Christmas reprieve

I'm sat in the lounge while the rest of the house snoozes (except for diligent Dan who is at work, freezing somewhere on the side of a football pitch). Reuben's afternoon football match has just been called off, so the day has emptied out lazily in front of us. With the Christmas tree lights twinkling and Harald Grosskopf's Germanic synth sounds wafting through the room, these are my favourite type of Sundays.

The respite is welcome, because the previous fortnight has been intense. Last week in particular was a significant one medically - both looking back and forwards.

Last Wednesday we got the results of my latest CT scan which was to determine if my cancer, which had been stable since May, had stirred again. The three months between these 'staging' scans are beginning to take a chart-able emotional pattern. First, in the initial days after the scan results show the cancer hasn't grown, there is elation, relief and a sense of lightness and freedom to plan ahead. Then, about six weeks in, when I'm half-way between the previous and next scans, I feel a bit cut adrift - like a swimmer in the sea who can't see the shoreline they've left or the island they are heading towards. Finally, in the last week or so before the results (by which time I've actually had the scan) I feel apprehensive about what might greet me when I reach the island. I prepare myself for bad news, and the sharp turn in direction that it could cause our lives to take, while hoping for good.

This time, as we walked into hospital, I had an 80% feeling that things would be fine. We sat down with our latest new, friendly cancer doctor. We talked about pausing my bone injections for a month while I have another tooth extracted, the dental legacy of 12 months of chemotherapy. She then asked if there was anything else to discuss. We told her we'd come for my scan results, which she thought we'd already received (as the scan was two weeks before the appointment). So, she pulled these up and told us that all areas of my cancer, again, showed no signs of growth. Suggesting another scan at the end of February, she encouraged me to"keep on doing what you're doing!" before we left, smiles all-round.

It's only in experiencing the relief of this good news that I fully realized the heaviness of the anxiety it replaced. This anxiety was particularly acute a couple of weeks before when a lot of little things had gone wrong at once, including our car's fuel tank springing a potentially expensive leak and my phone's camera malfunctioning. I sat in the dentist's, about to have my achy wisdom tooth examined, and suddenly found my eyes welling up as a Coldplay song came on Capital radio, through the waiting room speakers. Flipping heck; Coldplay tipping me over the edge for the first time in decades. Seriously?!

As I've mentioned before, even though I didn't want to emote in front of the dentist (and I didn't), I'm more welcoming of tears than I used to be. They tend to bring a sense of calm, of softness and of a slate wiped clean afterwards, like the freshness that follows a thunderstorm on a muggy day.

There were plenty of tears at the funeral of my best friend Paul's dad almost two weeks ago. John was a good man who died following an aggressive esophageal cancer which only surfaced this year. I wasn't sure how I'd respond to the funeral - the first I'd been to since my diagnosis - but wanted to be there to support Paul, Esther and their family. Everything was fine until I hugged Paul at the crematorium and then my floodgates unexpectedly opened. I was initially embarrassed, as this felt it was more about me than John. But that's the mess of life and grief which we increasingly get the privilege of sharing, as our defining, painful and joyous experiences mingle together in our shared tears. I'm crying again as I type this...

Returning to the past week, 12 months ago I wrote a post about the rocky road to my diagnosis and the questions it threw up. Two days after the scan results, last Friday, Lisa and myself sat down with a partner GP at our doctor's surgery to discuss this road for the first time. Last year, the consultant surgeon I saw immediately after my diagnosis had written to the GP to suggest they review my case. I subsequently found out this review happened last summer, although they didn't inform me about it (for which they apologised). It wasn't until this summer, with the pause in my chemo, that I had the mental energy to follow it up, which led to last week's sit down.

