Lent

I was delighted to get the call that told me my bone scan was all clear of cancer. Thankfully the torture of waiting for the result was over quickly. At first I was deeply relieved. Then I felt euphoric. Not long after I began to feel tired. The next day I felt run down. And this exhaustion persisted.

I had received the appointment letter several weeks ahead of the bone scan. I tried to keep doing things one day at a time and not to focus on this impending event. But my stress built up inexorably. This was intensified by the knowledge that there could be no way back from a positive result in the scan.

Over the past twenty years, I’ve regularly had aches in my lower back due to a worn disc I acquired during my younger days of running up and down mountains carrying a rucksack. In my youth I thought this was all good clean fun, and if someone had told me then that I would suffer in later life because of it I would have laughed. However, during the past couple of weeks when my back and pelvis were sore my mind began to tell me that this pain was something more than just the worn disc. These thoughts often seemed to happen when I was lying in bed at night. It was all too easy to believe that the pain was the cancer eating away at my bones.

All my fears seemed to be confirmed when I was asked by the nurse when I attended for the bone scan - had I noticed any pain in my joints and bones in recent weeks? I reluctantly answered yes. She noted my response and moved on to the next question. I gulped and my heart sank.

Since the scan result I’ve been treating the tiredness by cutting down on what I do each day. I’ve been meeting friends for coffee and going for walks in the fresh air and reading and doing a little writing; but not much else. I’ve also booked a wee break with T in the West of Ireland next week.

The war against cancer is an ultra-marathon. And to be able to win this war you have to remain strong and healthy throughout. The bone scan was an important victory, but the fight continues. In a couple of weeks time I will have a general CT scan which will check if there are any traces of cancer elsewhere in my body. I feel reasonably well at present, but you never know.

I’ve also been reading about what you can do to boost your immune system. It seems that despite much research there is no definitive evidence that there is any one thing that is of proven benefit (i.e. Vitamin C, Echinacea, Garlic, etc). The conclusions lead in entirely the opposite direction. To stop doing things that harm our immune system is the most important. So: not smoking, not drinking alcohol, not being overweight, not failing to take regular exercise, not missing a night’s sleep, not eating a balanced diet, not being stressed, and so on.

Given the intensity of our contemporary lifestyles these modifications are very hard to do. Wouldn’t it be so much easier to keep the unhealthy lifestyle and to take some magic bullet that would fix these problems? I wish it could be so, but unfortunately that doesn’t work. It looks like I’m going to be doing Lent for the long-term.