Page 205 - She's One Crazy Lady!

Headteacher.” “ I sat and listened as he dictated a letter to the LEA.
There are no words to describe how I felt. Overall numbness. I had agreed NOT to go back – for now. I was mentally exhausted. Now, I had to tell everyone. Dave and Dusty were very happy for me, joking I had changed my mind so many times in the past few weeks and that Dr W had done me a big favour. Years on, I believe he did. Others were shocked. I was in shock and couldn’t help but think of what could have been. What had I done? Where would I end up? I phoned my Union whose advice was to do nothing and not to be forced into going anywhere else.
I was brought back to earth with a big bump when I had a phone call from Cas, my older sister. Mum had had a stroke, but wasn’t bad enough to be admitted to hospital. I had such terrible guilt feelings that I had perhaps put too much worry on Mum’s shoulders, although I purposefully, always, hid the whole truth, only telling her what I thought she could cope with. I was ‘fine’. But Mum knew me.
Having written previously to parents that I was returning I now had to write a further letter... and come to terms with being ‘suspended’, a word that had a lot of stigma attached to it and a word that worried a lot of people – and me.
Seeing friends whilst out and about they would be surprised to see me and asked why I wasn’t in school. I told them I’d been suspended.
“Glennis, what have you done then? Suspended? Why?”
“I’ve had breast cancer, that’s why.”
Margaret, from the Breast Clinic, when I told her, said:
“None of this would have happened had you not been diagnosed
with breast cancer.” How very true!
Something else to put on my C.V. – ‘medical suspension’. What was this to mean...?
There are
no words to describe how
I felt. Overall numbness. I
had agreed
NOT to go
back – for now.
I was mentally exhausted. Now, I had to tell everyone. ”
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