Penny Brohn Centre 5-day Retreat

Having some difficulty swallowing at present – mainly juice and water today – but tomorrow I’ll try to get some Ensures down as I am travelling to Bristol for a five-day retreat at Penny Brohn Cancer Care. I’ll keep a record of what happens and enter it either there (if I have access to the net) or when I get back, in which case I’ll go quiet probably until next Saturday. I expect some therapies, some dietary advice, some healing and meditation, consultation and maybe some dialogue with other patients. Sadly it looks as if I’m not ready for their wonderful food yet, but we’ll see…

The Nature of Penny Brohn Cancer Care

(The following are my words, not an official description, so apologies to Penny Brohn Cancer Care if I have misinterpreted anything) For the website visit www.pennybrohncancercare.org
The centre exists to assist sufferers via a holistic approach to their condition, not as a replacement for “mainstream” medicine but as a complete provider of complementary therapy for individuals and groups in a relaxing and caring environment. The staff and therapists are highly trained, the atmosphere is bright, clean and tasteful, the cuisine is very sophisticated nutritionally yet delicious (I so wish I could have eaten the food!!!), the spiritual element secular yet very clear and satisfying, the attitude deeply caring.

Here you can come for a “CancerPoint” day for planned activities (i.e. massage, healing, advice); you can spend in-depth time on a two- or five-day residentialcourse; you can even offer your services as a carer.

My Experience

OK – so where do I start? The Penny Brohn Cancer Care is a beautiful Georgian building, extended with many wings on the very edge of Bristol, close to the Clifton suspension bridge not far from the estuary between England and Wales. It is set in extensive gardens, these peppered with wild flowers and protected by mature cedars and evergreens, close to the river in a delightfully secluded setting dominated by an imposing water feature, the sound of which reverberates throughout the grounds. The building has been wonderfully and effectively modernised with a bright, elegant atmosphere, favouring shades of blue and grey and oatmeal, with comfortable modern furnishings and spotlessly clean flooring in carpet and light timber.

I first went there on my daughter’s recommendation for a day’s visit and determined I would return for an extended five-day stay, to experience a combination of group therapy, reflexology, healing (very similar to Reiki), massage, art and music therapies, plus holistic medical advice, help with nutritional issues. One of my most important quests would be to try to work with the nutritionist to get rid of “Ensure” supplements once and for all, bearing in mind that the radiotherapy has yet to shrink my tumour to the extent where I can eat anything but liquid food.

When I arrived at Bristol, knowing I was about to spend several days in the company of fellow cancer subjects, I frankly did not relish the prospect, expecting the atmosphere to be dull and despondent. How wrong I was! Throughout my stay I would say the overriding feeling was of good humour (often laughter creasing us up), warmth and comeraderie – not of a stilted or manufactured type but spontaneous and incredibly bonding.

What I intend to do here is to describe the different parts of my experience and invite comment so that you can perhaps remark on similar places where you have experienced comparative activities, or offer views about alternative or complementary therapies undertaken as individuals or in groups. This may spark further discussion along these lines and also maybe provoke new connections between ourselves whereby we look deeper into the way we sufferers interact – especially the ways we use our energy to provide help, prayer, advice and friendship to each other so very swiftly and effectively.

On arrival (Sunday evening) we were shown to our beatifully appointed rooms, given supper in the delightful restaurant area (for me they made some soup – a little too thick, but got it right after a bit of straining) and we had a kind of briefing session with simple introductions (names, places of residence).

Each bedroom (mine looked out over the gardens, with cedar and evergreens and a water feature (like a huge illuminated black cauldron bubbling water continuously) was simply yet tastefully furnished; bathroom ensuite, fresh towels and environmentally friendly shampoo and shower gel; big double bed with extraordinarily comfortable mattress, bureau, wardrobe, radio/cd player, kettle and various exotic herb teas, etc.

