One statement made by Peter, my surgeon, which has stuck in my mind for the three years I’ve been in remission concerned fitness. Peter told me that no one will return to the level of fitness they had before experiencing the regime of chemotherapy and radiotherapy I did. Going into the treatment, I had been reasonably fit, albeit somewhat on the heavy side. Apart from having a massive tumour in the base of my tongue,…
In addition to having had cancer myself, I’ve had the misfortune of knowing far too many affected by cancer. My mother and father both succumbed to it – my mother died of ovarian cancer at the age of 54 when I was 25, and my father died five years later of lung cancer at 74.
After that relatively early loss in my life of both parents, I shirked from the word cancer. I didn’t want to hear about cancer, read…
I took Pedro for a walk alone a few weekends ago. Usually Maja and I go together, but she needed a little break from the monotony of Pedro’s schedule, so I loaded him in the car and took him alone. It’s a short drive to a number of small parks, but I chose the nearest, which also happens to be the wildest and the one most likely to find yourself walking alone and undisturbed by others. It was a good choice for a quiet…
Christmas was an amazing experience as a child. My sister and I were fortunate to have a mother who created magical Christmases year after year and a father patient enough to help her to do it. Family was so important to her that, I believe, even after my sister and I were adults, she had generated so much momentum over so many years that Christmas at home without the benefit of Santa and the other childhood fictions…
Life after cancer becomes a project of milestones to achieve. My profession as a management consultant is partly responsible for the analogy, but there’s still a lot of truth to it. Once declared in remission, a long period follows (with any luck) of check-ups with the doctors who treated me. In my case, the recommendation is seven years of milestone check-ups. The first year, the check-ups were quarterly. Successful…
