Politics or the Garden?

I do like to write in the mornings, but what to write today, the day that our lying, cheating and arrogant prime minister received yet another kick to his bollocks. That he doesn't have any can be the only explanation for the unnatural way he survives law-breaking, abuse of privilege and support for the proven bullies in his cabinet.

Meanwhile, I look out over the garden, not a mass of colour as Spring has ended and Summer not quite arrived, but a garden stocked so full that weeds have little chance to thrive. From acanthus to lemon balm, from flomis and verbena to digitalis, iris, geum and all those acers. Trouble is the garden can be work and I'd prefer to abuse Johnson and his cronies here indoors and out of the wind. Read one post this morning where the Charity Commission has required the chief executive of ....... to stand down as his charity is leasing him a thirty-roomed castle for £2k a month and paying his partner £150k per annum to act as his personal assistant; I wonder what services she provides for that? Clearly charity!

All this writing today is because I'm not focused on any one issue. Been to The Christie early, haemoglobin count is normal, kidney a little low, drink more water, now know who my surgeon will be, David D........, sounds like a comedian from TV but extremely well reviewed.

Nothing flows today, no creative thoughts, no stories; maybe i could focus on distant cousin Ann whose funeral is next week and the time she spent travelling Europe in her youth (St Petersburg in the late 40s, wow!), better still her aunt who was interned in Austria as an enemy alien during WW1. Maybe, maybe not? Time to end this drivel and drive Patsy to Decathlon; now there's an worthwhile task!

The Philosophy of a Pill!

Rosie offered me two pieces of advice, love your chemo and make sure you have a fuckit list! As I try to make sense of my world, I'm really not sure what Aristotle would have made of this, after all, there is a logic and a sequential order to his thinking and writing, an order which has determined the function of Western and Christian philosophy for two thousand years. Even Marx's philosophy observed the same strict discipline of action, reaction and consequence, often ending in the exploitation of some by others, and the consequent violence that endures before a new and still mis-equilibrium is seen by many as a resolution of the issue.  Is it hell a resolution!

As I wander through my chaotic musings this morning, I'm less Aristotelian than ever. His focus on balance in nature, on the inter-connectivity of thought and action, of ethics and politics, of classification and the need for order does not match my current mood in which disorder reigns. There can be no plan for a future when the forces of nature have a mind of their own, unregulated or is it deregulated by the consequences of a lifetime of dietary excesses.

To divert for a moment!  The Roman church, anxious to confine and destroy the 19th Century Marxist materialist philosophy, used this very same model to critique the social and political order of Europe. The Church was (and is?) trapped in the very analysis it opposes. So it is for me, trapped in a mortal body which is not as I have always believed, indestructable! This revelation demonstrates just how much up my own arse I have been, not accepting or realising the frailty of my confident claims about fitness and visits to the gym.

This seems a long way from poor dead Aristotle! Would he have put his faith in those orange pills? Would he have trusted the medics of his day? What they tell me at The Christie on every visit is that the treatment is always evidence-based, informed by observation of action, reaction and consequence. And while Marx's dialectic throws up the violence necessary to resolve disorder, Aristotle's search for order in the universe is mine too.  I love those little orange pills!

Day Five!

 The day dawned blue, still and warm, spoilt only by the cooing of those awful pigeons in the beech tree; being generous, I guess they are grieving their failure to incubate the eggs they have brooded in past weeks, the nest now deserted and slowly disintegrating when the wind blows.

Tuesday, being Day five, I wondered what the day held in store; the grace, good manners, refinement and elegance promised in the nursery rhyme, or something unconnected with the myths of the past. Thank the Lord it's not woeful Wednesday, I conjectured. But Day five. has other connotations; it's the day we are or were released from Covid isolation after infection just a few months ago. It's the title of the apocalyptic series on US television which I never really took to. Day five is the last day of a red-ball test match, and what a game and day it was against the Kiwis last week!

For me Day five is different; I now know what to expect. The steroids of the first three days of each cycle having faded, I'm left with that orange poison coursing through my body, I guess but don't really know whether it's the circulation of blood that takes this poison through atria, ventricles, arteries, lungs, veins and out to that orange-sized tumour hidden somewhere below my waist. I can't see it or feel it but it lurks, desperate to spread its evil to liver and any other organ it takes a fancy to!  The consultant advised that it was "stage three" ....... "and three-quarters" as an afterthought! Just in time, and it's not spread, yet!

