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Weekly update letter …

I am fortunate to have a great family and a great network of friends, locals, bloggers and health professionals following my fight so I am going to try a weekly update in the form of a letter. I have also replaced the ambiguity of the chess board with the Border Mail photo as I am feeling far more positive than when I first used the other photo.

Dear friends,

I am so frustrated at the moment

I am sitting here with tears in my eyes and a typical latter-life low back ache somewhere below the kidneys but feeling quite OK. Everyone seems surprised that I look so healthy … are they just being nice or were they expecting to see me near death?

I have no sense of dying in the foreseeable future yet, as I have been told, this cancer is in it’s final stages and is extremely aggressive. It would appear that I have had the damned thing for many years – early stage cancers have a life expectancy of ten years or more – how many of those years have I been unaware? At least, I have been able to ‘live’ those years rather than ’survive’ them.

It has been a busy week with the Border Mail regional newspaper writing an article on my journey. That was followed by our cow calving on Tuesday and then dying on Thursday of suspected milk fever. On a hobby farm, the cattle have personas and it hits harder than if one had a herd of cattle where this is an occupational hazard. I then had to find a home for the two day old bull calf and dispose of his mother’s carcass. Once again, the local community came to the rescue and the first friend I asked had no hesitation in taking over. I love these people.

Pauline is finally taking a break from the caring role trying to relax at her daughters place in Canberra and, after being confined with her for the last three months. it is bloody lonely around here without her. She tells me on the phone that she is not sleeping any better and is still feeling tired. Emotionally though, she is definitely calmer. Thank God she was not around when the cow died.

Pauline left first thing Thursday morning and my daughter Lisa and her family stayed Thursday night on their way through to visiting Richards family at Tallangatta. They will be staying over again tonight on their way home. On Saturday, Pauline’s brother Gary and his wife Janet from Melbourne dropped in with lunch on their way to Yarrawonga. I have all this activity and I still miss Pauline – she will be home Tuesday.

The pain management appears to be coming into place – after three months of failure – and I am down to one pain breakthrough event a week. Until now, I have had nothing but panadol forte and ibuprofin to deal with this. At long last – and I feel far too late – I have been prescribed morphine syrup that cuts through the pain within half an hour where it was previously up to two hours before … every night around 3 a.m.

The feedback from the Border Mail story has brought me a couple of new friends that have helped put things in perspective for me. Dianne has been to hell and back with bone marrow transplants, chemotherapy and total depression fighting Leukemia over the last ten years. The other is Priscilla who lost her husband in a truck accident just last year and has had to live with not having the chance to say goodbye. There was an instant rapport with both women and I expect to talk with them often along the way.

I will write again next week. Keep them cards and letters/emails coming in – I love them.

Your’s sincerely
Greg