Cancer 15

I received a message today saying that it is 99% certain that my operation has been brought forward to this Thursday! Good but terrifying news. I am very glad that it is going to take place sooner. I won’t describe how my bowels have been feeling recently but I know I need this operation quickly. Terrifying news because underneath it all cowardice lurks. Can I run away? Can I stick my head in the sand and pretend everything is all right? Don’t be ridiculous. Crack on with it. People have these operations every day – except these people are not me. In reality I only experience these negative moments for brief periods.

As the date for the operation approaches, I find myself closing down or focusing in on myself to some extent, excluding the outside world. It is a strange feeling, something that I know people who are dying do; but I am not dying, or maybe I am. Perhaps it is my body that is shutting down because it is aware that without treatment I will die within months at the most, from a blocked bowel that I imagine would be a rather unpleasant way to die.

I tend to be fairly well in tune with my body. I don’t eat crisps except when I am in a hot climate. When we had the house in Spain I would eat crisps regularly during the summer. I always put this down to my body craving salt, because, as a sweaty person I am sweating out so much salt.

Whether or not my body is starting to shut down because it thinks it is dying or not I don’t know, but I do think that as the operation is nearly upon me I am thinking and feeling more about it and less about what is happening in the rest of the world. I am reading the papers less than I was a month or two ago. I am forgetting important events (see previous blog and afternoon tea). I have less interest in the world generally. It is almost as if I am on the grid for the grand prix, tuning up my engine in readiness for the big race, focusing on what is becoming important.

This analogy is pertinent. I carried out a study a few years ago, interviewing both veterans who were taking up racing as a way of dealing with the stress of their memories, and top racing drivers (including one Formula One world champion, other formula one racers and an Indianapolis 500 chap – no names!). I was not asking them about their general experiences of racing, but of how they thought and felt at different stages. One veteran with PTSD described how at first if someone passed him on the track he would get angry, rush to overtake, and invariably crash. He then learned to control his emotions, cognitively plot a strategy to overtake and use that. It increased the number of times he overtook, reduced his crash rate, and also helped him control his emotions off the track. Instead of getting angry with other people all the time he learned to control his emotions generally. A much better idea than therapy.

Another key finding was how the drivers, both groups, prepared themselves for the race. They controlled their emotions, thought carefully about strategies, and by the time the race started they were mentally attuned to the race and how to maximised their chances of doing well. Emotional responses were saved for when the race was finished.

Perhaps this is what is happening to me, a growing focus on the treatment, preparation for the operation and what comes afterwards, and preparing myself so I can best deal with what is to come, including the unpredictable, those things that can go wrong that I may have to deal with afterwards (or not, if I am dead). When something significant is happening to us we focus our energies on what is important, channelling what we have in order to do the best we can to get through what is happening.

People who have near death experiences talk about a light at the end of a tunnel, but I think this is just the imagination. The tunnel exists, in terms of the focus, so what is the light? It is imagination, going through something horrid we want to come out the other side feeling better. For me this is my cancer. For others, the light may represent heaven, ie the imagination telling us that don’t worry; if you die then you will go to heaven. I am still waiting for the light!

Finally, I should mention that I have chosen the book I want to read while I am in hospital. It is an obvious choice really, a book I read years ago, and which I consider to be the best Solzhenitsyn, at least the best I have read. His 1914 took longer to get started than the First World War itself – though it wasn’t long between the killing of the Archduke in Sarajevo to the German invasion of Belgium. The Gulag Archipeligo is a fascinating book but could be edited a little. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is brilliant, but not really long enough to be called a Russian novel. Have you realised what it is yet? I am going to read Cancer Ward. I really enjoyed reading it years ago, and now it is a little more pertinent. The everyday story of patients and staff on a cancer ward in the Soviet Union. What could be a better read in the circumstances?

Tomorrow I am on liquids, clear liquids so I can’t even put milk in tea. I have to take the medicines to clear my bowel (details not necessary) and high carb drinks to prepare my body for the chop. I then have to be in the ward with all my books by 0700 on Thursday.

There may be a longer gap than usual before the next instalment of this blog.