Myself, With Notes.

I’m tempted to say that I’m not myself at the moment, but that would be illogical since, by definition, I can only ever be one version of myself or another. It would be more logical to say that the nature of ‘myself’ is rather different than it was a year ago. Getting a grade 3 cancer has that effect, at least it does on me.

Until a year ago I’d always been used to going through life with the normal open ended view of the future that is, generally speaking, one of life’s blessings. We all know that the end of the road is somewhere up ahead, but the knowledge is so deeply buried that it doesn’t get raised to the level of awareness. Grade 3 cancers change all that; the unconscious knowledge becomes elevated to conscious awareness where it earns the venerable title of Intimations of Mortality, and then it starts whispering questions for you to ask at every turn of the diurnal round:

‘Will I see those seeds I just planted grow to fruition this summer?’

‘How many more times will I go to bed and fall asleep in the expectation of waking up tomorrow?’

‘Is there any point in buying that heavy wool sweater I just found in a charity shop ready to replace one of my old ones next winter?’

And maybe the most poignant of all…

‘Will I still be alive in twenty years time to see the Lady B’s little daughter grow to the age her dear mama was when I first met her?’ I so want to know whether she is going to favour her mother in looks, you see, because it would evoke a cocktail of pleasant memories to go out with. (And also because it would be nice to do a Snape and say ‘you have your mother’s eyes.’) It won’t happen, of course; the chances of finding out are about as likely as seeing the new lambs that will shortly appear up the lane grow to mature sheep.

It’s a strange sentence to be living under – strange simply because we’re not used to it. Maybe it was different back in the days when TB and typhus were ever present, hanging over people’s heads like homicidal dementors and randomly taking large numbers of victims to reduce the surplus population. But these days we’re supposed to live at least into our eighties or be seen as having somehow failed.

Well, failure or not, all I’m saying is that when you’ve been used to seeing the road ahead running onward to an apparently clear horizon, it’s mildly discomfiting to see it disappear into a mist instead. The next thoracic scans are scheduled for April. Whether the mist will lift at that point, or whether the road will become rocky, or whether the terminus will become visible at last, remains to be discovered. In the meantime, I’m not myself (in a manner of speaking.)

Note 1:

To fully appreciate certain references on this blog these days, it helps to be up to speed on Harry Potter. Harry Potter has come to mean a lot to me for reasons which I can’t be bothered to explain.

Note 2:

I’m beginning to suspect that some sort of otherworldly presence is hanging around me while I sleep. I was woken up twice last night by things which shouldn’t have happened, but I can’t be bothered to elucidate further on them either.

Note 3:

Running on constant low voltage becomes tiresome after a while.