Surviving Cancer

Back on the subject of this blog.  Cancer and the journey.  In many ways I'm pretty comfortable where I am on my health front. I have to go see the specialist nurse tomorrow as my Spirography tests weren't great and so I'll go and see what she has to say and get my blood pressure done at the same time.  It appears the doc wants to see me for a review and they want a blood test too.

I hardly ever get ill - feel quite fit although I know I've put on a few pounds over Christmas I know that after this weekend I will be able to concentrate on losing that and once I've moved I just want to have the basic foods I eat available and not all these other things lying around the house :-) 

As for my Bladder Cancer, I don't think about it half as much as I used to do.  I know that I'm eating properly and I'm not doing absolutely everything I could do as I don't do the FOCC and heavy juicing of green vegetables I used to but I am eating well, losing weight and as far as I can tell I am a lot fitter and healthier than I was this time last year.  Occasionally I think about it and it crosses my mind how lucky I am.  Another chap I knew died last week and you hear about Cancer all the time and people are diagnosed, undergoing treatment and so on all the time and likewise some recover, some get some quality of life, some of course are not so lucky.

I suppose in some ways I have a "respect" for the disease and now I'm hoping that the next test is negative and that I can gradually see my Bladder Cancer sailing away into the far horizon and it just be a very serious illness I once had.  A nasty dream, now long gone.  OK that isn't going to happen as they will keep their eye on me for a long time but again that isn't too bad I suppose as long as it doesn't result in more visits for false positives! :-)

Whether it is the immunotherapy, my diet or that I rarely get colds and the like I do appear to have been very healthy this past year.  I haven't been really ill for about 6 years - this time 6 years ago I was in a right mess with a horrible cold, ear infection and I was stone deaf - that left me with tinnitus which I suffer with to this day.  Since then I've had the odd cold but otherwise all is fine, most of my troubles were mental rather than physical and it looks to me as if most of that was caused by my failing marriage and the shock of having cancer, the treatment and the recovery.  I tend to underplay it but there is no doubt about it - it is challenging and it is life changing.  Surviving it allows you to question everything and perhaps reevaluate your life and to be pretty honest about things I find.  Sometimes you can be a bit too honest.

I found a lovely quote yesterday and sent it to a very special friend of mine this morning:

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."

Albert Schweitzer  

I got a lovely note back saying that I did that for them.  I sent it because I felt that they had done that to me!  Funny we both thought the same about each other.  I'd never thought that I may also be someone's spirit guide too :-) Made my day did that! :-)   I tend to not see that sometimes I'm capable of being the change and being there for other people.  I tend to see myself receiving and I don't see myself as a giver particularly.