Coping

It's a funny thing, this cancer malarky. I can be fine and dandy, upbeat and logical. I can forget all about it and watch a jolly good (or even half decent) film, AND enjoy it, and be perfectly relaxed. As relaxed as I ever am. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I can read something, or have a random thought, and instantly all the air goes out of the room and I'm frozen into a blob of terror.

It happened earlier today when I was looking up the figures in the previous blog, and saw that the median survival for lung cancer at UCH was 242 days. That's the median, that's taking all the patients diagnosed and lining them up in order of remaining length of life, and 242 days is right bang there is the middle.That's only 8 months. That takes me just about up to my next birthday.

Jixie in August 2011

It can happen when I look out of the window and wonder whether I'll eat the beans we've planted, or whether I'll be on baby food by then.  It can happen when I look at our lovely old cat Jixie and think how I'm going to miss him when he dies, and then realise with a kind of mental screech of brakes, that I might not be around, that might be just one more awful moment in life that Godfrey will have to face on his own.

It's fucking scary.

I'm trying to push it away and focus on concrete things like appointments and writing this and making dinner and stuff, anything really, to try to avoid falling into that terrifying void that I can feel lurking somewhere in my mind, just out of sight.