Kitten has taken the children up to the "Outlaws" in North Wales where they will be staying for a week. I haven't seen them much this week (including my birthday), so I am missing the "little devils". It sounds as if they are having a fine time up there as Kitten's brother "The Prodigal son" is also present (I wonder what they are eating!)
Kitten has, as ever, been an angel this week and has done her very best to keep my spirits high. Whilst she is away my mother has been wearing Kitten's "chief carer hat", so many thanks to her too.
The above references to angels and devils isn't the point of this post though rather it is the on-going joust with my own psyche. I have talked at length before about not seeing my experience of cancer as being a battle because the cancer is part of me rather than being some "alien invading force". Of course, there are times when it is impossible not to feel some anger directed at your own situation.
The last couple of weeks the cancer has stuck me into a small dark cupboard, blindfolded me and given me a damned good "kick in", or at least that's how it feels.
Now that I feel slightly stronger there is part of me that would like to return the favour with interest but that is a negative feeling that goes against how I really feel and, as we know, it isn't a real scenario anyway. I do fight but it is at those moments when things go horribly wrong or with issues like trying to stem my weight loss. I am happy to say that I have put a pound back on this morning, which could be transient but rather I see it as a result of efforts over the last week and I hope that it is the start of a trend reversal.
The following quote from the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas is one of my favourites, despite not being as snappy a quote as provided by writers such as Oscar Wilde and it conveys the essence of my philsophy of my journey with the cancer:
I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression
A recent conversation with the osteopath put the above quote into some kind of perspective in relation to my own situation. I am not exactly sure how the conversation came about but the pivotal line was that you shouldn't wish to get rid of your demons because if you do you will lose your angels too.
That sums my thought up in that like anything in life illness is sometimes part of the journey and it is a journey that one travels and learns from. There can be stormy seas and huge risks and also there can be sunny simple days of mill ponds but you have to trust that sooner or later your little boat will come into harbour and you can return to "terra firma". When you do, you will do so in the knowledge that your angels and demons are there to serve you, not you to serve them.
I am not talking about real angels and demons, rather I am talking about one's own essence and understand the self.
Instead of taking the cancer into the cupboard and fighting it until there is an outright winner I would rather rise above it and gently place a shroud over it as I calmly move on. Make no mistake though, I will fight as and when I have to, but I won't fight aimlessly.
I'm going to keep on digging the trenches when I need to, potentially starting with chemotherapy next Tuesday. It will be interesting to see whether I make a better fist of it than I did with the blood transfusion on Thursday.
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