Sixty-Five Today

I’m sixty-five today and I have only two treatments to go.

The day started badly as I had the runs and had to resort to a couple of Imodiums to settle things down before I went out. From such a start things can only improve.

It’s been a day to make me realise how damned lucky I have been. When I was waiting for my treatment I was listening to a conversation between two women waiting for their husbands to come out from radiotherapy. Both men had had cancer in their throats or mouths and both had had to have part of their tongue removed. The surgeons had reconstructed their tongues using muscle from their arms and legs. I think that’s pretty amazing.

Mind you, the husbands were both having dreadful pains in their mouths and were experiencing great difficulty eating. Indeed one had not eaten for over a week and was being fed through a tube.

Later, after I had returned home a friend arrived to wish me happy birthday. She was telling us about the father of a mutual acquaintance who was dying of cancer. His had started in his bladder, too, but he hadn’t done anything until he had a big lump on his stomach. I just can’t imagine how he could have ignored it that long if his symptoms were anything like mine. Maybe his was far less painful but far more aggressive than mine and he hadn’t really worried about it until it was too far advanced.

Sometimes I wonder why I complain about feeling tired and having the minor inconvenience of the runs.