Cancer 83

I know people like to say that I am ‘living with cancer’, but I do prefer the practical ‘dying of cancer’. I don’t know how long I have, but the cancer isn’t going away and I certainly will die of it, unless I get hit by a bus, but that is unlikely as I try to avoid public transport.

The last few weeks have been a bit of a challenge. After 7 rounds of chemotherapy I was happy that I had been dealing with it well, and my only side effects were tiredness and a little diarrhoea. No problem. Then I was hit with the all over head rash, and the first threat that I wouldn’t receive my next treatment. I got over that, the rash is now minimal and I am on antibiotics to help it. I have been on antibiotics for nearly three weeks. I am not used to having antibiotics for so long, but I suppose it doesn’t matter what I am given now as long as it might help a little. Last week at treatment I had a bit of a sore throat and they noticed a cough, so they made me have a Covid test – my second ever, and I really do not like sticks being shoved up my nose. It was negative but I have had a bit of an infection ever since, and felt quite down.

I was rough with the infection two days ago and started to feel about death (feel, not think). It felt surprisingly all right. I had positive feelings about slipping slowly down to death. It wasn’t sad, it wasn’t despair, it wasn’t depressing. It just felt like it was meant to be. Today though, I feel a little better. I still have the infection, I am still moving only slowly and not managing to do much (though I smoked a side of salmon yesterday), but I don’t quite have the urgency of the dying feeling.

I suspect my lack of despair regarding slipping towards death is related to my lack of fear of death. Death is nothing. I was not alive for billions of years (a terminology that means nothing) and I will not be alive for billions of years. So what? Will I miss anything? Of course not. I can only miss something if I am aware that I am not there, that something is happening that I am missing. How can I experience that when I am dead?

It always, though, comes back to the real fear, the fear of dying, the fear of pain, the fear that I will be missing something in the future. I worry that this fear of missing something may make me unhappy as while I am alive I still have a sense of the future. That brings me back to this feeling of slipping away that was happening. If feeling this overrides the fear of dying, the fear of missing something, then surely it is a good thing, a way to have a good death?

But perhaps not yet.