Cancer 39

We are away for a week, partly to see how I get on, partly because as soon as we get back I have my first oncology appointment which is inevitably going to be life changing, whatever they say, and partly because we really need to get away.

I have mentioned before this phoney war stage, between the declaration of war – the diagnosis of cancer and the operation – and the main invasion (blitzkrieg? We will see. If so I hope for a Guderian) that is the oncologist’s role. This week may be my best for some time (forever?) because it is the furthest week from the operation and the closest point to meeting the oncologist. It didn’t start too well. I am not supposed to lift and carry things due to the weakness of my abdominal muscles which have been chopped through in various places and are also the holders of the cancer nodules. I thought I would be OK washing up. Nope. Afterwards I had an aching left abdomen and felt that I could be on the way to a hernia (as I have been warned about). I had to stand by while the car was loaded by the wife – guilt, pride, loss of masculinity? I did drive up here to the Yorkshire Dales but I was worn out by the time we arrived, and then guess who had to unload while I just sat there like the useless disabled person I am? And please don’t say anything about equality. Men are physically stronger and should do the loading and unloading.

I do flick around different moods. I am less optimistic than I was several weeks ago. I am a fraction of my previous self, I cannot walk as far as I could a couple of weeks ago, I can’t move as easily, I tire quickly, so I worry that my final decline is setting in.

On the positive side, I am returning at least in part to my previous verbal diarrhoea when with other people, but that is when I am sitting around and not trying to do anything physical.

I am confused.

I am becoming more particular in my reading habits. I only want to read good books, because there is a sense of limited time. If I start reading something and don’t appreciate it in some way I drop it and start something else. I am reading more longer books, which is perhaps an implicit thought that I can’t die without completing a book that I want to complete. I have just started Brian Aldiss’ Helliconia. I have enjoyed other Aldiss books, and I am around 100 pages (out of around 1200) into this one and enjoying it. I don’t know why, it has an element of fantasy which I generally abhor, but I quite like the idea of a civilization limited in length to the orbit of the planets, twin suns and a Great Year of three millenia. We will see.

I might need to go back to the Russian novelists who can be depended on for books of ridiculous length, partly because the characters have such long names. I have read War and Peace three times, the Brothers Karamazov twice, so that is enough of those. I might go back to Vassily Grossman’s Life and Fate, a good reliable account of Russia in the Second World War (I have also read Stalingrad, the prequel, but it is a little pro-Stalin). I started re-reading Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward a few weeks ago while in hospital in a cancer ward, because I thought it was appropriate, but somehow it didn’t work. Perhaps the Gulag Archipelago? That should sort me out for another 10 years.

Aside from long Russian novels there are other possibilities such as Stephen King, who is vastly underrated by reading snobs. I have read most of his better known and some of his lesser known novels. He has a wonderful way of putting a little unnatural twist into real stories about realistic people. A great storyteller. The filmed versions of his books vary from incredibly awful (It) to utterly brilliant (The Shawshank redemption), but the books are better.

I might start on some of the classic novel sequences. I have read most of Zola’s Rougon Macquart series – thoroughly recommended for insights into scientific novel writing, and for life under Napoleon III. I discussed La Debacle in Landscapes of Trauma. The book described the Battle of Sedan, the Siege of Paris and the Commune. Great book. I cannot face Proust. I know that if I read the full sequence I will be guaranteed a long life, but I think it might be better to be dead. I got as far as the Madelaines. At least I think I did but I was utterly glazed over in despair. I refuse to try again. What about Balzac’s La Comedie Humaine? This is where I realise I am so ill read. I have never read a Balzac. Shame. There are so many good books to read in this world. Dumas? I have only read the Count of Monte Cristo. Another excellent (and long) book.

The title of this blog is Cancer 39, a reminder of John Buchan’s fast-paced pre-WWI novel. It is very short though.

What I am avoiding is the need to try and finish my own novel. It is a campus novel, focusing on the nonsense of academic life in the 21st Century (this is where I feel like Blackadder about to describe his own novel in comparison with Johnson’s dictionary). Perhaps I should spend more time on trying to get that finished rather than reading long books. I could then rewrite my Civil War novel….

Writing is a distraction. Even when I write about my feelings it distracts me from those feelings. Writing makes me think about how I feel and, as Jim Pennebaker and many others would argue, it makes me feel a little better.