Perspective

I debated a fair bit with myself over the point of this posting, it's a tough thing to put onto paper and something I'd hoped would never be necessary. I ended up doing it because I sometimes find that writing stuff down helps my mind deal with stuff. I talk to my nearest and dearest obviously but I'm not always good at getting my emotions out. Those that know me well enough know I can let my emotions get the better of me sometimes and cloud my judgement. I think writing stuff down helps you speak with a more measured mind and helps me unload it all. Anyway that's enough of that.

I had a long weekend in Cornwall last week and it was an idyllic four days, spent in the wonderful Cornish countryside with my lovely Cornish wife and some great friends. Away from the madness of working on the roads of London and the general hubbub and stresses of daily life, it was a real soul cleanser and allowed me a brief relaxation of mind and body.

That temporary respite was somewhat dented on my return when a high court judge ruled in favour of my beloved Uber, allowing them to continue making life a misery for us London cabbies (see my previous postings on this issue). Highs and lows eh.

As a certain Forrest Gump once said, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get (or words to that effect). Although I tend to favour a bag of maltesers so I tend to know exactly what I'm going to get, but you take my point.

I'm generally a happy chap and am content with my lot in life, I've had my share of difficulties, haven't we all. It's a bit of a struggle financially and I stress about it from time to time but I've learned to keep a sense of perspective and that whole mantra of there being a lot of people worse off than yourself helps me to get to grips with things. Mostly. Career wise, I've made some odd choices and it hasn't always gone to plan but again, it could be worse and as long as I can pay the bills I'm happy enough. As I've got older I've become less obsessed with material belongings (cars, holidays etc) and, asset wise, I own pretty much nothing (apart from a pension). I'd be worth a fair amount if I was 6 feet under!

All of this sense of perspective has been brought into sharp focus in the last week or so when, after a series of tests and hospital visits, my 94 year old, fit as a 50 year old Mum, was diagnosed with cancer. To be precise, it is Myeloma which is a cancer of the bone marrow. It's not curable but it is treatable with chemotherapy and normally a person of my Mum's age would not be offered such treatment given how relatively healthy you need to be to withstand the treatment to start with plus the impact the side effects can have on one's health. However my Mum is no ordinary 94 year old, the consultant said in his entire career he'd never encountered anyone of her age in such a good state of physical health (she was still going to Keep Fit once a week up until about a month ago). As such they are able to offer her a couple of treatment options, both involving chemotherapy. One of these options is more aggressive than the other but is more effective in terms of reducing the cancer and, given the level of cancer she has, will probably offer a better longer term outcome (not sure what "long term" means for someone her age, but I'd rather not think of that at this stage to be honest).

So, despite her understandable indecision in the face of a mountain of information and no actual information on prognosis (outcomes are very much different from one person to the next in such instances), my Mum very bravely decided to go for the most aggressive option, in the knowledge of the probable side effects this will entail. I'm bordering on tears just thinking of the look on her face when the doctor ran through the possible/probable side effects during our consultation and to think that despite all that she found the strength in her tiny body and her fragile state of mind to go down this road is just simply awesome. I'm not sure I could do that, I suspect I'd just throw in the towel. But she's from a different generation to me, a generation that lived through a World War, left school at a young age to go out to work for pennies and had to fight and scrap for every morsel put on the dinner table. This is a woman who lost a finger working in a munitions factory during WW2 and was blown across a room in an office in Reading from a German bomber unloading his unused payload on return to his Motherland after a bombing raid on this country. So a bit of cancer isn't going to beat her resolve. It certainly puts my daily gripes into perspective.

So the next year to 18 months will be spent on weekly hospital visits for her treatment. I really can't get my head around how my Mum will cope with this but she understands, as do all of us in the family, that this treatment is necessary to try and relieve her of the ill that is going on in her body. I'm close to tears a fair bit of the time thinking about it, as I imagine both my brothers probably are, but this is a time to remember it's her that has to go through all this treatment, not me.

About 18 months ago my dear sister in law was diagnosed with the same condition and has spent the last year or so undergoing similar treatment as my Mum faces now. The treatment she had was of an even stronger nature, something afforded to someone of a much younger age than Mum. She is now in remission but, due to the nature of her treatment (she was part of a trial of a new kind of programme), she still faces weekly hospital visits for chemotherapy. I've seen how she's suffered but has been so brave in facing it all down. It's quite inspiring and whilst it's been horrendous for her and my brother, I hope my Mum can draw some inspiration from it too.

Many people have been touched by this awful illness in their families. Up until 18 months ago when my sister in law was diagnosed I'd been fortunate enough not to have been similarly touched in my immediate family. Now two of my closest loved ones are fighting it. I can't even imagine how my brother is feeling right now having gone through what he has with his wife and now faces similar with his Mum. But he's a tough old nut, he doesn't give much away.

Anyway, I decided to go ahead and write about this, for my own benefit really as much as anything else and I hope to post updates on her journey on here. I'm convinced it'll be a story with a happy ending.

So if anyone at Buckingham Palace is reading this, keep that ink pot topped up and the telegram machine stocked with paper.

Mum starts her treatment next week.