No more smoke-screen

(Max and Lily enjoying a barbeque lunch)

The Sweden holiday represented a number of things to me. A goal which we achieved, a fantastic break with good friends and a smoke-screen or distraction from my imminent near-total oesophagetomy - NHS speak for the operation in early July (date not set).

Now that we're back home, its feels a bit like "looking down the barrel". There's me and it, with nothing in between and only a few more days to go...

A report from the post-chemo CT scan, arrived while we were away. It confirmed what i had hoped, that the tumor is still very small, in fact not discernable in any of the images.
There's a big part of me that still looks for evidence of healing behind every comment, word and fullstop from the reports/medical advice we've received. Its a weird place where faith, doubt, common-sense and hope all collide and form a confusing blancmange in my head.

But surgery is still the planned route, because to leave even one cancer cell in place would eventually prove fatal.

So i'm waiting either for my burning bush experience - a flaming ceanothus and a voice saying "Pete, thou shalt not go forth and be operated upon for thy oesophagus is healed..." (sorry Lord, you don't deserve the Charlton Heston treatment) - Or a creeping sense that curing this cancer through capable surgical hands is to be part of my on-going life-story. I certainly know which outcome i'd rather.

But God's plan for me, for Claudia and the boys is perfect. All he asks of us is to trust him, however weird that might seem at the time.