For an hour or so, we pored through my medical records from the two years before my diagnosis, looking for any missed clues of bowel cancer. There were faint clues but these were drowned out by the testicular pain I was experiencing at the same time which was treated as the main symptom, thought to be linked to my vasectomy years before. As a result of my case, and fresh national guidelines, patients at our surgery can now expect to be offered a FIT (stool sample) test at the first signs of IBS symptoms; which I hadn't been. As the partner GP pointed out, this could have brought my diagnosis forward by six months. While there are still other pre-diagnosis medical loose ends to be looked into, it felt like a nagging itch had been scratched as we left the meeting. There's nothing we can do to change the past, but excavating and examining it, despite the pain involved, does feel helpful in terms of moving forwards.

Talking of looking back, it was wonderful to be able to go to this year's Christmas do (cheesy picture above) with former (that word still feels weird to type!) Lichfield Diocese colleagues. I was too ill to go in 2023 and was slightly apprehensive about last week's event at the George Hotel, which fell on Thursday between the scan results and GP meeting. I didn't have time to say goodbye to most people when I unexpectedly left work sick last year after my diagnosis. So, as well as doubling up as a leaving do for my former boss Julie, it felt a poignant event personally, especially when Julie mentioned me in her speech leading to a spontaneous burst of applause. It was almost like Coldplay had started up again... the warmth of people was touching.

The following evening, a smaller group of us huddled into the Bitter Suite pub, a few hundred yards from the George Hotel, for the Christmas get together for Lichfield's Oxfam Books & Music shop, where I've now been the resident 'vinyl enthusiast' volunteer for a couple of months. It was a lower-key event than the diocesan one and nice to get to know some of the volunteers I hadn't met, over pints and chips. These two markedly different work do's - the intersection between my past, present and foreseeable future - left me tired but thankful.

As we look forward and get ready for Christmas, it's helpful to notice a couple of things. The first is that I am beginning to trust my body again. This trust was severely tested by my diagnosis - the physical signs of my cancer had been so faint (as mentioned above) that I felt my body was too polite to warn me things were getting very bad. The chemo regime that followed knocked my body for six, with all sorts of side affects which further dulled my intuition about how I was physically.

Since I last had chemo in May, however well I've felt, I've naturally at times feared that the cancer could be spreading. But the longer things stay stable, the more I trust my body and slowly my hyper-vigilance is easing. I think I'm a better listener now - so when I manage a half-marathon, as I did last month, I can recognise that things are actually going well. I can also listen out for any unusual physical prompts, while acknowledging how stealthily my cancer tends to move. Bodies are mysterious, amazing things.

The second thing I've noticed, or remembered, is that this time last year we had to face the prospect that it could be my last Christmas. I'd forgotten that until I looked back on last December's blog post. That we're not considering the same thing this year is brilliant. As, I've written before, hope is a fragile and hard-worn thing that cannot be forced or rushed. Brene Brown says it well in her book 'Atlas Of The Heart', which I'm currently reading:

"We experience hope when: We have the ability to set realistic goals... We are able to figure out how to achieve those goals, including the ability to stay flexible and develop alternative pathways... Hope is a function of struggle—we develop hope not during the easy or comfortable times, but through adversity and discomfort."

While remaining in the 'now' and not getting too far ahead of ourselves, it feels like we have some Advent hope at the moment; a Christmas reprieve.

I'll leave you with a funny instance that sent my anxiety levels through the roof at about the same time as the dentist waiting room incident. Sitting downstairs, I suddenly noticed Lisa getting very animated on a call upstairs in her office. I went half-way up the stairs and heard her shouting at a school receptionist about our son who had got into trouble. Lisa was really going for it, exclaiming: "I won't calm down!", somehow being aggressive, demanding and dismissive all at the same time. My heart was racing. "Lisa can be forthright but doesn't tend to lose it with people like this; she must have finally cracked under the strain of the last 18 months," I thought.

I then noticed Reuben talking to his mates on his Xbox in the adjacent bedroom, his door closed. The same Reuben who had got into mischief at school and Lisa seemed to have standing beside her as she ranted. It was then the penny dropped. Lisa was taking part in a work training exercise about having challenging conversations. Her role play was so realistic that she had me convinced - and terrified. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry as she told me. I was still shaking as I walked back downstairs.

Happy Christmas everyone!