Ignorance is bliss

On Coping #4

You now live your life scan to scan.

The KPI of the cancer world.

Later you’ll figure out how to decipher the blood test results and know what the tumor markers are telling you.

But for now, you await your fate by photography.

.

It’s nearing July 2022.

You’re twelve rounds into intravenous chemotherapy.

Oxaliplatin, folinic acid, fluorouracil and irinotecan otherwise known as FOLFOXIRI.

You’ve weathered the hours in the chair.

The exhaustion.

The neuropathy.

The sickness.

The terror.

The boredom.

The pain.

And the fear.

.

There’s a break between rounds.

You have the scans and you await the results.

.

This ignorance is the only window hope has to creep into your heart.

You have to believe that it is helping.

That something is happening.

That all this suffering and trauma is going to be worth it in the end.

That despite the poison entering your body and your body’s fury at what it now additionally has to withstand, it is getting better.

.

So in the weeks between being unplugged and the day you walk into the oncologists office for the results, you allow yourself to hope.

And while you wait, you try and go back to a normal life.

.

You make pizzas.

You swim.

You supervise homework.

You walk the dog.

You stroke the cat.

You go to the beach.

You sleep.

You watch tv.

You go to the gym.

You laugh.

You hug your sister.

You spend time with your friends.

You kiss me.

.

My sister gets married and it is beautiful and everyone looks dapper and there are cousins and food and music and dancing and we are a big, happy, extended family.

And in this ignorance as well as hope there is a kind of bliss.

The simple bliss of day to day.

The bliss that comes with gratitude for this life you have built and which, for a short while at least, you can live hoping, no, believing it will be yours for longer than they expect.

.

Then finally the day arrives.

An end to this lovely normalcy.

You wait outside the oncologists office.

Eventually it’s your turn.

You take a deep breath and you squeeze my hand.

We go in.

.

And you can’t quite believe it but it’s good news.

There is definitely nothing in the lung.

The bowel tumor is stable.

And the liver tumours are shrinking.

I squeeze your hand.

.

It’s working.

It’s working.

It’s working.

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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.

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