Sixteen months ago, feeling perfectly fit and well, I discovered via the regular screening programme that I had bowel cancer with a secondary tumour in my liver. Since then, it has been all about following a Treatment Plan designed to give me “the best chance of a positive long-term outcome”. (Doctors choose their words carefully in such situations). It would take about a year, they said, and involve the following delights:
a) 3 months of chemo. b) 5 weeks of combined radiotherapy and chemo.
c) Liver surgery. d) Bowel surgery + ileostomy. e) 3 months of chemo.
f) Stoma reversal surgery.
Daunting, yes, but it’s always good to have a plan! Especially one that might make me better - hurrah! One measly year! That wasn’t so long! It’s amazing how the dipped spirits rise. So, I strapped on my metaphorical helmet, picked up my metaphorical sword and plunged into the unknown jungle of medical appointments, drugs, side-effects and operations. One step at a time, was my coping strategy, spurred on by regular, longing glances into the misty distance which contained my Finishing Line. It was called a “Cancer Journey” after all, aptly named by the millions who have trodden similar paths to recovery. Like all journeys it would have a beginning, a middle-stretch of twists and turns, and finally…arrival!
During mad sleepless small hours, I so often soothed myself by counting the number of days until achieving this glorious distant goal. Every evening, I crossed each day off my wall calendar with relish. To speed things up, I tried ‘bravely ignoring’ the side-effects of chemotherapy, only to realise my stupidity when the damage caused (non-healing blistered feet) rendered me virtually immobile. I grew more respectful after that, humbler, more patient. After surgery, I used gentle Pilates to get my strength back and learned to savour the restorative power of the simplest treats – a glass of wine, a good movie, seeing friends. That Finishing Line meanwhile, edged ever closer. Tantalisingly slow. I couldn’t wait to skip across it, flayed feet and all, sword and head held high.
Except that, gradually, as the months and milestones passed, the Finishing Line started moving further away instead. My body’s need for longer recovery times didn’t care about agreed schedules, you see; nor did the sometimes slow-turning wheels of our mighty, but overburdened NHS. The year of treatment on which I had set my hopes became a year and a quarter, then a year and a half… Now, as I write, with scan results, more appointments and the final op still to go, it is looking more like 19 or 20 months.
“Amanda, you are running a marathon,” my brilliant can-do surgeon remarked kindly, when the news of another summer lost to chemo broke through my armour and got me upset. I hung onto that word afterwards, drawing comfort from the analogy despite never having been a fan of running so many miles. Who would want, voluntarily, to put such a strain on an otherwise robust body…? Ha ha.
It dawned on me only recently that the “Finishing Line” was a myth of my own making. It was no coincidence that I was sitting in a cinema at the time, white-knuckled, as Matt Damon – Odysseus on his odyssey – fought through a decade of war followed by another nine years of monstrous diversions, each worse than the last. Even after Penelope recognised him and they set sail for the West, you knew there would be more trouble ahead, eventually, because there always is. The striving never ends, that’s the thing. Even if it turns out my cancer has gone, it might come back. Or a London bus might flatten me tomorrow. “Life is a journey, not a destination”, as Emerson famously put it, some 2700 years after one of the greatest poets of all time had already nailed the question. So, if I hear the sweet word remission in the coming weeks, it won’t be permission to draw a line and forget, but a song of encouragement as I forge on, intent still on my own odyssey, wherever it leads.