 

Meditation, Visualization and Relaxation

Apart from linking meditation with the Beatles and hippy life in the 60s and 70s, together with Maharishi Yoga, pop concerts, levitation and other mysterious and (to me) highly suspicious activities, I have never experienced such things until now. So to be thrown right into it at PBCC (Penny Brohn  Cancer Care) was a mind-numbing rather freaky milestone for me. The Centre waltzed me straight into a different spiritual wavelength, and I was able to derive huge benefits from digging deep into bits of my psyche that I had never visited before, although I had gotten a clue from the healing experience when I attended my CancerPoint day last month. Apart from the healing, there were basically three different forms of mental exercising that take place routinely at PBCC – meditation, visualization and relaxation, all using variations of their original themes and all stimulating different and very personal reactions at different times.

Meditation I found quite difficult, although possible the most profound experience. The intention is not to relax – rather to focus intently (sometimes using a phrase or “mantra”) so that you find a place inside you where you are absolutely still and, having reached that place, the benefit is most likely in the fact that you’ve got there at all. When you’re there you’ve attained the improbable situation of knowing bits of you that you didn’t know before and then being able to revisit them anytime to awaken the astonishing thoughts associated with personal discovery, a new kind of intimacy with yourself and, above all, a platform from which you can EXPLORE a world that’s unique, revealing and connective. What meditation did for me was partly to confirm that I need to dig much deeper into the inner self and I feel rather ashamed that it has taken me so long to make this discovery.

Visualization is different. Here, in groups, we were encouraged to drift into a dreamy, musing state of mind and thence to create visions of peace and tranquility. “OK, very nice,” you say, but the point is that the way we did it, under such expert guidance, made everything spring to life in such amazing detail, such clarity, in technicolor with brass knobs on. I am a visualizer by profession. My job is to see images in my mind and then translate them into, maybe, corporate branding, so my skills in this direction are normally quite well developed. But this was different. I found myself in a room with eight others, lying relaxed and silent save for the therapist’s voice, actually BEING THERE in the place to which we were transported!!! Every detail of what I imagined was so incredibly clear, and I am not sure whether to attribute this to the skill of the therapist or simply to the new role now accepted by my mind. Puzzling. It’s as if I’ve opened yet another door, and being at PBCC is just like being in a corridor with many different doors to open, each one showing me something new, learning another lesson, introducing another “me”.

Relaxation is paramount all the time at PBCC. When we met in a group we’d recline on very comfortable adjustable chairs with a footstool. We’d have with us our chilled water (available everywhere you look in the Centre) and a little notebook provided for thoughts as we progressed through the five days. We’d often be asked to close our eyes, relax and consider, relax and imagine, relax and listen… We became so relaxed in this way that the “chill out” emphasis became second nature. We had left behind us our families, our work, our friends, the TV and newspapers and, although we had radios in our rooms, I can’t recollect anyone saying that they had listened to the news, which we were also glad to have left alone, perhaps to the anguish of those dedicated to scare, tantalize, threaten or otherwise titillate us in our normal existences.

Consequently, each of those in my group of nine were treated to a combined experience of deep and novel personal revelation, and this performed intimately in the company of others serves to magnify the immense profundity and sheer exhilaration of the occasion, almost a rebirth – certainly an Epiphany of sorts.

 

Healing, Reflexology and Psychotherapy

I’ve recently entered a completely new world, begun as it was when I came to PBCC for my CancerPoint Day and received healing. Since then I have had Reiki treatment from a holistic therapist at Stoke Mandeville’s Cancer Care centre (I am now seeing him regularly) and two new (to me) healers at PBCC.

What is “healing”? To the uninitiated like myself, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of difference between the Penny Brohn healing and Reiki. In both cases one is introduced to the healer and the magic takes place in a slightly darkened room after a brief chat. Usually there are candles burning, and soft music is an option (I personally preferred silence). In all the experiences I have had – and I’m no expert – it has been obvious that voice training is a part of the overall tuition received by the therapists, as a soft well-modulated voice does assist to create the ambience required, an atmosphere where it would otherwise be very easy to drop off to sleep.

The initial chat includes an explanation – that the healer is not doing anything other than being a conduit or channel via which the recipient is given “unconditional love” from the Universe (could be translatable as God or another deity), and the one being healed is being assisted to open themselves up to this divine force. It is agreed that the healing power is admitted through the top of the head and reaches the necessary parts using various “chakras” which are positioned through the body. These chakras have different colours which are themselves significant in the process.

