As the days have rolled on I have realised that the importance of controlling my mental state is more important than the physical side. When this all started, we immediately started on no sugar, vegetables, super fruit shakes and attention to everything that was being put into my mouth. At the same time, my emotional force field was not functioning and whilst my body was enjoying the flow of nutrients like nothing it had seen in it's 46 year existence, my mind was slowly but surely disintegrating. With each new conversation the emotional outpouring was heavy and the result was expansion of the tumours, increased pain, lower appetite and sleepless nights. It's a vicious cycle and something that I have found very difficult to break. I have broken the cycle although I am still being dragged into the past or projecting into the future on the odd occasion. It is now my primary mission to avoid thinking about the future and permutations of it that I cannot control or reflecting on the past and regretting decisions or actions which again cannot be undone. There is no point reflecting or projecting it means nothing. you can neither control what is going to happen at some future point or undo anything that has gone before so why even bother bringing it into gaze. The mind is a powerful force however and it will always reflect as this is where our learning and evolution comes from, and it will always project as this is how we deal with fear and uncertainty - run the permutations. You just need practice at letting all of that stuff go.
I'm trying to meditate. For me I don't think it's that tough a thing to do to be honest as I can easily zone out of conversations and blank the rest of the world if I really want to. This morning I was plugged into a mediation video from the internet and within 10 minutes was easily in a different place. Unfortunately I was using my iPhone and had a headset on when I got a call. It was Joanna my counsellor who I had agreed to speak to before the chemo started. I answered the phone in a bit of a haze and came into the conversation very slowly. She immediately knew I had been trying to meditate and sort of gave me a well done for getting to the obvious point that she as a therapist would have tried to take me. We chatted for a while and I reaffirmed some thoughts of projecting with her and she agreed that the recent events of a long stream of visitors, the repetition of the situation and the conversations about future states was not helping the current predicament. This coupled with the fact that I had decided to read Philip Gould's account of his 4 year battle with Oesophageal cancer was not helpful in the slightest. The bones of the story are heroic but the guy went through 3 rounds of intense surgery and at times left him sounding like a science experiment contorted in pain. The graphic nature of the words was nothing that could help or assist my situation but I was compelled to find out what happened in the end and how he ultimately passed. I shouldn't have done this, it was something that gave me a right royal kick in the head and only promoted my projection of the current situation and forced me to bring similarity to my own cause even although there is nothing remotely similar. This and the events of the last couple of days culminated in a conversation with Carol about the fact that I did not want to go down the route of being a science experiment and that if it came to the crunch I would rather have less time in this current form than more time but with a poorer quality of life stressing about operations and dealing with the pain and discomfort for the sake of a few more months. In reality we agreed that the procedures already identified were really as far as we were willing to take things which is really handy as this is all that is on offer at this moment in time.
We decided to watch the final few episodes of Stephen Fry crossing America in a taxi on Netflix and this helped get our minds off the subject for a few hours but by the time we were going to bed things were agitated again and as usual the only way to get some 'head peace' was to listen to my new pal Ajahn Brahm who we beamed onto the TV in the bedroom from my phone. Yesterday was a low point and the things rushing through my head again were 'what happens when you die', 'how painful will it be' and 'is there something we need to prepare for'. Again all these things were projecting and again I couldn't shut my mind off without doing something about it. The talk from Ajahn was really good however again highlighting some ideas about why worry or think about these future events. He breaks up some serious learnings with a lot of humour and I found myself relieved and laughing as I drifted off into a deep sleep without sleeping tablets or double shots of morphine. I woke up around 3:30am thinking oh well 5 hours or so sleep this will be me for the rest of the night. The talk from Ajahn was around 2 hours long and I had only managed to last 40 minutes or so before dropping off. I decided that I would get a set of ear phones and listen to the rest of the talk whilst Carol slept. I lasted about 10 minutes and fell into a deep sleep again waking around 4 hours later.