This is why I love and hate those orange tablets, relentlessly, day by day, morning and evening, twelve hours apart, scuttled down after the savoury course and then iced like a cake usually with a banana, something to sandwich them in my stomach, to compress them and reduce my awareness of their presence!

Day five, the day I spend exhausted in bed, sweating without end, mind detached from body, disorientated, detached from reality, seeking refuge in a sleep that never really arrives, but today, day six, gives me hope that again the worst may have passed as I write this post almost effortlessly. Of physical energy, I may have little, but at least my brain has reconnected and there is some logic again to life.

Surrounded by reality!

Sitting here with seven never-before seen adults around me, I note the absence of conversation but an abundance of eye-catching looks. Words may be absent but communication is clear and mutually understood and agreed.

And the nature of this communication? Simply the realisation that we are all fucked, at least for the moment, by cancer of one type or another. There’s the woman in stomach pain, the guy, old before his years, whose silence indicates little hope, the woman (I think) wearing the scrum cap which is the evidence an already removed brain tumour, the diabetic whose cancer drugs constantly conflict with her condition, the young man the location of whose tumour is known only to him and the medics, and two others who seem so secure and positive in their demeanour that one wonders why they are here.

What of the staff, all nurses? One French, another Irish,  three locals and one of possibly Malaysian heritage.  All aged under thirty by their looks, but who can really tell, they prove to be a proven team of professionals and all with the same positivity and support for each of us. We really are in good hands, or should I say "positive surroundings" as the tone and manner of each professional is exemplary, and they have read my notes! That really was impressive; as I arrived, Clare, for that was her name, was familiar with a detail which might not be relevant for another month, or maybe never.  Really reassuring!

And what of me now, three days after beginning this post, infusion completed, two and a half days of tablets consumed (that's twenty-six in total!), but now, steroids no longer active, I feel just mentally half empty as though my mind is detached from body, not exactly listless but certainly disjointed. Time to end, to post and to sleep.

Oh Joy: Alone at last!

I have another ninety minutes of total freedom before my minder returns! Ninety minutes which I can waste surfing the net, sleeping in front of the telly, thinking about the meaning of life, catching up on admin, watching the cricket, cutting the lawns (too strenuous), or just doing what I enjoy most, writing down my thoughts.  This is an activity I have rediscovered in the last week, ever since the grim reaper was dissuaded to stay away a while longer.  Haha! Who will have the last laugh? Inevitably the GR, but I hope to dodge him, or is it her, for some years yet; after all I am indestructible, and until I split my head open on some unseen steel structure, I'm safe. That is the way it will be. Sober as a judge, I will walk into some unseen object and end my days in a pool of blood!

I'm sitting looking at our garden, loved and highly manicured by both of us and soon to be in the Didsbury Open Gardens for 2022. I can barely name six of the dozens of plants we have, almost all perennials, but my favourites have to be Verbena and Acanthus. Both are green as you would expect, the first tall, thinnish with small blue flowers, the other architectural with huge leaves and buds which break out into bland and palish heads of indeterminate colour. But this is not about my or our garden now; it is rather the question of how we eacg manipulate nature to our personal choice.  What will 109's garden look like in ten years time? will it have developed or declined. Will I have survived or died? Questions only time can answer, and fortunately Father time is miles away on the clock or it it a wind direction indicator at Lords cricket ground? A what? That's gross; maybe it's a weather vane, or an anemometer?

Enough of this verbiage! I have again proved my way with words, pity I don't get the opportunity to use this skill any longer. Standing in front of the Lord Mayor and officers of the education department with most hanging on my every word motivated me for years; reading the lessons in church with my vaguely Welsh accent always led to affirmation; even a rendition of "Mae hen wlad fy nhadau" usually raises some Saxon heckles, how i love that!

So time to reflect, think on, consider and inwardly digest the confident, even arrogant pose I strut, and enjoy a moment of quiet sounds, the birds in the hedges, the barking dog, the gentle breeze, and the ping of that bloody mobile.

