It's been awhile

 

When I came back to look at my blog a few days ago, I hadn't realized how long it had been since I had been here.  The last 3 years have been chaotic to say the least.  

Unless you had been living in a cave, Covid-19 was striking as I wrote my last post and my anxiety was really starting to spike to the point that I felt that I could do absolutely nothing and I lost a lot of weight super quickly; I couldn't eat a lot.  But my parents came to my rescue and I went to live with them for a few months during those first few months of the pandemic.  I had planned to go to Mexico for a birthday trip in May 2020, but that was put on hold until we could go down with no restrictions.  

But the thing that took up a lot of my time in the last three years is my diagnosis of breast cancer in September 2021.  I had been in a car accident in late July 2021 and a few days later, I had noticed a shooting pain in my left breast.  I had a phone appointment with my family doctor the next day and mentioned to her what was going on.  She had me come into the office for a breast exam and then referred me to the breast health clinic.  After a series of tests and exams, it was determined that I had breast cancer that was locally advanced, meaning that it hadn't spread beyond my left arm pit and left breast area.  Within a month of my diagnosis, I had started my chemotherapy treatments, which I went to once a week from October 8 until December 30, 2021 and then every three weeks until March 3, 2022.  I then had my mastectomy on April 4, in which it was found that the cancer had gone from the size of my palm to the size of my thumbnail.  Yes they got all of the cancer and then I was put onto tamoxifen and had my radiation treatments from about June 29, 2022 until August 8, 2022.  I only recently got discharged from the cancer unit.

And now I wait for my second surgery to complete my reconstruction (I started it when I did my mastectomy last April) and when the healing from that is done, I will be able to move on with my post cancer life.

As for my reading life, I have been reading lots.  In 2020, I read about 125 books and really enjoyed The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes and The Splendid and The Vile by Erik Larsen.  In 2021 I read 83 books and really enjoyed The Rose Code by Kate Quinn, The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, and The Last Green Valley by Mark Sullivan.

2022 was a bit of a wonky year for reading.  I got about 50 books read and there were some months in which I only got one book read.  But surprisingly, there were a number of books that were standouts in 2022.  Some of the standouts were: Beach Read by Emily Henry, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, Hamnet and Judith by Maggie O'Farrell, God Spare the Girls by Kelsey Mckinney, Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, Booth by Karen Joy Fowler, Greenwood by Michael Christie, and The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton.  I suppose some years its not about the quantity read but the quality of the book that you have read (the Hamnet and Judith book is the same one that was published just as Hamnet; don't know why the Canadian publishers added and Judith).

I also joined  The StoryGraph sometime last year and am really enjoying it over there (yes, I am still on Goodreads). You can find my StoryGraph account over here.  I am also quite active on Litsy as well and continue to post my book reviews over on Instagram.

Anyways, I am off to do some reading for my book club that is meeting on Saturday.  I really do loathe Order of the Phoenix and while it's not my least favourite book, it's my least favourite book in the Harry Potter series.

Happy Reading everyone!