April 2022.
Six weeks since the diagnosis.
There is a plan.
We feel a bit better.
.
The suspected tumours in the lung are no longer a concern.
A misread of the scan, maybe.
So.
Chemotherapy to shrink the tumours in the liver til they disappear.
Like recipe number four in George’s Marvellous Medicine.
Then surgery to remove the primary bowel tumor.
Which may or may not leave her with a stoma - a colostomy bag - for the rest of her life.
How does she feel about that?
.
For a moment then, that becomes her primary concern.
A decision we’re surely not evolutionarily nor educationally prepared to make:
Your life or your bowel.
The choice is obvious but not easy.
Once it’s made, treatment can begin.
.
But not before she elects to have an access port to her veins implanted under her skin just above her right breast and just under her right shoulder.
Her ‘magic button’ she tells the kids.
This is how they will administer the chemotherapy drugs.
It saves having to find a vein each time and means she can continue to swim.
Finally, she is ready for the administration of poison to her body as per phase 1 of the plan to save her life.
.
So we have the bleeding.
We have the scans.
We have the diagnosis.
We have breaking the news.
We have the treatment plan.
We have the choice about the potential stoma.
We have the port.
.
And yet, nothing has actually happened.
.
The cancer continues to grow.
To spread.
.
We feel better for having a plan.
But in reality, we haven’t even begun.
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On Coping is my story of surviving on the sidelines of cancer. It begins in 2022 with On Coping #1, written the day after my 41st birthday. The day my wife Imogen, the mother of my three children, was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. It’s the story of what happened next. Read from the start.