You know what?

Ssshhhhh - but it is 5 years this July since I was diagnosed, I keep thinking about that and just how well I feel now. It was great meeting up with my old colleague last week who saw me when I was ill and boy did I look it. I'm not sure if you look grey and drawn because of the worry or the treatment or indeed a combination of them both but rest assured once you got past that, moved on a bit and the BCG has grabbed you and thrown you about a bit and totally exhausted you it gets better. Suddenly you have other "stuff" to worry about and other things to do.

I realised that I would never have gone off and done this new business venture before - it wouldn't have fitted my plan of my life and how I envisaged things. Now, there is purpose and belief and commitment where I did feel at one time that I couldn't look that far into the future.

I think I was very much tomorrow, tomorrow when I was ill. You know, get through today, tomorrow will be better and each day will be better. Generally it was and life is pretty much up and down a lot for me not because I am a sort of up and down person but I am trying to alter to my new life and because - in reality - everything has changed. I don't think I have one relationship that hasn't changed in some way or other. My relationship with myself (if you can have one) has changed. I still regularly turn in on myself and get really angry that I am like I am or that I cannot relate to certain people, situations and other life stuff like I used to. The trouble is, that's the cards I'm dealt and that is what I've got to get on with - like it or not.

But does it make you any better a person? Surviving this far in - yes it does but you will probably never ever be the person you were before you got on the roller coaster. A little less brash, a little more human. Mind you there are things that I've said before about this - the emotional side, watching films and plays and other sad things really does it for me - I'm still a wreck when I see these things. I'm not certain how I will get on during Wednesday as it is my friend's funeral. I'm going with friends and it will be church, burial and then back to a local Hotel afterwards. I've tried to avoid funerals although I have been to a few, the terrible one with my friend's child and my other friend's dad. This will be awful - he had 4 children and I can only imagine how rough I'm going to feel about that. I remember my friend for all the right reasons and what great fun we had, what a great bloke he was etc. I can imagine that he was a brilliant dad - you just knew he would have to be - that was what he would have been.

Tragic stuff. Next week it is my friend's dad's funeral and that will be just as bad, he died suddenly and tragically too. I'm not sure what it is - I think it goes way back to when I was a kid and got a little traumatised in a graveyard in Rye, Sussex - it was pretty eerie as a huge storm flooded the graveyard and one of the stones was bubbling away and later a year or so later I remember my mum getting hit by a falling gravestone - either that or I'm just a woos!! :-)

Anyway - I was sat here today bashing away at my work when it dawned on me that I might be starting to lead a life away from bladder cancer and all the stuff that went on at that time.

What's surviving like? It's bloody marvellous - I just forget to celebrate that fact every day like I should. All the changes and all the things I've been through - they're fading memories now and things to be parked if possible to allow them not to cloud my future. Change is as inevitable as taxes and death I guess. I'll live with the first and hope the other two are a long way off.