Blog No 100 – living with my cancer

I can’t believe I’m writing my 100th blog post where has that time gone? I was wondering what to write to make it a special blog post but like all my previous blogs there is no plan I just close my eyes open my heart and let my fingers do the rest.

I’ve often just started writing with no aim or direction, I find once I start I’m guided by something I can’t explain, so who knows where this one will take us.

Like a lot of my blogs I’ve started whilst sitting outside on my patio. I’ve just returned from work. My students have just qualified to pass their blue light driving assessment and today it was my turn to be assessed both driving and teaching. I’m proud to say it went very well and the feedback from my assessor was excellent. Considering I’ve had so much time out of work I’m a little proud of myself today for proving I’m still on top of my game, a game I perhaps thought a little while ago I would never play in again.

As I said I’m on my patio, it’s one of those April days where you get all four seasons in one day. The sun is out and giving off some weak spring heat, but the clouds are gathering and I don’t feel it will be too long before they win this particular fight. Im looking at the dark storm clouds that are building, one looks like a horse’s head with a wild mane flowing behind it which then magically disolves into another shape. I love watching the eternal battle between the sun and the clouds. As the sun warms the air around so the shower clouds start their life, starting firstly as fluffy Cumulous clouds that grow into towering cumulonimbus clouds. Apologies I’ve always been a bit of a weather geek😃

The sun is struggling to be the king of the skies today and as it goes back inside the air around me grows colder and colder. It’s putting up a brave battle but I fear the clouds are going to win this one, we shall see.

I suppose in a way it’s a bit like life, the clouds are our problems the sun is the good stuff and the blue sky which is always there is our minds. I’ve been lucky , I’ve had a lot of blue sky in my life, the cancer surrounded me with dark clouds for a while but the sun is shining and the blue sky is back in my life again. The blue sky was always there I Just lost sight of it for a while.

A couple of fat rain drops hit the patio, one hits my head and spreads a chill through me. The wind picks up and tells me Woody it’s time for you to retreat back inside, I agree and do so. I sit now in the comfort of my chair in the warmth of my cosy house watching the ensuing battle outside like a fascinated child the weather enthralls me and always has done. A gust of wind blasts through the garden, the birds have gone silent they know a storm is coming and I guess they seek their own shelter. Do they sing when it’s raining? I can’t say I have the answer to that one. When a storm is approaching the world around goes quiet not just the birds it’s like everything goes quiet, like someone has just gone and turned the volume down on life.

The storm in my life was the cancer diagnosis, like all storms they come when you least expect them. One minute the sky is blue the next it’s a violent tempest blotting out the sun and closing in around you. A storm which appeared to have no ending, with a constant blitz on all my senses, the thunder roars and the lightening flashes in my head and there is no shelter to be found. Gradually the dark clouds started to become lighter and the rain died down the sun shone and the sky cleared and slowly slowly the senses begin to understand what is happening and that dark hellish place you get sucked into gradually lets you go. It fights to hold on to you but if you are strong you can escape it’s grip. The storm is over, storms don’t last forever you know.

Those thoughts just took me right back to when it first started. Many people might call it a nightmare but I just can’t see it that way now. The diagnosis struck me the kind of blow that you think you can’t get up from, ever. But you can, you hold on to the ropes and you haul yourself back up and to your feet. You towel yourself down and start the fight again. Except it’s not a fight, it’s not a battle. It’s an acceptance that you have to somehow find the heart to deal with.

The acceptance is that you are not the invincible human being you may have thought you were, you are not immortal and once you accept that you start to see another world. You live and feel and breathe another world, one where just living and breathing becomes a celebration after years of taking those simple mechanical processes for granted. Sometimes I sit for a while and just focus on my heart beating, I place my hand over it and feel the force that allows me to live. Sometimes I just focus on my breathing and just marvel at the complexities and also the simplicity that allow me to breathe so effortlessly even though I get out of breath much quicker than before. I still am grateful for each breath I’m allowed to have, once you start living like that your life changes in so many ways for the better.

So I’ve got this cancer right and my life has changed for the better in so many ways, how can that be? I’ve learned the power of appreciation, it’s a gift we can all use but like me I’m guessing many of us don’t use it to its full potential. The appreciation of life in it’s very essence is powerful. It’s a super power that we can all use. Sometimes it takes something that threatens to destroy your life to realise how valuable it is and how much you may have to lose. Just appreciating each and every morning that you are breathing is a start. How many of us wake up and say thanks for breathing ? How many of us wake up and say thanks for the sun rise or the birds singing or even the rain falling which gives life to us all, without the rain we would not exist.

I’m not a religious man, I’ve questioned religion a lot in my life and still do. Everyone is entitled to believe in what they want. Belief is what gives me strength, my belief is in the universe, I marvel at the universe and it’s complexities. You can call your belief what you like any name you chose. Many of us in times of need and in times when everything we hold dear in our world is threatened to be taken from us will start believing in something and in my opinion that’s good.

When you are told you have an illness that is going to take your life away you do one of two things you either lay down and accept it and wait to die or you say no I ain’t going to die I don’t except that, no way am I going to accept that. This is when you find your belief, you tell yourself over and over again that you are one million per cent going to do this on your terms. Without that belief you have nothing, with that belief you can become an unshakable force that defies the way things are. You don’t have to accept that you are going to die because that is dying and you can chose living. You stand up no matter how shit you feel and you stand in front of a mirror you look yourself in the eye and you tell yourself you’ve got this and then that’s when what ever it is you believe in, what ever name you call it, be it be God or Allah or something else this is when you are at your most weakest and most vulnerable yet at the same time most powerful. You put every ounce  of your strength in your faith your belief whatever you want to call it and then and only then miracles can happen.

I started believing very quickly aftery diagnosis, doctors told me I’ve got prostate cancer which has spread and become incurable cancer in my spine. It was like being thrown into a dark and still pond where you have the choice to either sink or swim. I started swimming, I looked up and metaphorically I swam towards the light, refusing to be drawn into the dark depths of that muddy silent pool. Belief started there and then and grew stronger and stronger.

Every day in every way I feel better and better

Every day in every way I’m growing stronger and stronger

Every day in every way my cancer is becoming weaker and weaker

I’ve been saying those three sentences since it began.

At first I didn’t really believe in what I was saying but I just kept on saying it anyway. Today I’m feeling better, today I’m getting stronger and today my cancer has clinically got weaker. Of course the medication has helped with those three things but in my mind my belief in those three things has grown stronger and stronger and I’m now in no doubt that my mind has helped the medication to work. My oncologist is astonished at my progress, with tumours shrinking and nothing getting worse despite the fact my cancer is very aggressive and she agrees that the power of the human mind holds such powers once you start to believe in it.

I’ve said this so many times if one person can survive being in my condition then so can I. I just have to fully believe that it’s possible.

Well that was blog number 100, a blog I never had contemplated writing when all this started and just like all the others it’s is written straight from the heart and based purely on what I’m feeling at the time I write,

I would love to know if this blog helps you in any way, you may not suffer from cancer it could just be something in your life that reading this makes you feel better in some way. Please let me know by saying a few words in the comment box below as this will keep inspiring me to write more. Thank you for reading and please keep sharing my message….

Love Woody ❤️