Spring is in the Air

The days here are getting warmer and with it comes good news. The last cycle has been so good that it proves that chemotherapy (for now, at least) is not such a slippery slope. I have had an incredibly pleasant last cycle, where I mostly felt normal, with occasional vomiting of course, though this has just become expected background noise at this stage. I had my first CT scan since my initial diagnosis the day after my last chemotherapy session and heard back within hours from my oncologist that the news was good. This was something that absolutely no one - including, considering her reaction, my oncologist - expected. When we met she said she braced herself before reviewing the results and saw no indication of any secondary tumours in the lungs or liver and my primary tumour, which was initially measured at 18mm in diameter, had reduced to 16mm. No one, least of all us, had expected this. I had been so resigned to the news being bad that I had not even given the results a second thought. This means little except that the cancer had so far reacted very well to treatment and that we can cease the current chemotherapy course at the start of November and I will hopefully, depending on how the tumour progresses or spreads during the chemotherapy holiday, have a four month holiday from the hideous chemicals, side effects and fortnightly day long sessions in hospital.

Who knows yet what the future holds? I yet hold out hope, though everyone whom I come across who has known someone with this particular disease has also seen them die, and not believing in miracles my hope is coupled with the realistic idea that there is not long left. I am four months into my final two years, unless I hear otherwise. That said, the present is bright and happy.

Someone Else Said It Better Than I Ever Could

A good friend sent me this amazing article last night, written in 2004 by cancer sufferer, writer and one time contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Marjorie Williams while she was living on borrowed time long after prognosis. Reading her words was like she could see into my soul and had laid bare all of my hopes, fears and many things I had dared not say aloud. This is an incredibly powerful piece of writing and worth following through until the end. I have learned through reading this that all terminal cancer sufferers in my position (especially those who are parents with young families) are united by the same fears, hopes, dreams, loss, strength and resolve.

A Matter of Life and Death

A Ray of Light

I faltered this cycle. My positivity gave way to a clawing negativity. Had my wife not drawn my attention to it, it no doubt would have been a slippery slope to darkness if not depression. Things just began to get me down. Its source was the fact that I could not shake the nausea this cycle. I felt dreadful constantly well into my second week. The source may well be my own doing, in that my reluctance to adhere to a prescribed oral hygiene regime may have left me with a pretty severe case of oral thrush, which at its worst causes nausea and vomiting of which there has been much this cycle - even resulting in another overnight stay in hospital on Monday night.

Back on the upward slope again with my head in the clouds, despite a healthy dose of man flu and a continuing battle with oral thrush, I am once again seeing many positives. Had I never fallen ill, my family (two brothers and parents) would not have visited me in New Zealand. They would never have had the opportunity to spend so many weeks with my son (and he with them) getting to know us as a family and - as one brother pointed out - getting to know my wife and I as a couple and feeling that I am in good hands here on the other side of the world. It also gave me an opportunity to spend two weeks with my next brother, whom I had not seen for that long in fifteen years or more and four weeks with another brother whom I had not seen for that length of time in twenty five years.

I am surrounded by an amazing immediate, intermediate and extended family, supportive friends, and an astoundingly supportive and understanding employer, all of whom continue to go out of their way to do anything they can for me. I am one of the luckiest people on Earth ... and I know it.