Originally published 1/5/13
Sometimes it is hard to find things to write, hard to actually process my feelings and get them onto paper. Well, not paper, pixels perhaps – but you know what I mean. Today I am somewhat conflicted, I still don’t thing that I have actually accepted and understood what it means to have this cancer thing going on. It’s almost like it is happening to someone else, the shock of the scale of the radio and chemotherapy they want to do next was so great that I think my brain has just decided it’s not actually happening to me. Although if this is not happening to me I feel sorry for the poor sod it is actually happening to.
If I stop and seriously think about what has happened to this family over the past few years, bereavements, job losses, all manner of nasty stuff which I will not go into here – some things have to remain private – then I find I start to think that someone or something must have it in for us, its like life has decided that we need a good kicking.
Then I think a bit more about it.
Then I realise something.
We are still here. We are, despite everything, still sane, happy and together. Stop and think about that for a moment, after everything that has been thrown at us we are still here. Life is hard sometimes, difficult things happen all the time – but do they always happen to people that cope as well as this family has? How often do you hear about fathers or mothers losing the plot and taking out half their families in the process? Families that just break up under a damn site less strain than we are going through. Has that happened to us? No. There is pride to be had there, we should be glad that we have each other that we have support. Many people go through cancer alone, in fact many people end up alone because of it.
I have kind of given up with the “why me” train of thought. There is no real answer, there is no reason, cancer is just cancer. It doesn’t give a crap who you are or what your family commitments are, it doesn’t care if you believe in god, it doesn’t care if you are the kindest most wonderful person. Cancer just is.
It was lovely to catch up with my cousin today, who I haven’t seen since my uncles funeral, she brought a fresh perspective – gives me another angle to attack things from. I also feel that the more I tell people about how I am going to make it through the chemo and radio, the more I try to take some of the worry out of their eyes when I tell them about it, the more that I remind myself that I will get through it. I have spoken to people who are through it, out on the other side and going through the regular checks and scans – but are living and surviving. That are back to normal, more importantly.
Hope springs eternal, that’s the saying. I feel it every time I hold my wife, every time I try to take some of the worry from her eyes. I feel more than a spring of hope, more like an ocean, she gives me hope, she gives me strength.
