Cancer 140

My common Tuesday, sitting in a chair that is too small in a room with lots of ill people being pumped full of poison. It is afternoon, so as usual, by this stage, I am starting to feel ill, but I try not to show it. I don’t want to endanger my treatment, particularly the pumping through of the poisons at the fastest rate possible. In any case, I will only feel rough tonight; by tomorrow, I should be fine.

The 25th round. We like to use numbers in an anniversarial (is that a word?) manner. Twenty-five is somehow more significant than 24 or 26. This is my last treatment until towards the end of October. I am having my break, we are getting away to Germany. We have just booked our accommodation – there is no real advanced booking now; my treatment is too unpredictable.

The consultant drew my death line on Friday. This was a piece of paper with a line bisected by a mark indicating when my first-line treatment will fail, which it will at some point. The next part of the line was my second-line treatment. When that fails, there is no more treatment, so that is it.

It is a bit of a shame really. I have been feeling better for the last few months, which has made me want to live. I sometimes feel so well (this is relative remember) that I forget I have cancer until I undo my shirt and see all the bits and pieces hanging off and out. It disappoints me. While I remain unafraid of death I don’t want to die. I am enjoying my life and would like it to continue as long as possible, at least while I feel well.

When I say I feel well I am excluding the constant tiredness but inability to sleep, the straining hernia, the sore stoma, the itchy skin, the inability to walk far and so on, but I have lived with these for so long I have forgotten what good health means.

It is all a bit odd really. As we get older we all know that we are going to die (perhaps deluded religious people don’t worry because they think their existence will continue in their heaven), but we don’t know when. Even with my cancer, though I am aware I should die in the next few months (statistically Jan to June next year) or a bit longer (optimistically), I do not know exactly when, but I feel that it has a profound effect on my life, as though I am waiting to die, when I am not, I think….