Relax, breathe in, close eyes, even sleep!

Reflections: one week in!

It's Thursday 9th June and how much have I learnt in a week? Probably not much but so much more than I knew last Thursday. It's bin day, blue bin day when I put out all the paper and card from life this week, a bin full to the brim!

Would that I could so easily dispose of my tumour, that great lump invading my stomach! "It doesn't look good," said the surgeon. "What we plan is ........., "said the consultant as he detailed life for the next few months, and reassured with his professional and calm voice that this evidence-based medication would work and the cancer would be beaten.  I see surgeons as engineers not medics, ever since they rebuilt Jake's heart. Let's hope my judgement works out.

So, a week in and having a reasonable day when I can at least type, how do I feel?  Yesterday, the worst day of my life, looking at those pink pills and asking, "Really, are you going to save my life? WTF is in that pill? I don't do pills ever, so these are life-changing moments for me; anyway let's hope so! Rosie says that Chemo is my best friend, so embrace it ...... after what it did to me yesterday? yes!  I couldn't even pick up and read messages on my mobile.  Energy? what is energy? I didn't have any, and I felt like shit all over.

Today is better. Alternating between bed and up but not about, I've been able to read and write comfortably, even welcomed a visitor or two, and they didn't stay too long. Remember Rosie's missive ..... use your fuckit list!

Time now to rest before tea and more of the pink pills, so signing off in the hope that I can stay awake for the BBC news which I have slept through for each of the last three days! The world might have ended without me noticing!

The End of the Line

(A tribute to my friend Dalva whose poem this is. Poignant, sad, even a little depressing, this dark destination we all pass through!) 

Ah! when I arrived at the vortex of life, 

When nothing more, nothing around me, was ascending, 

When at last I arrived at the end of the line 

It makes no difference whether I go or come. 

When the loves and passions and friendships, 

And their range of inescapable emotions 

No longer sound like drums inside my chest, 

Being just sad, poor and sultry echoes, 

 When my bodily properties, if all regathered, 

Again in these clothes, 

My hat, one or two books, some poems 

And a feeling of not winning what I wanted, 

 Ah! when I stopped, at last, at the end of the road 

And I considered the evil that I had within me, (and what I did not have) 

I was silent, like a rock, 

Like a tree in the edge of an abyss, 

Like an arrow that was loose in the bow, 

Like an idea that would never come to fruition, 

Like a shadow, or like a rough draft, 

Of everything I dreamed, and did not have. 

This is the end of the line ……..

Dalva Maria Ferreira

Sao Paolo

My New Best Friend: Chemotherapy!

Over seventeen years ago, I started blogging, and last blogged eleven years ago.  Is it time to start again?

What would have been my Dad's107th birthday (17/05/22) is significant here, the day the medics confirmed my colon cancer! Sure I'd had a bit of discomfort in my gut for three months, and thinking it was a muscle strain from the gym, it took that time to get to the GP who did the stool test which proved the need for further investigation.  

It's really impressive watching live video of one's colon and intestine on a screen which would do credit to de Bruyne and the Etihad; wow such clarity and the location of the trouble was easily identified even by me, the indestructible amateur. An hour later, the surgeon proffered, "It's not looking good!" Little else!  A CT scan a few days later confirmed the diagnosis of colon cancer with a tumour inconveniently located bang up against the liver and about the size of an orange! Everyone says, "Great they caught it early!" No they didn't; when I asked about the stage, I was told, "Stage 3 (pause) and three-quarters!" The good news, no spread can be seen, no xxxxxxx!

So Friday, 3rd June, saw me a little apprehensive as i entered The Christie alone to have the first infusion through a canula in the back of my hand. Lots of chat with the nurse first and then two and a half hours of inactivity while the chemicals followed through my veins with no apparent effect. Now, four days later, Its much the same. I've been to the gym each day and done my usual  workout with no real reduction of energy; in fact yesterday I felt really pumped up.

As for the expected side effects, very little to date; pins and needles in finger ends when handing cold metal, flatulence (is that posh for farting?), some gut ache but little else. Over the weekend I took steroids alongside the chemo tablets, apparently to ease me in to the impact of the medication. I guess I can now expect a more challenging time as from today I'm down from twenty tablets a day to just ten.