Living with cancer - David In Ireland (non fiction books to read .txt) 📗

about it, I have to realise that my future is uncertain. My heart is warmed by the lovely messages and emails I have received, friends, family and strangers. It kept me going during the tough times. Thank you.

If I can get one message to anyone reading this, here it is; If you find a lump, no matter where, no matter how small/large, please visit your doctor as soon as possible. It could save your life. If someone you know tells you that they found a lump, beg them to visit the doctor. I left it too long, the tumour grew too big, I will have to live with the consequences for that. .. .. My wife and kids are keeping very well. The have all been on a journey themselves. .. .. My wife has had to come to terms with so much. Is her husband going to die? Will she be alone? but after a while we got into the swing of dealing with and concentrating on the treatments, it is hard enough going through chemo without thinking about the future, it's a day to day existence, you might think of next week but that is considered forward planning. It was the same for my wife, she brought my girls to see me every single day that I was in hospital. We live about an hour from the hospital so it was a long trip (in the dark) at the end of each hard working day. The three of them brought a smile to my sad face each time I would see them. There were a few days that I did not smile but inside I was smiling. My girls seemed to adjust very well and very quickly to the new life of hospitals. At 10 and 13 they were old enough to understand everything, so we were honest with them. We did not give them the % chance of death or anything like that, but we let them know how bad things would get from the side effects of the chemo and radiotherapy. So nothing was a shock to them. They saw me in every stage of it, grey, white, yellow, bald, they watched as my skin sank, puffed up, wrinkled. During the days that I was at home, they nursed me, fed me, even watered me. They were constantly checking on me. In the hospital I was on 15 minute checks for a lot of the time, at home it was something similar. When the chemo ended, I started to look better, feel better, they reduced the frequency of the 'check if Daddy is alright' down to hourly checks. .. .. Things are getting back to 'normal' life now. My wife and girls are now starting to relax a bit. They even let me stay at home on my own now! The feeling of normality is a truly amazing sensation when you have spent 9 months in a surreal existence. The simple little things mean so much more. Just being home is perfection.

Today is my birthday, I am 42. It is a strange day so far. My wife has some work to do for a couple of hours. I have to do a bit of work myself. It is Saturday morning. We have not done any work on a Saturday morning since before ‘c’. I was awoken this morning hearing my wife moving around the room. I opened my eyes and she said ‘Happy Birthday’. It is a bit of a shock to me as I do not remember it is my birthday. Growing up birthdays were special to me. I have good memories of birthdays as a child, but as an adult the special feeling never existed. Once I was old enough to earn money and buy my own things, birthdays lost their appeal as I had already bought the ‘perfect gift’ for myself when I wanted it. I seemed to loose all celebratory feelings associated with birthdays. But this year is different. It is special. The gifts don’t matter, it’s the thought that matters. I was feeling quite embarrassed when I thought of the years that have passed where I probably showed very little emotion when someone gave me a gift. .. .. Waking up this morning, my birthday wishes meant so much more to me. My birthday gifts were special. The looks on my girls faces were somehow more animated to me. It did not matter what they gave me, it was the thought and effort they went to. I know that they had to work hard to find the right author, and a book I did not already have.

Time is ticking past. Last November my world came crashing down on me. A part of me died. Sometimes I feel that part coming back to life. Time is passing and as it passes I am able to begin to forget ‘c’. I will probably not be able to full forget it, but it is not always on the front of my mind. It hurts to think about it, so I try to be positive about it, but I have to keep real about it at the same time. I am eating healthier now than ever before. I am not ‘on a diet’, but I have chosen some things to remove from my diet. These things include dairy, beef, pork, in fact all red meats. I am beginning to loose some weight, but I am not trying. .. .. I am not getting much exercise. My leg bothers me when walking. I know I should just push myself harder but it hurts. My bones are hurting in places they never hurt before. My left hip is sore for about 2-3 hours a day. My feet feel like I have a broken bone in them. My chest and neck ache most of the time. My arms are constantly stiff. But I am recovering, I am getting better, I am not on any painkillers. .. .. During the last year I have met so many people with cancer. Every different type of cancer. We are all given the same label but we are not all the same. I am lucky, so very lucky. I have a cancer that has a chance of never coming back, it is not a big chance but it is a chance, that means I have some hope. .. .. Hope is such a simple word. It only holds 4 letters, yet its implications on your life are outstanding. I floated through my life with an abundance of hope. I never questioned its existence in my life. Hope offered me choices. It gave me opportunity. It had an abundance of ability for change and improvement.

