Things that now make me sad

All the time recently.

I was talking to my friend and we both have this now. it can be at any time and it is a bit like the Black Dog except not as dark and crushingly depressive as that.

Before Cancer and all the treatments and all of that, we were both quite mentally tough, were OK with things like Bambi's mother getting it or some sort of sad event, death, dying, people being hurt and so on. Bambi would probably wipe me out if I saw it now.

Well now, I get choked up when anything sad is on, even if I know it is drama or fiction - even a cartoon can do it. Things that I can't do these days - I realised that last year I made excuses, at the last minute, not to go to a number of funerals. I find anything that relates to someone hurting someone else or being cruel to people (except in certain film genres) really upsets me - things that reflect reality are powerful and yet, sad moments in films aren't violent moments or battle scenes or stuff like that that is fantasy adventure but it is more to do with saying goodbye or knowing that they aren't going to see each other again or some tragedy.

I find scenes where people are saying goodbye for the last time, scenes where some-one's loved one is taken away or is dying or has died and that sort of thing really make me have to get up and go out of the room. I can rattle on about lots of things historically and yet the only scene in Private Ryan that does me is when Ryan asks whether he earned being saved - had he been a good man? That's me - out of the room. What else? Not sure but I really can switch from being fine and upbeat to being almost weepy and I can't predict when it will hit or what will bring it on either. It can be almost anything that does it.

We kicked around the idea that it may be part of the Kubler Ross cycle - like losing a limb and grieving for it, or perhaps that we hadn't had the opportunity to let it all out. Perhaps there is something else going on subconsciously?

It is quite unusual for me to be emotional at all given that I don't have the personality type for it. I am known to be a bit of an ice man and yet when I do get going - you don't want to get on my bad side - I'm not violent - my weapons are words, logic and a hefty whack of sarcasm.

So - why all emotional? It is so unlike me to be like this so perhaps I am grieving for something I lost in the past few years? Maybe my past is dead? Maybe the ongoing uncertainty (BC can come back of course)? Maybe the realisation that I am mortal? Perhaps I now appreciate things that I never did before? Perhaps life is sacred now? My pain threshold is up, maybe my emotional threshold has gone down to compensate? Perhaps I am recognising something of myself in these scenes and I am actually feeling sorry for myself? It could be the current situation and being fed up of being no further on? Perhaps I think too much? That sounds more like me! :-)

Talking of thinking, I've only started to realise recently quite what I have been through and it may be that I am reacting to that. It isn't for sissies as I was once told - and I'd agree with that. You do need to get on with your life and you deal with what you have and what you are going through in the best way you can. No one tells you how to deal with it. Perhaps it is relief or realisation or some other delayed shock? Whatever it is, it isn't worrying me although I have had to leave the room a few times when everyone was there.

I find great empathy with people suffering and I can barely watch certain programmes like that on TV, I have to turn over or turn off. Perhaps it is that - God knows I've wanted to sit down in a corner a cry and let it all out - maybe I ought to - in a controlled way of course :-) I still feel pain in my hand where the cannula normally gets put and in my lower abdomen where I imagine the muscles still aren't back to where they should be. I know that in a few weeks I am back on the BCG Treatments too. I'm also acutely aware that I'm actually doing alright and other people are in a far worse of state than I am and yet, it is all about you at the end of the day.

I tell this blog more than I tell some of the people I know. I've seen the pain in their eyes or in their voices when on the phone listening to what I have done to me and even now a lot of that is for me to know about. No one else was with me when all the stuff happened (apart from the professionals of course).

I'm not sad now- I'm OK but being quite reflective about things. I realised that when I read certain blogs too I get sad. Not my blogs, other sufferers and those who didn't make it. It can be no coincidence that it is also coinciding with some major crossroads in my life and some major choices for the road ahead. There are a head full of emotions, facts and figures, rights and wrongs and past and futures to be filtered, reviewed, filed, dealt with and for a plan to come out for how to move forward again. It is perhaps that too which is making me review all these things and get rid of them, move the emotional roadblocks out of the way and to get on with life.

Blimey - that was a long blog to say that I felt sad sometimes! :-)