“If we leave this, it becomes a question of your life.”
“That is putting it rather directly,” I said in the consulting room,
laughing it off loudly. In truth I went home in no mood to laugh.
Alongside a large project called the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, I drove the whole thing while fighting cancer.
Chasing the dream, I have believed to my bones that illness begins in the mind.
But along with the cancer I have a progressive lung condition, and when I went back to the respiratory clinic after a long gap, this was what I was told.
Cancer treatment had come first and the lungs were only being monitored. Then came a CT scan, the first in a year.
And from my doctor, startlingly: “Left like this it becomes a question of your life — let’s start treatment at once.”
It seems that over this year of monitoring, on top of the bronchiectasis, cavities have appeared,
and the progression has to be stopped with drug treatment.
I try to keep bright and forward-facing, but I have failed at this particular treatment before, and the anxiety comes crowding in.
My doctor is always cheerful and kind with his words, so delivered breezily the seriousness does not quite land. I laughed it off — but treatment is not something I can avoid.
There is no visible side effect like the hair loss of chemotherapy, but taking strong drugs in quantity can lower immunity, affect liver function, even affect the retina. There are various possibilities.
Treatment also means going to the hospital more often, and not being able to do as much as I would like.
There is anxiety about what becomes of me from here.
But I want to take it as one more challenge, and go on feeling how precious life is and where the joy in a day lies.
When I go to the hospital I try at least to keep my mind from becoming a patient’s — always aiming at the positive. CT and MRI are old friends by now, though I still think of it as sauntering off to board a spaceship.
Precisely because I have driven Peking to Paris and made the dream real, I can feel how precious life is and where the joy in a day lies.
The road from here will not be easy, but I think it is also a chance to hold each day more carefully, find a new goal, and make myself stronger.
I want to hand people courage and hope by taking things on.
By sharing my own feelings and experience exactly as they are, I hope to give a little courage to anyone in a similar position.
Keeping hold of facing forwards, I am going to begin.
Let’s walk this road together.