I was contacted yesterday by a Bupa counsellor Joanna, a lovely mannered lady who specialises in the mental therapy of accepting and dealing with cancer diagnosis. In all fairness, it was me who spoke for around an hour and I think Joanna struggled to get an odd word in here and there as I opened the lid on the bottle marked 'Emotions' in my chest. The outpouring of thoughts and emotions felt good at the time. I described to her the long battles I've had with depression since my 20s, the fact that I had come to accept my mortality and the fate yet to come, the process I was going through about trying to sort out my religion and beliefs and the fact that through all of this I still very much felt in denial of the entire episode. Joanna suggested that all of the feelings I was going through were perfectly normal and that you need an element of denial in order to continue to operate as long as this does not interfere with the process of treatment. I did feel better for the conversation, we spoke a lot about the relationships I was forming between the Buddhist philosophies and my own Christianity. It was surprising to hear her be so 'in tune' with my rants but as it transpires, most psychotherapy or cognitive therapy is derived from Buddhist philosophies or teachings. The concept which is all the rage at the moment 'Mindful Mediation' is directly lifted from stuff that was in practice over 2500 years ago and is still current. We left the conversation and agreed to chat next Wednesday to prepare me for chemo.
The days have just got so much longer now. Carol has decided to finish her contract tomorrow and we will soon be in a situation where we are only focussed on my chemotherapy and nothing more. At the same time, we are still locked away indoors and have trouble at this point with the concept of reintroduction to civil society, the main reason being that anytime we welcome anyone to the house it ends up with rivers of tears. I am really starting to sound over dramatic but this is how it currently works, eventually I hope it passes, I can't spend the rest of my life like this. In order to break the monotony, we ventured for a walk around the Loch at Stewartfield in EK, It was freezing, we got a circuit in and went back to the car. Before we headed out, I had listened again to Ajahn Brahm about meditation. I was looking at these resources to try and help with my mind balance, it's not like it was 20 years ago when you can pretend all is ok, sit down and read a book - the internet is sometimes a horrible resource kit. With the ideas of walking mediation, we set off around the Loch, I quickly 'zoned out' but that's fairly normal for me and we marched around the path with me repeating, 'peace in / cancer out' as I took in the freezing air and exhaled again. It was a short walk but got us out of the house which no longer seems like a sanctuary at the moment, more like a prison.
Again throughout the day the well wishes came through on text and email. From my ScottishPower days Danny M pinged me a note to say he was thinking of us and again the thought of this guy, his warm heart and the fact that he is the clumsiest gentleman I've ever had the pleasure to meet brought a lump to my throat whilst I remembered the good times we had at SAIC whilst chasing down those contracts from our Utility overlord - cheers Danny. From that same era, Ewan also dropped me a line and it was nice to remember the good old days when we would work hard and play harder after some long strange days in the Energy Trading world - man that was such a blast back then EC, wish it had ran a bit longer.
Days seem to merge into one at present, I seem to be permanently plugged into the couch, youtube and the macmillan web site, it's generally not a healthy position to be in if I'm honest and I need to get back to a semi normal life for the sake of our sanity. It's tough though. I feel like the tumour under my arm is taking over as it's interfering now with nerves and the pain can become so fierce that it is very difficult to think of anything else which in turn makes you focus on the problem at hand and the way forward. A lot of the stuff I'm reading and researching about just now is mainly geared towards letting go of the past and ignoring the future. Live for today is the mantra and it all sounds fairly straight forward until you sit down to a meal, feel sick and have no appetite or get a punch in the ribs as the tumour under my arm continues to grow at pace. These are all ways of bringing you back into the idea of your future self, slowly exiting this life and there is no denying, it is a difficult thing to throw off or ignore.
Tuesday night was a difficult night as I struggled a lot with pain in my side so sleep was assisted with a sleeping tablet and a number of paracetamol. Wednesday night was not such a dramatic affair as there was not the same levels of discomfort and I decided to try and sleep without any meds as I am worried of addiction and the long term prospects of lack of sleep. Carol and I watched some documentaries on Discovery about the dead sea and gnostic scrolls and I drifted off to sleep. I have had this thing for the last few months however that sleep is always interrupted and I awoke again at 2am and we both struggled to catch any more sleep before dawn. This seems to be constant and is draining and with the appetite failing, my weight reducing, lack of exercise and the general mental withdrawal it all seems to be too much at this point in time. It was only 2 weeks ago that I was ok, I have no idea how we got to this point so quickly but assume this it is mostly to do with stress and anxiety of my condition.
Today was a slow day. It took a while for me to get washed, and get moving. when I eventually did, I came down stairs and slept again for 30 minutes. This seems to be a pattern, sleep when you can. We had an appointment with a financial advisor which broke up the day again but the weather turned and we were back in the cave for just after lunch. We lay on the couch for a few hours occasionally interrupted by calls from well wishers as we slipped in and out of consciousness. It's been a long day but expecting David and Mark around 5 so that will again be another hard session but one which I need to get through in order to return to some sense of normality.
