Reality Checking

Today is our wedding anniversary -- 37 years ago today Sue and I were married.

As those of you who know us know, Sue and I are totally different in personality, in what would like to do, and in so many other ways. But I have always been the advocate of opposites attracting, and in the case of Sue and I this is most definitely a fact.

Sue swept me off my feet almost 41 years ago when I first met over the post office counter in Barton on Humber, and since that time she has endeavoured to keep my feet firmly on the ground. This has been needed, as there are times when I do need a reality check. We married in the rain in a small village church at Bonby, near Brigg in Lincolnshire, and we have recently been back to visit with some of our grandchildren. They were very fascinated. I have to say they have been 37 wonderful years, and I wouldn't have changed anything.  Much has happened in that time, people have departed and new people have taken place, but of course that is the order of things.

Yesterday I went to visit the Oncologist, and Charlotte came with me. Not a good day. Apparently the cancer has spread to an upper thoracic vertebrae and several ribs. This news came as a bit of a blow, particularly as I am feeling so well. The Oncologist was uncertain as to whether to change my medication -- at present I am on Sutent, which has an average effectiveness of 11 months, and I have been on it 27 months, so it was inevitable that this time would come. Apparently the cancer cells learn ways of getting round the medication, finding new ways to multiply. This is what seems to be happening in my case. The new medication is a drug called Everolimus. He put this scenario to me as to whether to change the drug now, leave it to more cycles continuing with Sutent, and then have a further CT scan to see how things are. After much discussion, thought and reflection I have decided to stay with Sutent for now.  This does mean however that the Cruise which Sue and I had hoped to go on at the end of June is looking unlikely. Certainly the day and cruise to the Arctic circle we had planned won't happen, because I have a further meeting with the oncologist in that first week, but it may be we can go a few days later to another desitination.

So how do I feel about the cancer?.

I have to say when the news was given me it was quite a body blow, but not quite the body blow like when I was first told. The problem with many people (myself included) is that they think they will live forever, and that bad things will not happen to them, and if you pray hard enough things will get better. The reality in each of these is that this doesn't happen. We don't live forever, everybody is open to good and bad things happening to them, and prayer is answered in ways we don't always understand.  

As a priest and as a Christian I just don't understand, but at the heart of our faith there has to be in something we can’t see, we can’t understand, and we can’t prove – otherwise faith would not be faith but certainty, and there are no certainties in this life, other than it will, for us, one day come to an end!   I have seen many many instances where far better people than I have died of cancer, been killed in a car crash or other accident, had a heart attack at a young age, or whatever, and simply to offer quick slick answers I feel is utter nonsense.  We have to be honest in our belief.

But the trap I had fallen into was to fall back into the thinking that after almost 2 ½ years on Sutent "everything is all right", and as long as I take the medication, all would be well.  Reality should always kick in and remind me that 2 or 3 years ago I was very poorly indeed and not expected to perhaps be alive now.  But that same reality tells me I am here now, and I have, to use the Oncologist’s words yesterday, responded excellently to treatment, and hopefully I will continue to respond to this and to my new medication.

Last Saturday I had a wonderful time leading St Mary Magdalene Hucknall’s staff team in an away day. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I wish this more people would use me in this way. Perhaps in the future this may be the case.  I got the team trying to discover things about each other which they didn’t know, and also trying to get each one of them to understand that it is ok to be vulnerable, and at times, to let that vulnerability be on display.  This is a topic which is very dear to me.

Two weeks ago I went to see my Spiritual Director.  As always, I had a great time with her.  She is so wise, so prayerful, and so appraocjable.  She majored on this aspect of vulnerability, and linked it into my Sabbatical findings.  She was saying that it is ok to be vulnerable, and to display it, and to let us witness to today’s world through it.

Last week has also led me to meet our new Archdeacon (of Newark), David Picken, not once, not twice, but three times.  He seems a great guy, and his sermon on Sunday was very inspiring.  I felt very relaxed with him at last Sunday’s worship – not something I always feel when Archdeacons or Bishops come to visit us.  And that is my failing, not theirs! Archdeacon David has also been very supportive to me in these uncertain days health wise, and without giving too much away at this stage, helping me to sort out my future.

Last week I also had half a day in Dukeries College, a secondary school where I am a governor, and where I try and spend at least a day a month in its RE department.  They have fantastic teachers, and I love getting involved in their lessons. I'm going in all day next Tuesday and then going for a curry with two of the teachers in the evening -- they are helping me with my PowerPoint presentation of my Sabbatical.

I am now really looking forward to my niece’s wedding on Saturday and as I have already said on Facebook, particularly if you are reading this and will be at the wedding, I don't want anybody to look strangely at me, speak in a patronising voice, or think that it will be the last time you will see me. I am no different to last time you saw me. I intend to enjoy myself, with my family and friends, and to go on enjoying myself for as long as I possibly can.  Again as I said on Facebook, there is still life in me to be lived, and I am most definitely going to live it.