On Monday, Ramesh came through. There were no tears. We spent a couple of hours together and it was great to see him. He made some Dahl and when he left Carol and I had this with rice which was a rare treat. He's a great cook and has been a self sufficient Indian vegetarian in the west of Scotland for the last 20 year - respect. On Tuesday William dropped by and we had a good hour or so chatting about the club and his experiences of friends living with the disease. The pep talk helped and again there were no tears just plain talking and a man hug on the way out the door. On Tuesday Carol's brother Stephen and his wife Eileen dropped by and it was great to sit for for a couple of hours and forget about the elephant in the room. The weather had been awful since xmas eve and the house was starting to become a prison again as I hadn't left it for days. The flow of visitors, the emails, calls and texts however were helping me keep a level head and was very much appreciated although by Tuesday night had left me a little drained.
Today was a much nicer day and after I had spoken with Joanna and pulled myself together, we left for Strathclyde Park. We parked the car across the motorway at the KFC and walked past the mausoleum and under the M74 to the park. It was a beautiful day, there were swans, ducks, geese and a variety of other flying machines about playing on the tranquil waters of the park. 5 minutes in we were in bliss when I got a phone call from Goldie. I can't remember how much I've chatted about Goldie (Craig) in the blogs but he's a good friend who seems to be on my wavelength and is the type of guy who can wind you up for an hour solid and all you can do in return is to laugh. I need to laugh more so I answered the call. I decided to have a sit on a bench and watch the swans whilst I listened to him attempt to comfort me, I was going to enjoy this I thought. 'Hi Al, how's things how you feeling?' he started off with. I responded with something like 'I'm dying, what you want me to say?', although said in all seriousness we both knew this was my attempt at humour and got a chuckle out of him by suggesting he was a fanny for asking me that. We rattled on together for 5 minutes, it was good to hear his voice and his support. He finished off by suggesting that there was Radio 4 special all week on Oesophageal cancer and that I may want to listen to it. I suggested that I was trying hard not to project and that I was wary of getting bad news stories into my head again. Needless to say I came home and listened to the pod cast. Within the first 10 seconds the presenter described the agonising death of AA Gill a few days earlier of the disease - thanks Goldie. Carol and I enjoyed the rest of our walk. We returned to the car and for the first time in around 3 months I decided to have some junk food and got stuck into a KFC - it was heaven and has probably helped the calorie count for today.
We returned home and on and off I've been passing comment on a group of mates that have decided to climb Ben Nevis in my honour and try and raise money for Macmillan. At this point I'm not going to say who and how much has been committed as this has mountain rescue written all over it. A great friend of mine Darren once organised a trip to Ben Nevis a few years ago. I had done a bit of walking and I knew what to expect so I agreed to join in. Darren is an amazing guy who can summon up a tonne of energy at a drop of a hat and also lose it when he realises he as over committed himself and the rest of his party. On that fateful day in September I remember getting to the summit myself and being stunned by the 12 inches of snow at the top, the freezing temperatures and the fact that I was very close to hallucinating as it all felt like a dream state. We had all started off together but when we got to the top there was no sign of Darren for the next 30 minutes. We started off down the hill expecting to see him bringing up the rear. We eventually got cell coverage and called him to see what his situation was - he was sitting in a MacDonalds restaurant after having given up some hours earlier. We laughed at the time thinking 'typical of the big man' but this turned to abject venom for the absconder who had arranged the trip as we soon realised that the track down the mountain was much more demanding than the assent and with every step we took the pains in the feet and legs grew worse. Darren has organised the trip again in 2017 however has managed to get it organised for April when there is usually 4 feet of snow at the summit. I fear the worst.
So chemo tomorrow then. I'll be sitting in Ross Hall at 10am probably until late afternoon. As far as I understand I'll have a drip fed bag of anti sickness stuff, a flush of saline then the first potion. We then get another flush, then a flush of glucose and then next batch of platinum based rocket fuel. We then get a big bag of drugs to take home and then wait for the side effects to kick in and the tumours to start to decline. It's all a bit too interesting for me if I tell the truth. I'm not concerned about it really and am actually looking forward to the days that I feel like I can't get out of bed because I won't. I always loved science as a kid and I did 6th Year Chemistry at school and almost went on to study chemistry (I am reflecting but I probably should have done chemistry rather than engineering). So from a scientific perspective, I am interested to see how the drugs will be administered and the overall affect on the tumours. It will be obvious for me to see if the drugs are having an affect as I have two tumours which are visible and currently growing. Fingers crossed that the next few weeks stem the growth and show overall improvement.
