Tuesday and I wake up feeling totally crap, my acquired cold has caught hold with a vengeance. I make a coffee and retreat to bed with paracetamol and books. I start to read James Norbury’s Big Panda and Tiny Dragon. I am hooked straight away and read it all the way through and then I read it again. It is a Buddhist inspired book and touches all my nerves in the right way. It seems that every picture has a meaning for me at the moment. One in particular sets me off and makes me think that I have forgotten why I started the blog and why I finally retired in June.
My first thought was whether I had lost sight of why I write this blog. Originally it was for family and friends to let people know how I am. The thought was that people find it difficult to ask about cancer and what it is doing to me. My experience is that after the first crisis phase of knowing that I had cancer life could be very prosaic, boring even. I think my blog reflects this as it moved through the various phases. I looked back at the blog from the start and reminded myself of how long its been going on and what I have asked people to persevere with over this time. It seems to me that there is much of the mundanity of life and bursts of cancer related stuff. Of course the cancer stuff is always there and that’s the theme that remains unsaid most of the time.
- Welcome all. 01-09-2019 1 day
- Induction day. 02-09-2019 1 day
- Chemo Days 04 -09-2019 to 05-01-2020 124 days
- Fingers Crossed Phase 07-01- 2020 to 23-03-2020 77 days
- As Good As It Gets Phase 24-03-2020 to 08-02-2021 322 days
- As Good As It Gets Phase II 10-02-2021 to 21-12-2021 315 days
- Antiandrogen 22-12-2021 to 22-02-2022 63 days
- As Good As It Gets Again 23-02-2022 to 31-10-2022 251 days
- ROCKET 01-11-2022 to Present 57 days
- TOTAL SO FAR 1211 DAYS
It would seem there are a lot of days since that first all text page on the 1st of September over three years ago. Over the years to date people have occasionally told me that they have read the blog and found it useful and said nice things about how it helps from time to time or just keeps them up to date with my situation. I guess the blog is continuing to do what it was intended for and as time has gone on I have found that it helps me to be clear about what is important to me and makes me own some of the more tricky stuff that comes with the cancer territory.
The same picture in the book made me think about my poetry. I had intended to self publish my poetry but instead I entered competitions and sent some poems for consideration for publishing by various poetry journals. All that has happened is that I have joined a poetry Stanza and endured rejection and silence. I have had nothing accepted or published. The logic in the cognitive arithmetic could be argued to indicate my poetry is shit. It might of course be so but that’s not what I feel. So remembering why I started is helpful. I have already looked again at self publishing houses and rekindled my energy to find a way to publish. My first job is to word count all the poems that I want publish, that will give me a cost parameter. So over the coming days I shall begin the process with a view to publishing in the next six months.
I finally get up and set about clearing up the piles of wrappings and recyclable boxes. With that done I put out the bin for emptying tomorrow. I make hot soup and then settle down to write the blog as I watch Karate Kid and a rugby match. I dose up with more paracetamol. Its going to be a short evening as I shall go to bed early but not before sorting out tomorrows Tesco delivery.
