Category Archives: death & dying

three years ago…

04 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by in cancer, change, chemo, death & dying, fitness, health & happiness, home, hope, hospitals

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May 4th 2008 was the last day I ever felt “healthy and normal”. The next morning I woke up with excrutiating abdominal pain and the rest, as they say, is history.

Three major operations and two bouts of chemo later, I am in remission and have been since September 2009, but of course the risk of recurrence is always there. This was seriously brought home to me when my friend Gaelen was recently diagnosed with new metastasis after three cancer-free years. Around the same time another friend – my power twin Jed – got sick again and is now facing a treatment-without-cure situation. It’s made it harder for me to go along in my usual state of semi-denial, which makes for a lot of sleepless nights and general emotional upheaval. But mostly I’m okay. Because, as far as I know, I’m still okay.

Anyhow, not trying to be a downer, but anniversaries are always a bit poignant in that “will it be my last??” kind of way. As I’ve said here before, perhaps if I’d made more of an effort to do all The Right Things I’d be feeling less, well, annoyed with myself right now. Every day I wake up determined to eat broccoli and forego wine and spend two hours at the gym, and then … it’s not that I can’t be bothered, but things are never simple and I’ve had lots of stress in other areas of my life and I can’t seem to get it all together at once. As if I have all the time in the world to get it right…

One thing I’ve learned these past three years is to be less judgemental about people who can’t seem to get it together. Well, except for me. Are you very hard on yourself, or are you able to just go with the flow?

already missing…

20 Monday Dec 2010

Posted by in cancer, change, death & dying, home, life stuff

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This may sound silly but I am already missing my home so much, and I’m still here! I first noticed it a couple of weeks ago when the “tunas” were singing outside my house on the night of the Inmaculada, when traditionally they sing all night to the Virgin in the square down the road, and I thought “this is probably the last time I’m going to hear this!”, and I got ridiculously SAD. It was almost like last spring when I was listening to the procession of the Virgen de Los Dolores that stops right below my bedroom balconies every Tuesday night during Semana Santa. I remembered how the year before I’d been on chemo and wondered if I’d ever hear it again, so this year I got up and taped it.

But I don’t know what to about all the same feelings I’m getting now … all these “this is the last time” moments. It’s really getting to me.

I guess it’s because it wasn’t my decision to move, to leave this place that has been my home for over 16 years. And it hurts, like having something I love being torn away from me. It just feels so bloody unfair, like…

You’re probably way ahead of me on this one, but it took me awhile to realise that having my home snatched away from me was not unlike getting cancer and suddenly being told I maybe have a 50/50 chance of living another five years. Because I’m not ready to go, I don’t feel done with living yet. And this is just how having my home taken away from me feels like. It’s not my choice, I don’t want to go, and it hurts.

And so I find myself looking at things in my apartment now just like how I started looking at things in my life when they first told me about the cancer. It’s making almost every goddam day-to-day moment too poignant to bear. Kind of like a double whammy. Stupid f*cking landlord just thinks I can go out and get any other apartment, even though I’ve told him this is MY HOME. And this is my street. I am so used to all the sounds and the changes in the light and how the different seasons feel… this place *is* me. I identify with it, and I love it, stupid warts and all. And I don’t want to go. I don’t want to live anywhere else.

Which reminds me of when I said here just over two years ago, “I really, really don’t want to die. Not like this, not so soon …”

It’s all mixed up together, you know?

wonder twins

13 Tuesday Jul 2010

Posted by in cancer, change, chemo, death & dying, friends, hope, hospitals

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Sometimes I think about the things that have happened over the past two years,which never would have happened if I hadn’t got cancer. And amongst all the nightmarish crap there is actually quite a lot of good stuff too. One of the best things has been meeting and getting to know my friends Gaelen and Jed, both of whom I met on the Colon Club forum. There are a lot of very good people on that forum, but somehow I’ve always felt especially connected to these two guys in a way that’s difficult to explain. I’ve also had many parallel experiences with both, and most recently with Jed…

You probably remember the seriously bad scanxiety I had before my last PET scan a couple of weeks ago, feeling almost certain that the other shoe was about to drop and I was going to end up back on chemo this summer. Or worse – that they would find more tumours and chemo would no longer be an option. Well, at that same time Jed was very seriously looking at that latter situation after having had a scary PET scan result a few months earlier. His follow-up PET was scheduled for a few days after mine but he then had to wait another ten days to get his results. Which was yesterday.

Jed’s been in Taiwan with his family this past year, teaching and writing, which means we are in way different time zones. And so when I woke up yesterday morning I knew that he would have already seen his doctor. First thing I did was grab the iPhone and check my emails, and there it was. A quick report from Jed saying those magic words – nothing visible on the scan – and I almost cried from relief and happiness, also knowing how relieved and happy he must be feeling. As he said, “we have both had our doctors convinced we were beyond hope before climbing back from the brink”, and I think it was over on the forum that he first made the remark about us activating our wonder twin powers, which made me laugh. But hey – it worked!

So, well done my wonder twin.
Together we are invincible!

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lunch at manolo’s

29 Tuesday Jun 2010

Posted by in cancer, death & dying, food & drink, health & happiness, hope, hospitals, restaurants, sevilla

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Manolo Leon’s restaurant/bar is about half-way between the hospital and my place. In fact, it’s right across the street from where Susan (aka Pipocas) used to live. And some of you may recall that it was where I went for the post prognosis party back in October 2008, when I was – mistakenly! – told that my cancer was untreatable and I had maybe a year to live. On that occasion Nog, Pablo and I splashed out on a gorgeously decadent lunch and later on met Susan for cocktails at a smart little bar across the street. So it seemed appropriate to stop off there on the way home from receiving my GOOD NEWS yesterday …
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