How I learned to appreciate my Chemo
It was about two weeks before I wrote my last post that I sent this photo to my family Whatsapp group captioned “it’s all going to be grand”.
Two weeks had passed since an operation to remove a tumour from the back of my head and I’d successfully managed the walk to the top of a local hill by myself. I cried several times on the way up and several more times on the way back down, mourning the loss of what I can only assume was my innocence.
Trees have always had a grounding and relaxing effect and, looking around at the local forest in Dorset, I experienced a deep sense of perspective. Those trees had been there an incredibly long time, longer than several human lifetimes, and they had endured it all. Winters come and go, wars pass, emergencies come round eventually and the trees just wait it all out patiently.
I decided then and there that I was going to return to that spot within the next six months, after all the madness had blown over, and relive the same vista. I knew that everything was going to be OK, because I knew that I was going to make it back to that spot. I was not going to die, so I just had to place some faith in the universe and trust that everything was going to be well.
Fast forward five months and the one factor I could never have planned for was the chaotic nature of life. Just as I mounted the same hill last weekend, at the spot where I hoped to relive that moment, I noticed a group of mourners crying over a lost loved one. The details I know nothing about; it was no business of mine.
The juxtaposition was almost perfect. Months after an attempt to put my troubles into perspective, a real life Memento Mori had come along and really whacked me upside of the head.
Life has smacked me about the head fairly repeatedly recently. Sometimes metaphorically, sometimes with scalpels. But what I’ve come to learn is that there’s a choice in how I react.
Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was an example of a someone who really knew how to roll with the punches. You’ve probably seen the film of a black professional boxer from Georgia USA who was wrongfully convicted of a triple murder by an all-white jury in the 1960s. Bob Dylan wrote one of his best songs about it:
All of Rubin’s cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus, he never had a chance
The judge made Rubin’s witnesses drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the black folks he was just a crazy n*****
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger
And though they could not produce the gun
The D.A. said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed
Carter served twenty years in prison due to a viciously unfair and racist system. In comparison, my concerns were nothing — and they are nothing when stacked up against the daily problems that people outside of my privileged position face every single day. Perspective is everything.
But the reason I look up to Mr Carter is because of the way that he chose not to be a victim. He famously walked into prison and demanded to speak to the warden, telling him:
“I know you had nothing to do with the injustice that brought me to this jail, so I’m willing to stay here until I get out. But I will not, under any circumstances, be treated like a prisoner — because I am not and will never be powerless”.
I am not comparing myself to Mr Carter or his experience. I couldn’t. I merely offer his story as a paragon of virtue that helped me personally through a really, really tough time.
Life with cancer is scary because there are large periods of time spent waiting for the unknown; constantly trying to stay positive while random waves of pain crash over you. It’s about waiting for doctors, tests and results that bring more unknown and scary possibilities. Then it is about putting a smile on it all and telling people that it could be worse. Because it really, really could be.
I decided at the beginning of it all— probably about the time I climbed the hill — that I would never be the victim. Were I to take chemo, it would be because I chose to accept a life-saving medicine that I would be grateful for. It was a decision that got me through the hard times and I hope that it might help you in some small way too.