Personally, I challenge the notion that the healer plays such a small part in the healing, and I say this because, having had several different healers in a short space of time, I was acutely aware that each experience is utterly different. Whilst the overall pattern of action may be similar,  the range of responses within my psyche varies wildly and I personally believe that there is much more of an enmeshing process going on between the minds of the two parties. One individual has given me Reiki on three different occasions and each time the feeling was sufficiently similar for me to have identified him from the nature of the experience, even had I not known who was doing it. (Room for debate here?)

Whatever. The similarities between all the healers are nevertheless also profound. The period of healing (usually half-an-hour to an hour) begins with lying on a couch in a comfortable position, either prone or semi-reclining, while the healer talks gently about the process, asking you to relax progressively until you actually feel yourself “dropping off”. The dreamy quality that now prevails never leaves you throughout the session, although your level of consciousness changes depth from time to time. Occasionally I think I have been guilty of actually falling asleep, but only for seconds as another vision soon occupies the attention. Visions? Well, during these extraordinary periods of dreamlike relaxation, you look at whatever you normally see when your eyes are closed – a blackish, purplish backdrop. Except that this now acts as a “stage” for a most remarkable lightshow (for me, at least), where anything may appear in the limelight. I have seen swirling amorphous shapes in a myriad of colours; hard, crystalline structures; detailed veinous objects in stark relief to pale, watery drifts of cloud; billowing bursts of liquid gold; silvery white whisps of silk. And sometimes, much more detailed objects – manuscripts in oriental text; faces and bodies of ethereal creatures; sandstone friezes with ancient carvings; flora and fauna in a detail akin to high-definition television images.

Where does all of this come from? Beats me, I have to say. But when it appears in my mind it is, believe me, as real as what I can see now. 

All the time this is going on in my head, the healer is working round me – perhaps touching me lightly, or sometimes when I ‘ve taken a peek to see what’s going on, standing feet away although I was convinced they were in contact. However long the healing takes, it’s invariably much longer in reality. Half an hour goes by in what seems to be ten minutes. And when it’s all over I’m always disappointed and wish it could have gone on. Furthermore, when I stand up (slowly) after a session I feel I need to connect with the ground because I’m so light-headed. So I imagine I’m growing roots into the earth through the floor before I can walk away.

And, when I do, I feel refreshed, elevated, energised.

Reflexology is a simpler procedure in that there seems to be a direct connection between the various parts of the feet and the rest of the body. Massaging the feet induces (or so I understand) release of tension and healing in the specified area, and this is a very exact science. My therapist asked me where my problem (cancer) was in my body and I explained that it was at the junction between my stomach and oesophagus. “You will feel some warmth there”, he told me, and sure enough when he applied pressure to a certain part of my foot, the area around my tumour began to heat up. Could have been auto-suggestion, I suppose, but I certainly felt it! Reflexology is very interesting and I’m going to explore further in time. It is actually one of those things about which I have up to now felt a bit doubtful, but no longer.

Psychotherapy is at PBCC a strong feature, and it’s the hardest to describe, largely because by definition it’s different for everyone, and you don’t see any tangible result, other than maybe a shift in your emphases, and that’s more likely to be detected by others. The psychotherapist I saw is an extraordinarily perceptive individual, and, much as I imagined (never having seen a psychotherapist before) did much more listening than talking. I felt we really “hit it off”, a feeling ably assisted by the fact that she is remarkably like my own mother in some ways, or maybe that’s how she comes across to everyone! Certainly, in our conversation, there were many areas whereby our spiritual views coincided. There was nothing judgmental in her attitude and she got me to offload a lot of baggage to make way for further clarity. (Here’s a thing! A thought obtrudes that everything that happened to me at PBCC was to do with making things clearer!)

I feel as though I have benefited immensely from all the therapeutic work as well as from the mental stuff, indeed, the combination is continuing to prove the importance of the body-mind link. Our physical being and psyche are intricately and inextricably conjoined; the more we appreciate this the easier it is to increase the advantages of helping them to work in harmony.

