Time to move on?

I went for my post-RT check up, and the really really good news is that I'm fine. There's no sign of any son-of-Ridley, and only a tiny bit of scarring in the lungs. Nothing to stop me having a full and happy life from here on in. Which is a huge relief.

Post-Ridley, some Lung Scarring from R/T.

The new Registrar, Dr Ahmed, was concerned at the long time I'm taking to recover, and with that and my alopecia, decided to do a raft of blood tests to exclude further scary things like auto-immune disease and thyroid problems: the results have come back and they are all within normal ranges. Everything is fine and dandy, except me.

Which of course, begs the question, why? Why am I struggling now to simply live a normal life, when a year ago I was champing at the bit to go off and walk for miles and miles across the lovely Essex countryside: and that was when I was carrying my uninvited guest? I was fine when I was ill: now I'm better I'm decrepit.

The answer has to be psychological. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes: "When you have eliminated the physical, whatever remains, however uncomfortable, must be the truth". And what remains after physical causes are removed, of course, are emotional and psychological factors.

Being an awkward cuss like I am requires a certain amount of strength. It's much easier to go along with the flow, follow the pack, drift. The problem is though that I'm not very good at drifting, I need to paddle. But just recently I've been forced to face a few facts. Like, paddle as hard and fast as I like, the fates have plans for me and they won't be brooked. Like, there have been times when I can't even lift a paddle, never mind steer the raft of life with it, so I've had to accept the help of others to do that for me. And like, sometimes the direction I'm headed in is simply the wrong way to go.

I've had to acknowledge my lack of power and control, and I don't like it.

There have been times when I've been scared that I won't ever get well again, won't ever be back like I was. But I'm better now than I was a month ago, hugely better than I was at Christmas, unrecognisably better than I was back in November. I'm on the road to recovery. Now I have to ask myself, do I actually want to be back like I was?

When you start off in life as a mewling and puking infant, life seems full of possibilities. Then you start to make choices, and each one necessarily narrows the range of potential futures. Each choice seems like a free choice, but they're not, they are limited by what's on offer. And by your own self knowledge, prejudices, and vision. Unless you watch out, you end up boxing yourself in to a space where there's not enough room to turn around. No room to shed your own skin and re-discover things about life. No room to stretch and look around and say, "actually, I don't have to be this version of me, any more".

I haven't done that, yet. I'm not completely boxed in. I have choices.

Maybe I've needed a time of quiet inactivity (with all the stresses of last year moved off to one side) to realise that the future can be different from the past, and I don't have to be constrained by my own habits of thought and action, any more.

My hair's starting to grow back, the sun's starting to shine, my energy is picking up month by slow month. So the question is, what happens next?