Takes a village
On Coping #6
Since your diagnosis one thing is for certain: we’re not alone in this.
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Parents relocate.
Family cook and clean.
Friends visit and send daily messages of love.
Schools make allowances and put support in place.
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Old communities reconnect.
New communities rally round:
The football teams
the neighbours
the gym buddies
the yoga class.
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Colleagues celebrate your achievements
the impact you have on their work
the way you’ve touched their lives
and what you’ll do next.
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You make friends at the hospital.
On the chemo ward
at the clinic
at the hypobaric oxygen chamber
with your rolfer.
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Your ex-boyfriend drives to our door.
Your dad is on call.
Your sister is a rock.
Your mum is omnipotent.
Your best friends drop everything and cross the country to be at your side.
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Your aunts send love and money.
Then your friends send love and money.
Then your colleagues send love and money.
Then complete strangers send love, and money.
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Events are arranged to raise awareness and funds.
Runs.
Concerts.
Clothes swaps.
Marathon step-up challenges.
Your four-and-a-half-year-old God son does a sponsored 10 mile bike ride.
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The worst happening to one person brings out the best in everyone else.
The mightiest courage inspires the greatest kindness.
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They say it takes a village:
As a warrior, you have an army.
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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.