 

Food and Nutrition

A minefield. Everywhere one looks, the conjunction of cancer and food raises bitter controversy. Cancer (it is said) gobbles up sugar and sweet things; dairy products are bad and so is all flesh (including fish) because they are too acid in the body. Even fruit is often cast in the role of evil acid-producing agent. So boil it down to wheatgrass, some vegetables, pulses, alkaline-producing fruit (not many), some nuts, all eaten raw and you have a recipe for healthy living, detrimental to the growth of the cancer. OK. My problem makes it even simpler, as all I can ingest is liquid, so read as above but juiced or liquidized.

However, until I went to PBCC I was virtually living on “Ensures”, which are cartons or plastic bottles containing a mixture of corn oil and whey powder with added vitamins, sugars, minerals and artificial flavourings, which all taste more or less the same despite the addition of words like “Fruits of the Forest”, “Coffee” or “Strawberry”. The consistency is that of an unctuous gum which coats the mouth, teeth and throat and which sticks to everything on the way down, so you feel you want to wash your mouth out after each “meal. 6 of these a day yields around 2000 calories, 6% of which is pure added sugar. They were OK at first but after 4 months the very smell of them was enough to make me gag. What’s more, try to combine these with vegetable or fruit juice and they curdle, which for me meant literally hours of discomfort whilst the Ensures and the juice fought to find their way back up into my throat, leaving me speechless and undernourished.

At PBCC I spent some time with nutritionalists. First, we had a long lecture about eating and drinking which left many members of our group aghast. It appears that finding healthy foods for cancer sufferers is a hell of a task if you eat “normally”, including bread, cakes, meat, milk, processed foods in your diet, and anything that in the Western world is advertised at least hundreds of times a day on TV. This presented no problem for me, of course as anything worthy of eating is fine as far as I am concerned, so I passed on that hurdle.

What I did do was to spent lots of time with another nutritionalist in order to collaborate and replace the “Ensures” with drinkable stuff of an equivalent nature in terms of calorific value and mineral/vitamin content. The minerals and vitamins were easily taken care of by the addition of a daily spoonful of “Natures Answer” Multiple Liquid Vitamin and Mineral in a bottle. This contains all the “Ensure” additives plus lots more. The calories were provided by (and it does involve a bit of work with juicers/liquidisers) “Build-up drinks, which ml for ml provide at least twice the energy of an Ensure. Typical Recipe:

High Energy Strawberry & Banana Build-up Drink

Ingredients:

Cashew pieces                      25g 

Silken tofu                            25g

Banana                                 One

Strawberries                           20

Vanilla extract                    1/2 tsp

Slippery Elm Powder              2 tsp

Set Honey                             1 tbsp

Coconut oil                           75ml

Rice Milk                                125ml

This makes approx. 500ml.

Preparation: Grind the cashew nuts to a fine powder in a blender or seed grinder, then combine with the other ingredients and blend until smooth.

Total calorie content of a 200 ml glass: 447.6kcal

That’s just one of a limitless number of combinations that, with the mineral/vitamin additive, kick Ensures into touch (sorry, Rugger expression! Means “beat them entirely”).

That was the official nutrion quest for me and it’s solved.

The PBCC attitude to nutrition is most ably demonstrated in their kitchen and superb restaurant, where, although I could not partake of it, I mentally imagined eating the delights they had to offer, whole food dishes prepared by their amazing team of chefs and planners to grace the most exotic table. There was always a vast array of natural condiments, sauces and spreads to whet the appetite, delicious hors d’ouvres made from unbelievably well-chosen ingredients, and exciting main dishes. I cannot begin to describe the wonderful way that they make and present their food; I can say that my group tucked in with great gusto and I would have done the same. Whatever I may have thought previously about a vegetarian cuisine was quickly unlearned here, where the accent is on brilliant cookery, finest ingredients and imaginative presentation.

Additionally, what their chefs did for me was astonishing, preparing tatsy exotic soups, build-up drinks and fresh juice combinations to make me feel at home, and keep me “eating” well…

 

Working and Living as a Group

Throw 9 cancer patients together and what do you get? Well, before I joined such a group I would have thought ‘ a fairly miserable bunch of people’! I would have expected lots of gripes about aches and pains, maltreatment at the hands of the NHS and the medics in general, dissatisfacion with one’s lot, in short, all the “why me?” gripes one could imagine, only ninefold.

