An Attitude To Life

As I mentioned a few days ago I have received Good News about my cancer. I don't fool myself that it's gone. I've been here before and cancer never actually goes completely. But it looks as though I'll be blogging for a year or two yet. If I don't do something silly like get hit by a bus or fall out of a plane at 30,000 feet or .... well, you get the picture.

So how do I feel? I feel strange, is the answer.  I had come to terms some years ago with the cancer and its seemingly relentless decision to inhabit my body.  The fact that I've never ever been able to feel it nor been affected by it (apart, of course, when I had the operation and the radiotherapy) has made the fact of its existence rather unreal.  But mentally I had completely come to terms with it and, having seen Andy die such a horrible death, had taken the decision not to go for quantity over quality of life.  I had come to terms with the likelyhood of death coming rather earlier than the family norm of the nineties.  I accepted it as a probablilty.  After all I'd been told that the implants had limited efficacy and when it returned more vigorously last year I'd been told that radiotherapy wasn't an option.  But things change.  And nowhere more rapidly than in the field of cancer treatment.  Five months ago I was told I could have radiotherapy but that it only had a 20% chance of targetting the right area. And bingo!  They hit the 20% and I got the jackpot.

So, I ask myself again, "How do I feel?".  What is 'strange'?  The answer is that I don't feel the joy and elation that I might have expected.  I feel pretty much as I did before I had the news.  However there is a big BUT in all this.  And that is how did I really feel before I got the latest good news?  What effect has the knowledge of a life-threatening disease really had?

As I said in the last posting it has been an incredibly positive experience.  It still is an incredibly positive experience.  I have learned more though this than ever I could have hope to learn through any other experience. I shall not go into too much detail 'cos that would be boring but I can say that I am sure that my outlook on life has altered for the better.

When I first went to New Zealand it was for a long holiday.  The cancer was becomming troublesome again.  I decided that I was going to do everything and anything that I wanted to do.  Carpe diem was my motto.  I was determined to seize the day.  I decided that I might, realistically, not have another such wonderful opportunity to do the things I had never tried before for a myriad of reasons.  I paraglided off a hilltop and soared above the birds. I white-water rafted over the highest commercially run drop in the Southern hemisphere. I helehiked up a glacier.  I did lots of things.  For the record I did not bungee jump and have no intention of so doing!

And I've lived my life like that ever since. 

That's just one aspect of how I feel and how I've been affected.  It was a very positive experience.

I've learned not to sweat the small stuff.  And it's almost all small stuff!

Oh.  I could go on.  I've learned so much.  But I will confine myself to one more thing.  Possibly the most important thing I've learned:  to play The Glad Game.  The game consists of finding something to be glad about in every situation. It originated in an incident one Christmas when the fictional character Pollyanna, who was hoping for a doll in the missionary barrel, found only a pair of crutches inside. Making the game up on the spot, Pollyanna's father taught her to look at the good side of things—in this case, to be glad about the crutches because "we don't need 'em!".  Sometimes it's a bit hard but I've yet to find a situation where I've not been able to play the game  for myself.  Having said that it's sometimes very hard to play it for others; very hard.

There is one more feeling and that is Guilt.  I'll blog about it separately.