining some might say – that I have been forced through this traumatic experience but it taught me more than I ever would have been able to teach myself without it how to appreciate everything you have and enjoy making those memories!
