Season of mists and mellow
Fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing
Sun,
Conspiring with him how to load and
bless,
Ok, that’s Keats and his poem ‘To Autumn’. While I’m pretty sure that my writings about Autumn won’t be inflicted on children 200 years after my demise, like Keats, I do love this season. My happy places are outside at any time of year and the cooling and maturing season as September flows through October and into November are glorious to be out in.
The sun is lower in the sky and its light catches and illuminates with so much more clarity and atmosphere than the harder, brighter and hotter mid-summer. Colours and details stand out. And, of course, there are more colours, a welcome change from high summers dullish uniform green. And the wildlife becomes more interesting. On Exmoor, we have a red deer rut and to hear stags ‘bolving’ on a misty moor is a special experience. New birds arrive, later in the season, there will be amazing starling ‘murmurations’, smoke ring patterns as millions of birds fill the sky at dusk.
I’m a very active person and a long walk on an autumns day through Exmoor’s coombes, along full flowing rivers, through the lancet-lit ancient woods or over the moors is close to perfection. A pork pie and home-made fruit cake lunch with a flask, sat on a log by a stream. Sometimes, confession time, I ride my mountain bike out into the countryside and there’s a particular descent off Withycombe hill down towards Timberscombe where I can whoosh downhill for a mile under beach trees, throwing up a cloud of burnt orange leaves. A few minutes of child-like bliss (‘whooping’ may be heard)
Well, not this year. A thief has conspired to try and steal autumn from me. I’m not unique among cancer patients to describe their treatment as far worse than the disease itself. Before the chemotherapy started in mid-September, I was getting out for regular bike rides and we were doing occasional reasonable walks. I had moderated the riding to shorter and closer to home routes and had curtailed the solo jaunts out on the mountain bike; lowering the risk of a spill that could delay treatment. And the walks were around 10 miles or even shorter, and not our 12, 15 or sometimes longer ‘two-flask’ circuits. But I was keeping a reasonable level of fitness, both physically and mentally. I totally agree with all the blurb on how good outdoor physical activity is for the health inside our heads.
As we reach mid-November and the leaves are nearly fallen, the temperature is dropping and darkness slips in at 5pm, I am being physically wrecked by a poison regime that I have signed up to. My ‘best chance’ to survive cancer.
I’m slugging my way through the third of four rounds of chemo. I get a short, 6 day, toxin free break between each 15 day poison fest. This recovery period is too brief to get anywhere near fit again before the next cyto-toxic battering ram is crashed into me.
I feel weak and fatigued and am very conscious of my much lower level of physical fitness. My muscle tone has gone and a walk of a couple of flattish miles around town and the sea-front is very tiring. And there are the other symptoms; I am ridiculously sensitive to the cold. My hands, feet, nose and throat all get painful ‘electric’ shocks from the cold air and I have to dress for the poles for even a short outside trip. 14 days of toxic pills sit heavy on my stomach, low-level nausea and tummy ache are regular companions and there are the occasional visits from the pantomime ugly sisters of constipation and diarrhoea (all together, they’re behind you! – I did warn you of schoolboy bottom jokes)
I cannot claim that ‘cancer does not define me’. Since the chemotherapy started, the effects of having cancer have timetabled my life and the impact on every aspect of my life has been profound. I think that cancer has not only stolen Autumn, it has also changed who I am and how people interact with me. This is probably inevitable. And in a large measure, this truly sucks.
But not completely.
In ‘High Noon’ I finished by saying that I was not alone. And my real weapon against this horrible disease are the truly tremendous people that I know. I have already shared my admiration and appreciation of all the NHS professionals who are caring for me. And there is a very large group of family and friends who keep in constant touch and provide support in so many ways.
I have a long list of drivers, prepared to give up a day and chauffeur me the 50 mile round trip to Taunton for chemotherapy, delivering a relatively fit person and gently gathering the mangled shell that crawls out three hours later. And there’s always several people who will meet for a coffee on the days towards the end of each cycle when I feel almost normal. Another friend takes me for birdwatching trips to our local marshes and nature reserves. My sisters, the self-styled ‘coven’, travelled from the far east (Norfolk) for a weekend and we got out and did normal things; we walked, had lunch in postcard-perfect Selworthy and talked about families, home improvements and berated the government. And there is much more.
With some friends I have been able to put in place some ‘fluffy edged’ plans should things go south soon. This is a hard thing to do and I am truly humbled by their kindness and strengthened by their support. I am staring down the barrel of my mortality and it feels responsible to organise as much as I can to relieve some of the pressure on the person closest to me.
So, cancer, you have stolen my Autumn..
And you have showered me with the unconditional love and support of extraordinary people.
(mid-November 2023)
