Category: Spring.Prostate cancer

Well this morning I had reason to look back to one year ago. 2016 brought wedding plans, a new member to our family and another little house to be built here ‘on the farm’. David was awaiting his biopsy for raised PSA but we, or rather I wasn’t worried as he was so well. He had no symptoms of anything wrong except a painful back now and again. The house was full of wedding dresses, purple bridesmaids dresses  and silk flowers. A wonderful time except for my eldest daughter Lisa and her aunt Trisha, trying hard to make life very painful and difficult for me and take away something precious. Marie and I were concerned that they would try to spoil the big day so we kept the date a secret. Wasn’t easy and only told those coming the real date. I posted on social media the day after the event with photos. That kept the day safe. Mother’s Day which was earlier last year brought nasty comments on my Facebook page after I had wished mothers everywhere a happy day. Again from my daughter and ‘sister’. So it wasn’t all good and David’s health was a worry but we put it out of our minds until the wedding. In all our life was happy and forward-looking. Little did we know what was ahead.

We, David and I are not the couple people look at in restaurants etc. the typically married couple, not talking, just staring into the air or into their food. Sounds a bit unfair but we did an exercise in college about body language and how to recognize the relationship between two people out together. That is where this came from. We always have something to talk about, laugh about, discuss But we can also have silences, these times are sometimes beautiful. No need for words. Just enough being together. We are, as the title says, lovers, partners but most of all best friends. We laugh together, play together and lately cry together. We share everything, the good the bad and the ugly. Seem to have had a lot of the latter in the past few years. But this week, although it started so well, I have taken on another role and thankfully David has joined me.

Tuesday saw the removal of the catheter and the clips. He was very brave and has not yet stopped looking at his ‘war wounds’, as we are warriors, that term seemed fitting.This week I have gone back into a mothering role it seems at times. It began after surgery, but not like this past week. After his operation I naturally nursed my man through the pain, the discomfort, the frustration and the tiredness. All expected after major surgery. But this week things changed. My usually tidy bathroom became a cross between a sluice in a hospital and a laundry and supplies room. Pads, pants, wipes, creams and pails it seemed everywhere. Trying to get into the loo for my own ablutions was like a military exercise! Not to mention the times I needed it at the same time David did. Our utility room, which I hasten to mention is outside, has a loo and it has never been used so much since it’s being installation!

 Although it has been hard, especially to watch my handsome, independent, fastidious husband look so weak, tired and frustrated, in some way, his vulnerability has renewed my love for him tenfold. But it isn’t fair, any of it.

I want to blame someone. I want to shout and scream,’It’s your fault, you did this’. But I can’t. It’s no one’s fault. Life is a lottery and it seems these past years instead of winning we have lost. Many times, many things. An unfair lottery in my opinion. No choice, not even of which games you enter.

It seems the partner, lover and friend are still there, on both sides but this new identity  is something I found yesterday. After many many visits to the ‘little room’ and a dejected David exiting looking sad and glum. I was in my study writing when he almost bounced in through the door. ‘I did it’. ‘I managed to wait’.  I was a little taken a back until the penny dropped (suitable pun here). Like a child rushing to tell his mum that he had used the potty, he hadn’t wet his pants; my big strong man was smiling, smiling with his eyes, something I haven’t seen for many months. He had managed to control himself, once. We laughed and almost cried at the same time. Only a little step forward but in another way a huge one. Yes we laughed and yes it was a joyous laugh but the reality is, it gave us hope. Gave him hope, something I was afraid he was losing.

In my work, when clients come to me at rock bottom, I draw a slope. The bottom is where they are when they come in to me, the top is where they are aiming for. They travel up indicated on my page with an arrow and are not allowed to come back down. They can plateau and stop, reach a hurdle and find their way over or stop for a rest, then travel onward and upward. Never going back down. In Carol Ann’s therapy, they are not aloud to go backwards. That is the drawing we have now, in my study, I might move it to the bathroom, David’s climb. Every hurdle, no matter how big or small, is a triumph. We reached a triumph yesterday that gave us hope.

So, today is the first on that slope. We awoke to the sound of birds singing. We could  hear the  ducks on  our lake and ponds courting.  The sun was shining. Spring had happened and this enforced the hope that better things were on the way.

I walked into the garden and could see the beginnings of buds on my shrubs, The daffodils are already out as are the snowdrops and primroses . A miracle in itself as the garden has been sadly neglected. David hurt his back last Autumn so the clearance didn’t happen. Everything has just died and fallen to the ground, leaving the whole garden, which is extensive, covered in overgrowth and weeds. But do you know what? In spite of all of this, all the overgrown brambles that have stayed, the dead plants that have lain where they fell, I can see the Aquilegia plants sprouting, the foxgloves trying hard to push through the rubbish with determination and little shoots everywhere peeping up and trying their hardest to see the light. So that’s what I have to do.

Through all the cancer with a little ‘c’, David’s and Tony , my brother’s. My sons illness and pain, all the hurtful rubbish ‘family insist on throwing at me and my own health problems, my life garden is overgrown and full. I have my own overgrown garden of  weeds and unwanted dead plants so I need to become my own gardener. I will ‘paint’ all the  nasties, the lies, the betrayal and the cancers brown. Then I can use my own adage for gardening. ‘If it’s brown, cut it down’. That’s what is needed, that’s what I need to do. Then I will see the light and future, whatever it brings. If the garden is full of dead old things, there is no room for the new and the fresh. Now where is the scythe.

So,more days to go with ‘nappy  training’ and we will laugh our way through.  I can’t allow David to get low, become depressed so I need to be his friend, his wife and his comedic element. We will try to see the funny side in everything.As a lady I admired, a comedienne the late Marti Caine said, ‘If you can laugh at yourself, it doesn’t hurt when others laugh at you’. So we will laugh together.

This week has brought despair, frustration, love hope and laughter. Long may it last.

Thankyou for reading.x