The Road of Certain Uncertainty

When I was a boy, I thought I would live forever. As a man in my 20s, I was told by a fortune teller that I would live till I was 104. In my 30s I didn't give a 4X because life was good. In my early 40s, I revised the lifespan figure a little more in line with my expanding waistline and general unfitness to a respectable 80. When I was 47, my aspirations were curtailed somewhat when I was diagnosed completely out the blue with prostate cancer. Cancer was not in my family. My father was 80 and in rude health and my nan lived until she was 100. By the time I had reached 50 and my cancer had recurred, I grasped at straws by looking to achieve a bus pass and by last year's birthday, my 52nd, had to revise it yet again to an ambitious 60 as the hormone therapy failed to halt a rising PSA.

Many of you will have read the very excellent Rocky Road analogy a while ago before our friend Spurspark passed on to that great patient's waiting room in the sky. In the early days, his words and advice, although not related to my then situation, were of great comfort. Well, I'm on my own path now. One of my own very certain demise but with an uncertain and unpredictable dateline so it is my turn to offer my own analogy of what it is like to reach this stage in the hope that it gives peace, some clarity and succour to others. My oncologist is too afraid or too canny to tell me exactly what my prognosis is but as a hormone resistant patient (I hate the word fighter despite the indisputable fact that we all fight this b*****d disease), I have limited options and have, despite always believing I could overcome my cancer, now reluctantly accepted my fate. In the early days following my initial diagnosis, I was in denial. After surgery, I was in denial too and the same following salvage radiotherapy and ADT. In fact until very recently when I was told that my cancer had never ever responded to hormone injections, a continually rising PSA despite all treatments and now had the bleakest of bleak outlooks, certain death before the age of 60, I was still in denial. Now, if I lived in Egypt, I would actually believe that I was rapidly drowning in the Nile!

When I was 16, my great Aunt Flo died. Before she popped off her mortal coil she told her sister, my nan, that if there was another existence after this one, she would come to her via a medium's hearing with one word, "Acceptance." My nan sadly never heard this word until the day she died herself, but I have carried the mantle on her behalf and believe that instead of hearing the word acceptance, it is actually a state of mind the sick and the dying acquire once all hope of a cure is lost. In my case, denial has transmogrified into a form of acceptance of my fate and that, now, this acceptance has released me from the despair of worrying about the disease spreading as it had done the last year or so to live the rest of my days enjoying what I have now. My mantra has become: accept your fate Barry graciously for all you ever need is now - and noone's the future can never be guaranteed, least of all your own. Each persons' mould is cast from birth and there is no average. Just the luck of the genetic draw.

Prostate cancer hits men at all different ages, stages of life and with varying degrees of treatability. What man A has will never be exactly the same as man B and so the disease in this respect is distinctly unique. In the early days, the newly diagnosed will, quite rightly, grasp at the finest straws of positivity, seek knowledge from those in broadly similar situations and solace in the experience of others who have been through the inexorable mill on stage treatments. In time, if the cancer has not been caught early enough and they are one of the ones unlucky enough to remain undetectable, they will sadly enter the doors of that dark, satanic mill themselves and begin the journey on what I refer to as the road of certain uncertainty, that infamous 'rocky road.' At times, even if accepting of one's fate, one will often feel invincible even in the early stages of incurable disease, or in control when the drugs and treatments are working. Conversely, they will often, too, tend to delve into varying degrees of sadness, hopelessness or for the weak of spirit, depression or similar as treatments fail.

For the majority of my own particular journey, one that is unique to me and that no reader of this forum will ever truly share in exactitude, there have been days of deep, dark depression and seas of tears for the injustice of it all and the unfairness of knowing you will die much younger than Madame Fleurie once prophesied. It has, until recently blighted any optimism I was told I should try to exude and ensured that the cancer was beating me both psychologically and physically. However, now that I have reached that certain point in this very uncertain journey, the fulcrum that lay between curable and incurable, I am, albeit reluctantly and mightily hacked off simply because I wanted to notch up just a few more life events, much more accepting of my situation. It is this 'acceptance' that I believe my dear old Aunt Flo spoke of before she died. That acceptance of the once unacceptable but now clearly unavoidable. That drive towards the cliff of our own mortal lifespan where the brakes are failing but the engine still rolls along. It is, I believe, the rocky road that Spurspark once eloquently spoke of but which has now become my very own - that road of certain uncertainty. Once impossible to live with, it is now a little more palatable having tried and failed all the treatment options and is, for me at least, allowing me to get on with the job of enjoying every precious moment with the woman I love, the children I would take a bullet for and this life which I once thought would last forever but clearly will not. I urge all of you, whatever your fears, your anxieties and concerns, whether Gleason 6 or 10, T1 or T4, a newbie or an old hat, to live for the now and fill it with every joy you can, whether that is travel, a bucket list, drinking the finest wines and beers or simply dunking a huge wad of your favourite biscuits into a hot mug of tea. Life, for all its pleasures, simple or otherwise, is there to be relished, not be complacent with. For as death always wins in the end, taking the maximum joy, whatever your predilection, should always be your aim every day. God bless you all. (Bazza)

Edited by member 04 Aug 2015 at 10:30  | Reason: Not specified