What if…

To quote a late friend, “cancer is a bastard.” Dennis Potter went one further and named his pancreatic tumour Rupert, after the News Corporation mogul.

Mags and I have long since passed the name calling stage. In some ways to name it is to have your life defined by it. Undoubtedly one of the reasons why the Big ‘C’ is used so widely. A nod of fearful recognition, in the same way that the nicknames of hard men are spoken softly from the side of the mouth.

What we have come to learn about cancer, in recent months, is the sheer weight of a prognosis. The unrelenting progression of mutating cells and the resulting shrinkage of what was a full and active life.

Over the Christmas period Mags decided to forego any further palliative chemo. The odds of success were so cruelly slim, she opted for quality over quantity. Obviously as a family we support her 100%. Her oncologist concurs. We have been on the same wavelength as him from the outset, and it came as no surprise when he told us how so many people, in the final months of their lives, disappear down the “treatment tunnel”. An endless round of hospital appointments, brutal treatments, and scans. All the while the window for actually living closes almost imperceptibly.

Despite some manageable symptoms, Mags remains generally well. There is support from the hospital and, more recently, the hospice. Two nurses from the latter have visited on separate occasions. They are hugely experienced and come bearing gifts of honesty, reassurance and good humour. They encourage us to try and focus on the ‘what is’ rather than the ‘what if’, yet ‘what if’ is ever present, like the cancer itself. We’re told not to waste our time imagining the various future scenarios. Apparently things rarely turn out the way we picture them in our minds. That much is true. This time three years ago we both had a very different vision of the way ahead.