Sometimes it's just about getting on with it

I love an inspirational quote. I'm a bit of a sucker for a nice little line to pick up my mood. As some of you may have noticed, Alice in Wonderland is a particular favourite of mine. However there's one line I see quite regularly that I just can't abide - the "This too shall pass" phenomenon. Something about this one really winds me up. I think it's the naivety of it. The truth is, not everything does pass.

I got diagnosed with cancer over three years ago. Initially I thought I would take chemotherapy pills for two years and then I'd be done. It would pass. That was naive. Once you've been diagnosed with cancer it doesn't pass. Even if you recover and get the all clear, it doesn't pass. You get to live with the knowledge that you can be attacked from within your body, without knowledge, at any time. I would say for the majority of people who have had or have cancer, you live with a heightened suspicion of everything you feel.

It wasn't to pass for me. I very quickly got the metastatic diagnosis and at that point "This too shall pass" would likely mean death. An option I am keen to avoid for as long as possible. My reality became how to live with cancer. I would love it to go. I would love to be cancer free. I know this is a very long shot and that living with cancer is something I could really get my head around. Having the best possible life for the longest time possible is still a pretty good deal. It doesn't pass though. It means finding a new reality for myself. It means learning to manage my health, becoming an expert in many different medications, adjusting my lifestyle and my goals. It doesn't pass; I just find a new way to live a fulfilling life. And I have. I accept there are some things I can no longer do and I found I cared more about some things than I realised. I've learnt to appreciate the simplicity in life because sometimes just making it outside to sit on the deck is a challenge and other days I can explore a city on foot for hours.

I've been in and out of the hospital for the last three months. I got hepatitis and it doesn't seem too keen to respond to the copious amounts of medication we're throwing at it. Initially we thought this would pass and I would get better from it, but my body is doing some weird things and now nobody is quite sure what's going to pass and what's not. This may go away or I may spend the rest of my life on some of these medications just to try to keep things under control. That was a blow to hear but like so much of my life, it's an unknown. I've been keeping my head down and trying to focus on a day at a time in one of the harder patches of treatment I've had. Maybe not physically as hard but mentally very challenging because there is no final date. There's no magic number of doses. In fact there's no obvious plan at all because there isn't another case in my situation.

Because cancer and hepatitis didn't seem like enough I also got diabetes, caused by the high dose of steroids I've been on. It didn't quite happen overnight, more like a week, but it was pretty sudden and I went from never having an issue to needing insulin in a click of the fingers. It may or may not pass. I might just be bruising up my belly for the rest of my life (or I might establish some coordination when injecting myself, that could be good too).

To me, something passing doesn't necessarily mean it gets better.  We live in a perfectly imperfect world. Not every moment is happy but there is happiness to be found in many, many moments. So I prefer not to think of my life as something to get through, instead I like to think of it as something to live. For me the end of cancer may mean death and yet having cancer could mean life.

Although I would like my steroid-induced fat face and mood swings to pass, (the uncoordinated shaky hands that throw pens across the room, the cocktail of pills and the copious amounts of time in the hospital, the added nausea, random insomnia and achey knees can all stick it too) I am willing to take each of these days just to have had another day where I will have laughed; even if it was through tears.

I think Albus Dumbledore sums it up better than me (he did have an extra hundred-ish years to get wiser) when he said "Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light".

Cheers Albus, I think I'll turn on the light and have a laugh during my five hour infusion today. I'm currently hiding out in my single room and that in itself is a bloody bright little light!