Quality of Life

On Monday night, Sarah asked me this question: "What's your quality of life now?" Hmmmm, I thought. "It's just that Julia [one of our friends] said the other day that she thinks she'd have thrown in the towel by now, and doesn't know how you keep going." The quick and abbreviated answer is, "It's great! " And I wanted to tell you all why.

I know I've taken sides with Miles Kington on the whole "When you have cancer..." thing, but I'm going to start with an amended version of that preface, and I hope the difference in it will allow me to be found not guilty of prattish pontification!

Since I've had cancer, I have noticed a couple of things, and they are, to me, the things that give my life at least as good a quality as it ever had before I became ill. The first of these is an appreciation of what a moment by moment miracle life is. I know, I know. It sounds bloody trite, even to my own ears, but I don't mean it in an airy-fairy fantasy fashion, or in an intellectually appreciative fashion. I mean (and it's something I find hard to express in words) I find myself frequently aghast at the sheer impossibility of the whole of life on the planet existing, and the fact that it does (exist). It seems to me I have been so absent mindedly living my life in the days prior to my illness that now I am shocked at how, number one, unlikely it is that life should exist at all and, number two, how privileged I am to have been given the opportunity to experience it! I wish I could say I feel vital and constantly vibrant in the prescence of all this miraculousness, but, most of the time I feel a bit too knackered to be wide eyed in constant awe, speechless with the wonder of it. But I do have this sensational appreciation of how bloody marvellous being alive is.

And if that one sounded trite, then this one I should be shot for! The second thing I've noticed is the mindboggling amount of love one person can experience. And I think it's related to that "concertina" experience of life I mentioned the other day, where the highs are high and the lows can be really low. The intensity of life lived like that means love is magnified like everything else. For example, I have never, before a few months ago, cried at saying goodbye to a friend, or at a news reel, or at a suprise gift. Now it happens with regularity: the time I left Nick at the station, I cried; when I heard of the life of Baby P on the news, I cried with the pain and horror of it, incapable of understanding how anyone could be so devoid of love and appreciation or valuing of life to be able to do something like that to another human being - especially a defenseless child; when I heard of a friend's business colleagues raising finds for a children's cancer clinic in Nepal which had to treat children without drugs of any kind (including pain relief), I cried because I couldn't imagine how anyone could live with the kind of pain I experience undimmed by morphine; and when I received a gift today from one of my aunts and uncles, I cried with the love behind the gift. It moves me to tears now as I write about it, because the love they are expressing is so present in the gesture.

And so, if anyone asks me about the quality of my life, you can rest assured that it is absolutely the best it could possibly be and has ever been. People seem to think I am doing some kind of great job in the face of a terrible illness and tough physical circumstances, because the messages I've been sent, and the calls I've taken, and so on, have all in some way referred to my being brave, or being remarkable, and, whilst it's lovely so many people might think of me that way, I have to say, it's not really true. I'm not brave, and although I have some pain, I am not being superhuman about it by any means - ask Sarah, and she'll tell you, I frequently groan with it rather than stoically suffer! I'm happy with my life because I am really happy with my life!

The thing is, I also know that it is very different for Sarah. I don't mean her not appreciating how great life is and can be, but I know for her, she is facing a possible future that leaves her life empty of someone she loves absolutely. I'll say it again, and again, and again: cancer is not as hard for the person going through it as it is for the person who loves them watching them go through it. I am not being the brave one here.