Believe it or not, it is exactly one year ago today that I contacted the GP surgery with my current condition. Believe it or not, I thought I had an infection. If you read my blog from the start of this series, you will find that it was just a wee bit more complicated. It was, believe it or not, the start of a very serious cancer.
The last year has been a very interesting journey, to say the least. There have been times when I have been so fit that I have gone to the gym and times when I have felt not quite up to it. Believe it or not, the days when I have been having chemo are generally the days when I haven’t felt like the gym – I get a bit tired on those days!
All has been going fairly well. I have coped with chemo very well and had very few side-effects. Compared to most people, I have been really fortunate on that front.
The biggest problem I’ve had has actually been the lack of chemo. The problem is, you see, that chemo destroys bad cancer cells and the good cells that your body needs to survive. That became a problem part way through the programme because the chemo damaged my immune system itself. Believe it or not, that can cause quite a few difficulties in the days in which we live, where Covid, flu and fast foods are trying to bump us all off!
So that my general health wasn’t compromised, they delayed one session of chemo by just one week until my immune system recovered. Believe it or not, that delay of just one week indicated a problem I would and did face if chemo stopped. As soon as the chemo stopped, the cancer in my lymphatic system kicked in and caused a blockage, which meant that I got oedema – a watery swelling that won’t drain very well in me and causes pain. However, the immune system recovered and chemo restarted. The oedema cleared and the pain stopped.
As I have said in an earlier post, I would normally have 12 fortnightly sessions of chemotherapy, followed by a 3-month rest, then back on to more sessions – just to let my system recover. Because of what they had seen when that one session had been delayed, and because I hadn’t suffered any bad side effects from chemo itself, they decided to keep the chemo going, without a gap. It is, after all, palliative care , so it’s all about finding the sweet spot.
Believe it or not, that is when the problems all kicked in big time. First of all I got a urinary infection, which meant I couldn’t get any chemo. Then I developed kidney failure, which meant that I had to get a nephrostomy into my other kidney, which meant I couldn’t get any chemo.
You wouldn’t believe it, would you?
So, today, exactly one year from the day I started this journey, I am in a bit of trouble. I have missed 6 weeks in which I should have had 3 sessions of chemo. That is a problem, a big and very painful problem. There is a lot of oedema, which means a LOT of pain!
Believe it or not, this is where my Christian faith comes in and I will be perfectly honest with you, sometimes my Christian faith has not come in, because the pain doesn’t always go away when I pray. It is easy to have faith, to believe, when everything is going well. It is easy to tell others to have faith when they need it. But when it is you, face on against the pain, right there and then, it is not so easy. There have been times over the last few weeks when I have cried because of pain
“You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.”
Matthew 17:20
Believe it or not, that is hard! Having faith really takes a lot of faith!
But what about having no faith? It’s all down to this believe it or not thing that I have been going an about here. Because that is what faith is about. That is what life is about. You believe in something or you don’t. Because of my faith in Jesus Christ, I believe in life after death. Perhaps you don’t share my faith. Perhaps you don’t believe what I believe. You believe in the “not”.
I have admitted that I have times when I have recently doubted, times when I have cried in pain because I have cried out in prayer for the pain to stop and it hasn’t. I am staring reality in the face, I need my belief to be real. I need to believe in my belief.
How about you though? How firm is your disbelief? You might feel quite comfortable in it at the moment, but there will almost certainly come a time in your life when you need to know that your belief in the “not” is right. How will you cope then?
Believe it or not, that is the question!
Robert you are in our thoughts and prayers now that the winter is approaching and the dark nights are in, you might not be in sight as much but you are never out of our minds.
God bless ❤️