Waiting for Chemo

This evening I am going to see my doctor to get the results of some recent tests. I was recently diagnosed with multi-site Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis and we’re going to talk through the treatment options.

Doctor House off the TV described LCH as “you got your cancer in my autoimmune disease”. It’s a fun little malady that can hit in one of three places. I got lucky and it didn’t hit my organs, but it has hit my bones.

For a whole month ove Christmas, I was reduced to bed with two rounds of strong antibiotics as my autoimmune system reduced a part of my skull to mush, a tumour pushing onto my brain for good luck.

A short while after this I eventually was unable to walk more than a few metres and had an operation to remove the mushy tumour from my skull.

Optimism

Since the diagnosis, I have not been able to get it out of my head that I’m now soon going to start a six-month course of chemotherapy. Not to say that it has become an obsession, but it has become something that I’m almost sure of without evidence.

But is that a negative view? For so long, I have been thinking about this illness from a stoic perspective — prepare for the worst and plan for the best — that I wonder if I have become convinced that the best will not happen. I have become stuck on the negative outlook and have not concentrated hard enough on the most positive.

Positivity is one of the hardest things in the world to maintain. There is no evidence out there that proves that every little thing is going to be alright. In fact, there are endless historical examples that show that, on average, things are usually not alright.

Yet despite this, one has to strive. Choosing optimism and a positive mental outlook is probably the only option available when faced with adversity. Giving up before you’ve even started is just moronic.

Helvellyn

This is why I have to choose to focus on the literal sunny uplands. I have to focus on beating this disease so that it never comes back and then climbing a beautiful mountain with Sarah (my girlfriend).

I have to choose to concentrate on that amazing vision of reaching the summit of Helvellyn in the Lake District. Everything else along the way can be what it’ll be — I can choose to be scared or not at the time. Right now, I have no certainty about what the future holds and, instead of choosing to concentrate on some imagined outcome, I should instead try to feel more comfortable with that uncertainty. I don’t know what’s coming next, and that’s OK, I don’t have to.