The End of Gerryscancerdiary

After 6 months of blogging I think it is time to end the run of gerryscancerdiary as part of the transition back to our normal life. As things stand now all my treatments are complete and I am expected to make a full recovery back to normal health over the next six months.

Since the end of radiotherapy I have had nearly two weeks of holiday time to help my body recover, which will come to an end when I walk back into work on Tuesday next week for my first full day back in the office. So far the recovery has gone well, I do from time to time have some level of chest pain, as there is a reasonable amount of "collateral damage" to the tissue in my chest but its no more than you would feel if a footballer had head butted you at the end of the match. I do not yet have my usual energy level but I was blessed with a lot of natural energy before, so me at 75% can manage pretty well, and may even appear to be normal for a change.

Medically I am done with Hodgkins unless I am one of the unlucky 10 percent who gets the relapse, we will only know that in 1-2 years time, so for now the advice from the doctors is to get back in the game and just be a bit careful for a few months, I am not allowed to travel until mid September and, oddly, not allowed to go to my normal dentist until November so the hospital dentist is going to work on the abscess which made chemo 2 such a misery. I still sleep more than before, but that's no big deal, and my ability to concentrate seems to have returned to something close to normal.

Over the last weeks I have traveled with the kids and my mum to her house in Donegal for a week of playing on the beach, reading books and chilling out, despite the weather, which was not so favorable, but that did not keep Poppy and Holly out of the sea. Lees big conference in Glasgow went very well and she had articles published in the papers here and was on radio quite a lot, for a little while I felt like a press secretary for her as folks from the Sunday and daily newspapers called the house. Then I had a week with Poppy as Lee chilled out up in Deeside with Holly and Poppy had a watersports course at Queensferry, that gave me the time to do three critical things, reassemble my axel, sort out the loft for the builders who start tomorrow and to develop an obsessive interest in series one of "The West Wing" which my friend Charlie lent me and has been captivating all week, in fact I just finished the last episode.

Yesterday was spent at the farewell party for a friend who is going to Oz for a few years, Ken was Lees flatmate at university and introduced us when he worked at ICI Dumfries, so lots of old friends were at the afternoon garden party, which then developed for our group into a dinner party at our house - a great crack, as we say in Ireland, and a fantastic way to end this journey.

So I would once again like to thank all of our friends, family and colleagues who have managed to make our cancer journey a real journey of discovery, friendship, warmth and support which I could not have imagined in the whirl of my life before of this time - you have all been fantastic and we are privileged to know such a great group of people. In many cases you probably did not even realise how supportive just having normal conversations was when underneath I was sometimes not in as nearly a good a shape as I would let on, but all those interactions, even the phone calls from the couch for work, gave me targets day by day to help keep me going. It all really helped. Many of you have been great friends and comfort to us but to start to mention anyone would just keep me here all night, however the unsung hero of this whole time has of course been Lee, she had all of the worry inside but never wavered in her belief that this would work out fine and never allowed me to look on the dark side too much, I am an unreasonably and undeservedly, lucky man.

For the moment I am really looking forward to getting back to normal, though I think in reality normal will be different from here on. It seems to me we spend a short time on this earth and we forget that too often, the friendships we make and the positive difference we make for family, colleagues and friends is more important than all the other games which have different names like politics, results, blame, anger, frustration and winning. I feel have have learnt or relearnt that our work is the game, and an important game, but our relationships and the difference we make are the true reality, so I still hope to play well and with all the skill I can, because its fun and rewarding to do things well, but hopefully with more of a twinkle in the eye and more empathy for the difficult things which all of us face. So next time I ask "how are you" I will mean how are you really, underneath, with all the worries, crap and stresses attached I look forward to seeing a lot of you again face to face for that and many other conversations.

I will have a lot of nostalgia however for the good parts of the time I have spent at home with the family and our friends here in Edinburgh, it has been a very nice time for me and when I walk down the road here I now speak to two or three people every time, I hope I can keep a lot of that up. Spending so much time with Poppy and Holly has been just brilliant and has developed our relationships on many different levels, we have some plans to expand our vacation time in future to make the most of that while they still want to talk to "the old man"

So there it is, the end, I wish you all every blessing in the world and if I can ever help any of you as you have all helped us, it would be a privilege, just call, anytime.

Thanks

Gerry