7 Months on

I spent a hour or so in bed reading through an archive of incoming text messages from the early days of diagnosis till the 2nd round of chemotherapy. A short period of time during which i received over 400 messages of support from friends and family.

Many moments came alive again - times which seem so distant now. Though the effects of what happened then are all too real now.
It took the 400 messages for my nausea to ebb away. A frustrating side-effect of the Oesophagectomy which remains stubbornly in place. I have my theories of what causes it and a few dietary principles by which i live to avoid it as much as possible - but i'm clearly missing something. Maybe it just needs time.

Anyway, i still have 900 more to read which cover the time from surgery to the recovery period at home. At least i can keep myself occupied during the next 2 bouts of nausea...

A day with the brothers

Monks at lunch

It was one of the most unusual/fascinating things I think I’ve ever done.
I spent a day with a friend at Downside Abbey, a monastery inhabited by a community of Benedictine monks.
Antony’s holiday cottage was booked, so his fallback plan for our catch-up session was a place that he’d used as a retreat on several occasions.
The accommodation was fine and the setting was certainly austere, but the various brushes we had with monks over the day were exhilarating!

For me, the monastery newbie, the mealtimes were the highlight. They were in silence - almost. Antony and I would wait until the 20 or so black-robbed monks (early 30’s up to late 80’s) had filed/shuffled into the refectory.
We didn’t sit with the monks. Our table was off to one side, one corner of which was used as a stockpile for elderly monk medication – eg Dom John’s days-of-the-week tablet box of statins.

The meal would start with the Abbot “dinging” his ornate brass counter bell. The one exception to the silence was the monk chosen to read from a book, deemed by the Abbot to be of betterment to the community. The current passage was the chapter “Russia – the 3rd Rome” from Diarmaid Macculloch’s book - A history of Christianity. Hardly Jackie Collins, and it flew stratospherically over my head, but it was all part of this remarkable experience.
It required supreme self-restraint to stop myself taking surreptitious pictures of this amazing ritual. I failed once or twice and the monks around the refectory tables are just about visible.
The meal ended as it began with a “ding” from the Abbot. The reader finished mid-sentence… closed his book and the monks all filed out. You could almost hear the tumbleweed after they had processed out of the room.

It was a revelation to me. A good number of these men have lived the same routine at the abbey (starting with Matins prayer at 7am) day-in day-out for decades. One monk with whom we had polite conversation, Brother Martin, had been there for over 40 years. He was warm, articulate and super-intelligent – hardly the effect you’d imagine so much repetition to have had on someone’s mind. But maybe there’s method in the madness.

The Work of God for these monks as St Benedict describes it, is the incessant praise of God through prayer and study – mostly in silence. A simple, uncomplicated but devoted life. How utterly OTHER is that from today’s wild rat-race? The 24hrs there had a big enough impact on me. I'd like to do it again sometime soon.

And it begged a few questions of me. How often do I take time out – do nothing – sit in silence – take stock – take time to think things through properly?
How much stress, unnecessary baggage, anxiety, “noise” could I offload if I could “be” a little more and “do” a little less. Would it make life simpler, more manageable, more meaningful?

Hospital appointment - 3rd follow up

My consultant seems to get stuck in theatre almost every time i've had a follow-up appointment. Its not a personal thing i'm sure! So i was weighed, prodded and listened to by one of his registrars again.

It seems that i will be visiting the hospital more regularly than i thought.
For the 1st year it will be every 3 months, then on a 6 month basis and after 3 years, annually. As there is no blood test that can determine a recurrence of Oesophageal cancer, the surgeons rely on patients to report any major weight loss as one of the key indicators. The registrar told me that if oesophageal cancer ever comes back, it most likely happens within 5 years.

Anyway, the hospital whizzy scales told me i weigh 73kg (clothed), which is significantly less than what our £10 Argos scales have been saying. Surely cheap scales are supposed to under-estimate!

On all counts the doctor was encouraged by my progress...

Seeing the light

Claudia and i love this simple painting.

No, Max didn't paint it... its by the dutch artist Kees de Kort and depicts the very moment that a blind man has his vision miraculously restored.

The well-known story is described in the 10th chapter of Mark's gospel. Jesus is travelling from A to B and this guy called Bartimaeus happened to be sitting/begging at the roadside.

He was blind. His remaining senses sharpened to survive his poverty and total darkness, told him Jesus was coming. In his desperation to be noticed amid the noisy crowd, Bartimaeus performs the bible's first recorded tantrum. It worked and Jesus stopped.

Seconds later Bartimaeus can see. There was no long sermon, no credentials checked and no strings attached. This guy knew what he wanted and Jesus simply gave it to him there and then. It was as random as it was kind.

Bartimaeus was desperate, but he wasn't short of courage either. The vast crowd, always hungry for special effects, would have gone fiendishly quiet. He must have felt 100's of curious eyes on him, but he still dared himself to ask for the impossible.

The painting freezes the moment that followed. His eyes are filled with light for the first time. The colours are beautifully overwhelming. His cheeks are flushed with emotion, he's speechless. Having just won a sense, he's temporarily lost another.

Had he really expected it? who knows, but there were a few more followers on the road to Jerusalem that afternoon, that's for sure.