So, here I sit on the edge of a new era, staring (as all of us do) into an unknown future full of the same fears (and some new ones for god measure) and wonder that we all do as I imagine my future. To be honest, the future brings mostly sadness and a reluctance to plan so for the majority of the time I keep my focus firmly on the now as that is essentially how we all experience the world and experiencing the world this way, I am mostly happy. It is still an almost daily occurrence that I allow the sadness, fear and helplessness in and allow it to take hold of me for a short time, acknowledge my worst fears, deal with them with whatever emotion deems necessary at the time, close the jar, place it back on the shelf and then continue on with life. I am still happy most of the time, as most of the time I remain present and a currently, on the whole, in a very happy place with a loving, supportive immediate and wider family, group of friends both locally and further afield and on an almost daily basis I am bowled over by the majority, kindness and thoughtfulness of others whom I know well or barely know.
No longer having to work, I have turned my focus on to creating and capturing memories with my family, writing letters and notes to my son and wife, recording myself reading novels to my son that I may not be around to share with him when he is ready, trying desperately to compose music that helps me document how I am feeling for myself and others. Music has always been a huge part of and love in my life. I have always adored listening to and appreciating it in its many forms - often surprising myself how I can change my mind about a certain piece, song, band or genre due to the slowly growing love for it - I have always enjoyed playing it, and most of all performing it. I do not necessarily enjoy the narcisistic element of enjoying people cheering for my music, I just perform very differently under the pressure and gaze of an audience that gives me serious rush and pushes me into places and forces me to forgive myself (for I am ever the perfectionist) for mistakes which tend to enhance rather than detract from the performance and resulting musical experience for the audience.
Having explained recently my difficulty with composition - something I have always battled with - to a new friend, she has given me the loan of her compact travelling guitar to allow me to play, compose and perform while on a long holiday away from my instruments and comfort zone. She also purchased me a journal for the purposes of aiding me with composition and lyric writing. It is this generosity that overwhelms me at times. I hope I have been as generous throughout my life and have brought similar joy to others whether I knew it or not.
Back to the precipice / sea shore / mountain vista on which I now stand. I am about to receive my final dose of chemotherapy for this first course. It is the hope that I will now enjoy a chemotherapy holiday of at least four months if I am very lucky. It will need to be at least three months as I will be away on the holiday of a lifetime they suggested I take at this juncture. I am both elated and nervous. No longer having to deal directly with chemotherapy and its symptoms, I now have to deal with the harsh reality of having untreated cancer and the unknown of how this will affect me and how my body will handle it.
To date, besides my initial illness, which led to eventual diagnosis, I have had no symptoms bar the chronic flatulence that I can attribute directly to cancer rather than chemotherapy. This has lulled me into a false sense of security somewhat. I am nervous that once I step away from treatment that I will now begin to feel the effects of the disease which started this off. I will need to wait and see.
For now, I hope, that after the next few days I can slowly look forward to a temporary end to the constant, clawing nausea, cold neuropathy and allow my body to slowly recover its platelets via my recovering bone marrow.
This will likely be my last update prior to beginning my next course of treatment as this is the focus of this blog. I am due a final scan to monitor my tumor next week, I may check back in with those results. Otherwise, time to draw an end under 2015 and look forward to 2016 and what it may bring.
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