Cancer is a word of only 5 letters. We all have a picture in our heads of what cancer is. We have all been effected by it in some way. We all feel that we know cancer. We throw words around like chemo, radiation, port’s, blood count, remission. But we do not have any idea what these words actually mean until it is your vein that the chemo is pumped, your body that is burned from radiation. .. .. I thought I knew chemo, until I met chemo. I thought I saw my Mum suffer the side effects of chemo, but I only saw what she could not hide. I never understood chemo until I felt it run slowly through my veins. I remember as my Mum was being sick I thought that she would feel better after vomiting, but vomiting from chemo is not like it is when you have had too much to drink or a stomach bug. There is no end to the nausea, it is there always, vomiting does not take away the feeling. Anti-nausea tablets take away some of it, but there is only so much they can do. .. .. Chemo took my strength away. I cannot compare it, I have never experienced anything like it in my life. Being plugged into it, I became like an old car battery on a frosty morning. It was like the opposite of giving someone an energy drink.

Everything was harder to do. Radiotherapy began quite easily, I had 5 weeks of recovery so I was feeling pretty good compared to being on chemo. But as the weeks of radiation went on I began to get less and less energy again. The burning became intense. The pain meds were strong.

In my understanding ‘low energy levels’ were just like being tired. In my ignorance, I thought some extra sleep would sort that out. .. .. Whilst all of this is going on, I am having to cope with the one thing that is gone, hope. Will it ever come back? Am I on borrowed time already? .. .. As a patient, we usually follow our doctors instructions, that is why most of us choose to accept the treatments. But the doctor does not prescribe how you think. They tell me to be positive, but to be realistic. Which to some means that you should ignore the cancer and continue living as before until the day of remission ends. To others it means that you should enjoy today and don’t plan too far ahead. I am not sure what it means to me, I seem to change by the day. There are good things to take from every walk of life. There are things to be learned. Moments of enjoyment. But we do learn, we understand more, we can appreciate things in a different way. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. But where does the lesson on cancer become useful in life. I cannot get my 42 years back to re-live. Those years are gone. The lessons I have learned would have been amazing to know during my life before ‘c’. .. .. So I must go on, living my life, learning my lessons, applying what I can to today, tomorrow and every other day after that.

I am one of the lucky ones. So far. I have been given something that I did not want, but it could have been a lot worse. I AM lucky, seriously, I am. If you have ‘c’ then you know how lucky I am.


A STRANGE WAY TO LAY OUT A BOOK, I HEAR YOU SAY.

Yes, I began on the day of being told I had cancer, then I just kept going. I could see no reason to tell myself my history, I could see no reason to say names, but then it got to the state where we are now, tomorrow it will be a year since cancer entered my families life, I now feel able to begin to put an end to my story, so I feel I should, in true Irish style, end with an introduction.

INTRODUCTION

I cannot believe I left it so long before I introduced myself, sorry about that. I just said 'my wife' and 'my daughters' and left out their names. I wanted to write about the cancer, I needed to get the cancer seperate from me and my world.

Hi, my name is David. What you have just read is my story. I did not write it for anyone, I wrote it for me. I started to type on the day that I was told I had cancer and I never seemed to stop.

As I wrote, as the weeks passed, my life changed, my personality seemed to stay the same, but everything in my life became about cancer. It absorbed every waking moment of my day. Each day was filled with thoughts of cancer. But I kept writing my thoughts and descriptions of my days.

I never thought I would let anyone see my words, but as the weeks and months passed