Not so. Either my particular group was really unusual or else getting together is all about really different things – comeraderie, sharing, mutual amusement, learning, and a whole stack of joint experiences to treasure forever. We were all “thrown in the deep end” with quick and smart introductions and then spent five long days together, mostly in each others’ company except when we were undergoing individual therapies. Day by day we got to know each other well, and I can truly say that every individual in the group -who we called the “Mayeights” because we were together in May 2008 - proved to fit in easily into a remarkable “family”. We see ourselves to be unique, and I suppose we are. Even the staff at Penny Brohn Cancer Care thought we had “gelled” much more than is the norm, and we now keep in contact with our own weblog on which we give to each other our news, recipes, hints, phiolosophies, photos, jokes, and other valuable information. We hope to have some kind of a reunion one day, probably at the Centre.

Laughter was, as I have said, the main activity for the Mayeights. We shared in our quest for knowledge about what is happening to us, and marvelled at the incredibly strengthening effects of the therapies we were receiving. We loved the food (yes, even the concoctions the kitchen produced especially for me!), we exposed our innermost thoughts via the creativity of the art and music therapies (more about these later), and we thoroughly enjoyed the environment, with its extensive grounds, trees and wild flowers.

We also shared more serious emotions at times when a few tears were shed, but the overall effect of this was cathartic and soon gave way to more fun and laughter. No names or pack drill here, but the Mayeights consisted of two chaps and seven ladies, aged between 30s and 80s, from all parts of the UK (Scotland and Ireland included). A more disparate bunch could not have been created on purpose, and yet we were SO close, and, when it was time to part, the sense of loss was almost palpable. We all realised that we had become far more welded together than it was right to expect after such a short time, and we were also careful to note that this process was largely due to the atmosphere of care and indeed love that we all received as part of the Penny Brohn scene. We will stay in touch and we will hopefully share our thoughts and hopes and fears for a long time to come. Since we left, at least one of us has received fantastic news about their diagnosis. I hope there will be more to follow.

Art and Music Therapy

What has art and music got to do with  cancer therapy? Fact is, getting to grips with oneself is a major part of healing, and being creative, as I well know, having lived a life of visualizing every day, is a great way to start knowing the real “you” more intimately. Picture this: divided into small groups of four or five, we are introduced to the “art room”, a small studio, where we are seated around four connected tables – ourselves and the therapist. We are surrounded by art materials – paints, crayons, pastels, pens and ink, plus paper in all sizes, some very large and affixed to the wall, ready for use. The therapist talks to us a little about what he wants us to do, largely to express our thoughts spontaneously, and we set to work.

Everyone produces something quite different, two of us choosing to decorate the large pieces of paper with open, sweeping strokes. Others are less demonstrative, using poster paints on smaller sheets; I choose a thick watercolour paper upon which I begin to create an image of my tumour in black pen-and-ink, depicting the “creature” as (or so I thought) an evil monster, but he turned out to be more sad than dangerous-looking. A diverse selection of images were soon brought to life, and it is interesting to note that, regardless of artistic skills and training, everyone was totally engrossed in their creative work, rather like being in the Art Class at school. When time was up, we compared notes and each of us in turn explained what we had been trying to achieve. Later, in the music room, we all displayed our work to the entire group and shared some more laughter and positive critical appraisal.

The music therapy was both surprising and amusing. We were all ushered into the music room, but on this occasion the floor had been cleared of chairs and instead was literally covered with percussion instruments of all kinds and sizes – xylophones, drums, bells, clackers, castanets, tambourines, marakas, and even a rain stick!  We played around with these at random for a while, and then our therapist told us we were going to make music, firstly with a “trial run” (here we made an awful noise banging and bashing away) and then with a more controlled effort whereby some of us set up a regular rhythm and the rest joined in, carefully keeping in time. We were overwhelmed by the success of this latter exercise. I think the trial run had been a deliberate attempt to make us want to do SO MUCH better next time, and it worked. What followed was incredibly harmonious and rhythmic. We were all grinning from ear to ear by the end and seriously regretted we had not had the presence of mind to record it in some way. Even the music therapist said what so many others seemed to be saying – that our group was remarkably “together” and I must agree that communication on this occasion was almost telepathic.

