For reasons that will hopefully become obvious in time I have had reason recently to think back through the time I've spent as a chronically ill man and assess my psychological state at the various points along the way. While writing a blog does need a certain amount of retrospective navel gazing I don't think I've ever had to so intently analyse how well (or otherwise) I have reacted to the various things I've had to contend with in the intervening years.
The thing I had to address mostly was whether or not I'm bitter about the way things have panned out since my bone marrow transplant. That is to say, am I bitter about the fact that the treatments I had back then are pretty much directly responsible for the situation I find myself in now? I've addressed this before in my musings on here. I don't think I am bitter about the way things turned out because I feel we made the best decision with the best information we had at that time. That's the important thing. Of course I knew that there were possible complications to the course of treatment I opted for - remember I was getting radiotherapy that amounted to 105,000 chest x-rays so there was bound to be some tissue damage - but I reconciled that with the idea that this was the only way I could regard myself as cured. That was a massive point at the time. I could deal with the side effects later, I just wanted rid of the cancer. I considered myself incredibly fortunate that I lived in a time when something as dramatic as cancer of the blood could even be cured so I took the aggressive option.
All of which is terribly sensible and zen and that but it doesn't really answer the question. Am I bitter about the fact that I was the unlucky one that developed chronic Graft vs Host Disease after the transplant and am I bitter about the way it has dominated my life ever since?
Well that's another thing isn't it?
If I'm brutally honest with myself I probably am a bit. I do find myself looking at people who have lived a more conventional life with a certain amount of jealousy from time to time. There's no doubting I have had an incredibly interesting life but I could certainly have done with a few years more of the straightforward life before I succumbed to the lung problems. I think that's an important distinction to make. I don't feel I'm in any way bitter about the cancer. That's just a sad fact of life. I also don't think I'm really that bitter about the way things have panned out with the lung failure. My issue is with the time in between those massive events in my life. I REALLY wish I had more time in between to just live a normal life, undominated by the diseases that have punctuated my life as a grown up.
Part of this is because I can feel a bit lonely at times. Curiously this tends to happen when I am surrounded by people and not when I am alone in my room. I am a natural at spending time on my own it seems and that never really bothers me but when I'm in a large group of people it can really highlight the ways in which my life is limited by what I can't do. That can be kind of crushing.
Now I've been over this in my head a few times. I'd love there to be someone by my side for all of this, sharing the load somehow, but I also know that my nature dictates that I'd feel bad for them and try to protect them from the worst of it, as idiotic as that clearly is. I think I regard the times when I have had long term relationships as the times when I've been happiest in my life. I think having someone to put ahead of myself makes me a nicer person in some ways. That's why I wish the period between illnesses was longer. I needed that time to settle down with someone I feel. If I had gone into this illness with someone already by my side I think I wouldn't have been so full of the need to protect them the way I have with the few relationships I have had since then. I would have been more comfortable with the idea that they were capable of coping with it all. And here is the crux of my own idiocy - I assume that nobody can deal with all of this but if someone is inclined to go out with me in the first place they're almost certainly the sort of person who can deal with it. Why can I not just let them? I honestly don't know.
Away from all of self assessment I have been relatively well. The almost endless cycle of bugs that dominated the winter months seem to have passed and the last month or so has been as good as it really could be for the last wee while. I am enjoying doing a few things away from home under the notion of 'making hay while the sun shines'. I even went out to a concert a few weeks ago and it was one of the best gigs of my whole life - Paul Simon and Sting. I have always loved Paul Simon so was really looking forward to it and I thought I could tolerate Sting for one evening if I could see him. Paul Simon was tremendous, as expected, but I also really loved Sting. He was such a surprise.Of course I knew the songs but I had no idea he was such a good performer. I thoroughly enjoyed myself even though, thanks to the mental parking facilities, I made it home with an empty oxygen cylinder. It's no big deal really - I can go some time without it before anything really untoward happens but it doesn't half freak out those who are with me.
