I suppose I have to start with an apology to those who I scared a bit with my last post because of the title (The reaper he reaches and touches my hand - from Wake Up by Arcade Fire). My intention was to imply that while death has had his grubby paws on me he didn't get a firm enough grip to shake me loose of this mortal coil. Apparently quite a few people took it a bit literally and thought I was actually in dire straits already. I can only say I'm sorry for scaring the bejesus out of you, but I'll be around for a good wee while yet, all things being equal. What I write down I have discovered doesn't always read the same way and that's my fault as the author. I know I've done it again with this one's title by the way but it is pure ironical and that.
"Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin, impatience" or so says Franz Kafka.
That being the case I'm doomed for the fiery pit as I am growing tired of waiting for the late night phone call that would herald the dash to Newcastle for the start of a new life. I know averages are nothing to go by but I was kind of hoping not to be an outlier on the graph of waiting time thank you very much.
My level of impatience though pales significantly with that of my family and friends, especially the latter. My family deal with me regularly obviously so they see the gradual changes and can accommodate the fact that I am stronger in some ways (fighting infection for instance) yet weaker in others (pretty much everything else) and so, while I am sure they fret about my health, they get constant reassurances from yours truly that I am ok and my time will come. I have two friends who also see me about as regularly as family and we've got to the stage where we barely talk about my illness any more but that it's fine to talk about their lives too. I treasure them dearly.
Most of my friends however only see me every few months and as I have said on here before I hold no ill will against them for that as I know that real life genuinely gets in the way sometimes. What they see are more dramatic changes in me and not always positive ones. They see that I don't even get about the house as easily as I used to or that I won't even get up out of bed to give them a hug goodbye. That can just be a case of bad fortune on getting me on a bad day for what it's worth - those days are few and far between still. In fact I've (under guidance from the two friends mentioned earlier) tried to push myself and get out a few times outwith my hospital visits to bring some sort of normality to my life. So I have been to visit my aunt and uncle at their place for dinner and a good long chat, the cinema on three occasions (would have been 4 but for unforeseen car issues) and to one of the aforementioned friend's house just for an afternoon of sitting around doing nothing. It was the most fun I've had doing nothing in ages.
The film that I missed incidentally was the final cinema screening of the adaptation of the best selling book The Fault in our Stars, which about half a dozen people were on at me to read as it deals with teenage cancer. I read it in two days which is no mean feat with my current attention deficit. Now I know I was in my early 20's when I was diagnosed but I was an immature guy for my age and this book about teenage cancer sufferers resonated more with me than anything I've ever read on the topic, which is a lot. I would urge everyone to read it as it is wonderfully well written and breaks the sanctity of cancer in allowing the reader to laugh at aspects of the whole thing. Ever since my diagnosis I've sought out the humour in the condition which isn't easy as you can imagine but it is there if you look hard enough. The author, John Green, makes a point of saying at the beginning and end of the book that it is a work of fiction but he has clearly done his homework on the topic. He references the other book that I'm reading at the moment (I like to have one hard and one easy book going at any given time) The Emperor of all Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee and makes one beautifully oblique reference to it in the narrative. It is a Pulitzer prize winning self styled biography of Cancer and is wonderful reading, if a little hard going at times. I mentioned it to my main consultant and, perhaps unsurprisingly for an Oncologist, she loved it too. Anne loves our consultations because I'm one of her success stories because even after all I've been through I'm still plodding along fairly content considering my lot. We get to talking about long term effects of the treatments they've put me through because, being blunt about it, patients don't always last as long as I have so long term effects aren't well known or understood.
Of the other visitors I've had recently, and on the aforementioned trip to the aunt and uncles, my least favoured four letter word beginning with f has been getting used, fair. To be honest with you I see the word fair as being massively egotistical. I have often trotted out the mantra in this blog about how 'The rain falls on the just and unjust alike' so to suggest something as being fair or unfair is to put yourself at the centre of something where you're really nought but a collection of cells that the universe has put together temporarily flying in the face of entropy. There's no fairness to it because it really could happen to any one of us. Even my well massaged ego knows that I'm not being picked upon by the universe.
I've already got the DVD of The Fault in our Stars on pre-order for my friend and I to watch when it comes out in a month or so by the way.