 

 

 

 

I’ll add to this experience day by day …

Cancer Therapy Spreadsheet

My son has just shown me a way to create a Cancer Spreadsheet via Google.
This is intended to list all treatments together with a series of data inputs, such as: name of treatment, originator, where and when, trials?, type of trial, anecdotal evidence, collaborator, comments, etc., etc., etc.

Collaborators may use a form (see below) to contribute , unless their input is in any way “undesirable”. The spreadsheet is updated automatically.

The idea is to provide a level playing field for the provision of information, an enhanced capability for comparison, and an opportunity for hitherto unavailable or perhaps unreachable material to find its way into the public domain. It is not intended to be a “cancer supermarket” or any type of sales pitch – merely an impartial place where one can hope to make a more valued judgement regarding these vital decisions we have to make.

Anyone game to be a collaborator ?
(treatment vendors specifically excluded)

Look at the “under construction” spreadsheet at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=prM7MIDuDDdPoymPq3Y3uTg

To collaborate, complete the form at http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=prM7MIDuDDdPoymPq3Y3uTg&email=true

My introduction to Penny Brohn Cancer Care

It used to be the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, and it has now been reborn as Penny Brohn Cancer Care, just outside the city, a large Georgian residence fully and beautifully modernized in a landscaped garden setting. Two of my daughters had recommended I go there and I called to attend for a “CancerPoint” appointment, which in this case was to be an hour’s general consultation followed by “Healing” for a further hour. The first part of the session was an interchange of information about my diagnosis, medical history and medication etc. and the details of the services they provide. I was interviewed by a lady whose training in cancer care was evident from the start. She is an engaging individual with singular knowledge of the different treatment regimes, a good psychologist (from the way she handled my questions) and indeed a very sincere caring individual. She explained that their object is not to cure cancer but to treat the whole body and mind so that the effect of the condition is minimised physically and spiritually. She told me about a 5-day residential course they offer and I determined to do this. It’s not cheap but there can be ways to get funding if necessary.  She ran through the various elements of the centre’s offerings, which include consultation, healing and various therapies (eg aromatherapy, acupuncture, nutritional therapy, meditation, relaxation, massage, shiatsu, reflexology and counselling) – a comprehensive package of physical, emotional and spiritual support.

This took place in an ultra-modern, restful and harmonizing environment.

Although I could not take advantage of the exquisite food in the restaurant, I did manage a bowl of delicious lentil and carrot soup, before proceeding to the healer. She is a genteel mature lady of serene countenance and a ready smile, sparkling eyes – everyone’s idea of a loving “auntie”, who put me at my ease immediately and then asked me to lie on a couch with my knees and head supported by cushions, the back of the couch being raised to a comfortable position.

After explaining that she was about to release thoughts of “unconditional love”, she told me to relax and allow thoughts and images to simply “drift through” my mind and not to try to hold them. She would, she said, ring a soft bell to warn me when I would be “coming out” of whatever I was about to go into. The lights were dimmed, the curtains drawn.

The next hour was an astonishing experience. I kept my eyes closed as suggested and soon began to see amazing images in the blackness of my mind. (Meantime my healer was just barely touching my shoulders, head, legs and feet, although the one time I “peeked” she wasn’t actually in contact with me at all, yet I  was sure I could feel her touch!) The first images were a series of reddish purple diamond shapes, inside of which were incredibly clear snippets of illuminated manuscripts in red and black with pictures on a parchment-coloured background. Each “manuscript” had text in a different language – the first was biblical Hebrew, the next Arabic, the next I couldn’t recognise but it looked like Thai or similar (How did I visulaize this if I didn’t know the language characters?), the next Chinese…

Soon, I kept “dropping off” and reawakening several times with images, some clearly identifiable, some abstract appearing and fading away. At one point I clearly exhaled very heavily indeed as if expelling something. Later these colourful images changed to gentle shapes in silver and white with no other colours. All the while my healer was moving around me silently, until, after what seemed to be perhaps fifteen minutes but was in actuality just under an hour, the muted bell rang and she asked me to “return”. The couch was lowered so I could stand up and, when I did so, I felt rather as though I had woken up from a deep sleep. I was then asked to imagine myself growing roots from my feet through the ground so that I could “once again connect with the earth”.

