Succour and Hope

Things have definitely eased for me.

The most difficult thing to have coped with recently was not the changes that took place but the rate at which they happened.  The decline in eating capability and the onset of pain came not as a slow and osmotic process but as a battering ram.  Before I could adjust I had to get my body off the end of the ram first, which was still swinging wildly.

As soon as you can do that then you are able to normalise things.

Add into the mix the fact that there have been a number of things to lift me physically as well as personally and I am back in a good place, albeit a little more tricky than it was before.

When I wrote about the return of the children it invoked the word "succour" (healing given in a time of need).  Like all good medicine it is not just about what you take but about when you take it and their re-emergence has been timed perfectly.

Today Kitten took Boogle ice-skating as I was due to take Huffty to see Chelsea vs Stoke in the Premiership.  So they both had the pleasure of the Italian clan (minus Mrs) and Boogle got a new pair of ice-boots.  Huffty and I enjoyed an afternoon in the sun and a home victory.  As lovely as my lad is, I am sure that he has just a tiny smidgen of thug in him.  I say this in jest as at times he seemed much more interested in the chanting from the Chelsea (Matthew Harding) end that we were sitting close to.  He was off his seat with his arms in a "V" joining in with eyes starting wildly, in a way that I have not seen before, whilst the action was at the other end of the pitch.

Hope I mention because it occurred to me today that perhaps I have never really understood what hope is.  At some level I have always been dismissive of hope because I have always perceived that you make your future by your actions in the present.  I have aways understood that what you project and hope for also play a part but today I understood this in a slightly different way.

Today, as I sat there with my son I touched hope in a way not where I envisaged wanting to see my kids grow up (a recurring motivation), but in a way where I saw myself with my kids grown up and that the perception had dragged me to the future.

There is a subtle but significant difference in the perception in that in the one today "hope" was a something real, a tangible vehicle to be used rather than simply a projection of what I would like to happen.

I prefer to base my aspirations on my own steam and on science but there is a long gap between the end of raditherapy, chemotherapy and reassessment and I am aware that my approach and frame of mind is of no little significance.  I feel as if I am in a new phase of the process and will be looking to get the best out of it that I can whilst ensuring that my body gets the rest that it so evidently needs.

With any luck the hope vehicle has got a full tank of diesel and the desert and other terrain that I will be travelling over in the next few weeks and months will be a little forgiving.