Cancer 189

It is a bit of a struggle at the moment. The main problem is my hernia, or hernias, as it feels like my abdomen is a sieve, with bits trying to poke out in various different places. I have a deep chesty cough and every time I cough it is a) painful, b) feels like my abdomen will expode, c) impossible to hold in using my hands. I never realised that my abdomenal muscles are stronger than my arm muscles. It might have changed the way I did physical labour. I am having to restrict my food now, even though I have spent the last couple of years focusing on a couple of comments made by nurses regarding cancer patients not restricting their diet. I am making a real effort to lose weight. I have lost 7 kilograms over the last four weeks, so it is a start (Oh yes, I had put 6 kg on in the previous few weeks). My new line is also problematic. I have had every central line available, and my body has found ways to rejet them. The current one, the portacath, is also problematic, not just as already reported about being the wrong length but also because the surrounding skin is very red and sore. It shouldn’t be, but I suspect my body is trying to find a way to reject it. Reject the cancer you foolish body, not the means of treating the cancer.

We went away for a three nighter to North Yorkshire, returning yesterday. I slept little, moaned (literally) about my abdomen, took too many painkillers (not too sure the ‘killer’ element is a true description), but had a good time. Now it is back to reality. I am writing in the early morning of Thursday. I have my blood test at 7am, and then tomorrow I see the consultant, and all being well treatment on Tuesday. Back to the slog. The analogy of the moment is the eternal war that I cannot win. I am forever fighting battles, sometimes difficult and painful ones, when I know I cannot win the war. It is simiar to the German soldiers who realised the war was lost the moment Operation Barbarossa took place. Nearly three years later Germany was defeated, but from the moment of the invasion they could not win. I feel the same. The obvious next thought is why bother? The end result will be the same. I am dead. All this fighting is in the end for nothing.

Or is it? Come on, it is not as though the last couple of years have been miserable. I have a good family and good friends. I have travelled to new and not so new places (not out of Europe, but who needs to travel out of Europe?), read books, written books (ok, only one published in this time but I am writing, albeit slowly, and generally lived a fulfilling life.

All life ends, though it does profoundly affect one’s mental state knowing that it is foreshortened.

Sod it, I’ll get my battle axe and crack on.