Next, I was offered a glass of water and told that from now on I should think of anything I drank as melting the tumour away, a concept wich appealed greatly. My healer told me that I could at any time return to that state merely by closing my eyes.

I must say she impressed me enormously by her auntie-like presence and her deeply knowing demeanour, something I can’t quite understand, but which was nevertheless incredibly strong. From her small and rather frail frame, this middle-aged (maybe bordering on “elderly”) lady emanated immense power and strength. Quite an experience, which left me feeling elated and somehow purged.

I will go back to Bristol for a 5-day course starting May 11th, and will record my experiences in these pages.

To Adam

Lie there in innocence, my little first-born,
Care not a jot about why you exist.
Eyes are unfocused,
Hands clench so awkwardly,
Feet kick so randomly, thoughts in a mist.

But just a few moments ago, just what happened?
You looked at me directly, saw deep inside.
Followed my movements, understood everything,
Full recognition. Miraculous pride.

Now you are restless, dismayed without reason,
Your sweet, new-born features contorted, then calm.
Emotion has vanished,
Intelligence absent,
Just chaos and confusion, searching for balm.

But where is the knowing you showed only recently?
Where is the focus you brought from the womb?
Why has this vacant expression replaced
The all-seeing, omniscient dispeller of doom?

So you are here, and fully on board.
Your life is beginning, we’ve started the clock.
Childhood is pressing,
Your mother’s breast nearing,
Replacing the trauma, absorbing the shock.

Oh where did you go to, the strange godlike being
That greeted your daddy just moments from birth?
Perhaps you are marking time, learning from living
Until you return like us all, back to earth.

Wake Up!

I begin with a poem I wrote about a week ago, entitled “Wake Up!”  …

 

Wake Up!         April 2008

 

A moment of madness,

There when I wake up.

Feeling OK for a brief span, sublime.

Then it is flooding back,

Harshest reality.

My days are over; I’ve run out of time.

 

My body’s ruined,

My system attacked

By a ravaging cancer that’s spreading so fast.

Now I’m accepting

For me there’s no future

But day-to-day viewing the shades of the past.

 

How long I have left

There’s no way of knowing,

So each day is borrowed, a cumbersome debt.

The payback is coming,

The interest growing,

An onerous burden that’s not quite here yet. 

 

For me it’s too early.

There’s so much to do,

But already the choices left to me are few.

No longer eating

Save liquid refreshment.

Too weak to exercise; too much to rue. 

 

I weep for my loved ones

And sigh for my friends.

Leaving them all is just not what I’d planned.

I so regret parting

With my dearest Tracy

A lifetime of love slips away just like sand. 

 

And yet I’m here now.

So how do I ration

The time that remains? How best to proceed?

Must earn, so I’m working;

Must sleep, so I’m dreaming;

Confusion is reigning; what else do I need? 

 

I think of those others

Departed before me,

Diminishing life spans just gone in a flash.

My parents, my sister,

Aunts, uncles and cousins

Are memories fading, their substance like ash. 

 

My treatment is looming,

So life could be lengthened.

But what will the cost of extended time be?

Will I be a zombie

Or creased up in agony?

Should quality not be my priority? 

 

Tonight my sweet daughter’s

Returning from India.

Tonight she’ll be told of her daddy’s demise.

Oh, how can we do this

To poor dear Charlie?

Her trip from the airport Hell in disguise. 

 

My kids are my real strength.

Through them I’m handling

This nightmare scenario with realism and calm.

I am so proud of them

And they’re providing

A future of sorts, living on beyond harm. 

 

My nurse from MacMillan

Has just been to see me,

A curious mixture of pathos and cheer.

I feel her pity,

It’s her great capacity,

Spreading it thinly with sugar and fear. 

 

Next week, radiotherapy.

Then, maybe, chemo.

My internet’s buzzing with promise for pay.

Cat’s Claw and Mistletoe,

Shitake, Shark Fin,

A few hundred dollars will see you OK. 

 

Yes, yes, I’m still standing

And yes, I’m still working.

