Post op to Now

POST OP TO NOW

• Due to some pretty weird post op problems I decided to spend a while in bed.  5 months on permanent morphine and pain killers, eating nothing.  Lost over 40 kilos in weight (jealous?) and looked like a stick insect.  I do not recommend this.  Several times I was within a few hours of being very dead and each time my wife managed to shock, threaten, plead or persuade me back to life.  I really knew nothing.  I suspect the other me did but kept it quiet.  Eventually became stronger and clawed my way back.
  
• Returned to the UK early 2003. Several hernias a bit of a problem but they have just been fixed.
  
• After a bunch of advanced scans and other tests we found that the original cancer had spread to both lungs (probably), liver and (probably) pelvis.  The other me was quite looking forward to having treatments for these niggles because it would have given him a while in the spotlight, however the advice was that operations were out and chemo/radio would probably (that word again) only be a holding measure. Time? 6/12/18 months maybe but maybe more.  It made a change from probably.

Now this is really decision time. Hang on to life? Try everything and anything to extend it?  String it out for as long as possible so that you are able to breathe?  I completely understand those who take this course and pondered very long and hard myself.  I decided I would pass.  I have been offered and accepted the option of a course of chemo which should have few if any side effects and may give me another few months, but that's it.  This could well give the wrong impression of my view of life.  I love it.  Every single minute, good or bad.  A joke I heard many years ago sums up my philosophy.  "If you don't drink, smoke and hang around with loose women, you don't live longer - it just seems like it".  It is quality, not quantity that matters.  I know that when I go, it will have a devastating effect on my daughter.  Whenever it happens.  The way I see it is that the less time she has watching me die - the less time before she can start to get over it  - the better.  She was aware of everything the first time round but we have made the decision that she now finds out at the last possible moment.  We want her to have as many days as possible, happy, normal, with her father. The same applies to my wife Kim.  What happens afterwards when I can't help.   I believe that I deal with our situation in the best way possible.  I have no answers to this bit.  It's the only time I cry.