Dropping off the plateau

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Over the New Year weekend I noticed a sudden drop in energy levels; whereas before Christmas I had been regularly climbing Mangere (the small extinct volcano behind our house), in January I became increasingly unable to manage the staircase at home. A new scan has revealed further tumour growth, and the specialists are telling me that this weakness is being produced by the cancer. It seems nothing can be done to halt it.

Well, not nothing. If I were willing to undergo another massive round of surgery, there is about a 5% chance that I would find myself back on a plateau with a lot more energy. This would last for a few months before the inevitable and inexorable progression of the sarcoma reduced me once again to where I am now.

Currently I'm therefore faced with a decision as to whether to undergo this operation. I see my specialist on February 10th, and we'll reach a definitive answer then. His recommendation is not to intervene; he quotes his mentor at me - "Good surgeons know when to operate; great surgeons know when not to". Not that he would be big-headed enough to set himself up as a great surgeon... but he saved my life three years ago when a number of other surgeons had given me up as a lost cause, and we have built up a really trusting therapeutic relationship since then. I would need a fairly good reason to resist his advice now.

Anyway, from now on these blog posts will be more immediate, more in the form of a diary as I contemplate what increasingly looks like a downward journey to death. This is where I'll be tested on some of what I wrote earlier about values like dignity and acceptance, and resisting taboos. It will not be a story with a happy outcome. But I hope that this writing will nevertheless bring comfort to all of us as we look at our own mortality and realise perhaps that it is not as terrifying as we thought.

In the meantime, this will cheer you up!