My writing the proof of my presence – still here!

And sometimes forgetting,

Just lately ignoring

The fact of my passing, just trashing my fear. 

 

My body is thinner,

My eyes are much larger,

Their home darker craters in a shadow of me.

My strong hands are failing,

I know that I’m ailing,

Yet tell myself nothing of what is to be. 

 

Instinct takes over.

No self-preservation,

But deadly acceptance, a strange monstrous calm.

My soul’s insulation

A quiet intuition,

A knowing that I’m beyond all further harm. 

 

Your turn will come one day.

Perhaps, if you’re lucky,

You will make the best of what’s left of your time.

But if you should vanish

And leave without warning,

Here’s hoping you’ve already lived through your prime.

 

 

Well, that’s the poem. It’s not intended to be morbid – more of a self-knowledge process.

Introduction – Part 1

I have never blogged before and I’m really interested in the process. To begin with, I am curious about the way the number of “hits“ may grow, and I’m intrigued by the esoteric aspects of blogging, the way the tag cloud forms and grows, the necessary disciplines involved in maintaining the impetus and the level of steady interest shown by my friends, many of whom I would previously have imagined would not know a blog from a tomato sandwich.

Perhaps a little more about me and my situation would help the reader to get a “feel“ for the content, as any narrative will always benefit from flesh on the bones – at least enough to picture the life and times of the writer, his background, influences and the environmental conditions in which the work was created. I am not a professional wordsmith. The visually creative skills have been my main means of earning a crust, and even now I ask myself how I can be so presumptuous as to pose as a writer. But in the end I make no apology. I’m simply telling you a story about my life and ultimate demise, peppered with analogy and spiced with experience. If it is of interest I’m delighted, and should it help you to reach more valued judgements or conclusions which assist you to more ably determine the length and breadth of your own views – then I am indeed frankly ecstatic.

I was (only just) a “war baby“, being born in February 1945, a few months before the armistice. My mother had carried me in her womb through the dark days of soot-blackened bombsites to the dreaded sound of doodlebugs, and I’m sure the wail of air-raid sirens is something I heard clearly and memorably whilst still waiting to emerge into the pale half-light of almost peace.

She was the daughter of second-generation Latvian immigrants, who had married in Grimsby and later moved to North London. A talented artist, erudite and articulate, my mum was exactly five feet tall and round and extremely cuddly, the archetypical warm and loving mother who had few bad words to say about anyone. She was a kind and incredibly sweet mother, with whom I would often spend long evenings in front of a coal fire in our tiny living room, discussing what had been topical on our brown bakelite “wireless“, or simply exploring ideas on the secrets of the universe.

My father was a private, intense individual, an eccentric violin player of no mean accomplishment (he reached his zenith as Leader of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Thomas Beecham)whose brilliant career, commenced in glory as a lead violin at the age of 14, was later to be demolished almost overnight by the onset of tuberculosis, resulting in a huge portion of his lung being excised, along with several ribs, thus rendering impossible his daily exercise – the vigorous raising and lowering of an arm on the end of a violin bow for several hours at a time.

He never recovered totally from the withdrawal of opportunity from his extraordinary talent and became monumentally embittered, a man savaged by circumstance and ravaged by his reaction to it.

I was the oldest child, big brother to two sisters, the youngest of whom recently succumbed, also to cancer, at the tender age of 50. Susie was perhaps the most persistent person in all things that interested her that I have ever known and, as an aside, it beats me that she never managed to communicate with me from “beyond“. Seriously, if anyone on earth was determined enough to want to make contact, it would have been Susie. But enough of that – more later…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Starting Radiotherapy – Day 2

Day 2 – woke up with no pain or discomfort – not feeling sick or particularly tired (at least no more than usual) and no feeling of burning. So far , so good. A good friend came over after I had done a couple of hours work. Long chats. Then back to the Churchill. In and out like a dose of salts. Even quicker this time, as the machine was rotated back to front by remote control. Lovely radiographers (I think I called one a nurse last time – sorry!!!) and in a flash I was back in the car on the way home. Worked all afternoon. It’s now 6pm and there is the slightest suggestion of discomfort, but it may just be wind!