From the time in late September until now, we’ve been living a life tainted with the surreal. At any time I expect Salvador Dali to peak around the corner of the hallway into the living room dangling a fluid clock from his arm peering at me silently from his secure death. I can’t seem to find a solid bit of ground, a place where I don’t have to feel the ethereal presence of the spectre of ‘incurable cancer’. Everywhere I turn all I see is wall with no door inviting me into the light beyond the uncompromising diagnosis of a life sentence with no chance of parole. Some people will argue that there is always a door, one just has to believe in it for it to appear and open. Imaginary doors like that don’t exist in any prison I’ve ever visited so I am left with the only tangible evidence I have and that’s based in the physics of concrete and rebar, and not in my imagination, which I confess, I thoroughly enjoy as a garden of pleasure and delight but which flickers inexorably out of existence like a holodeck program on Star Trek.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

We were supposed to retire in 2012 and do a lot of the things we had no time to do while we worked at our jobs. We could go camping in the off season and not during the busy summer season. We were supposed to go on long walks and go out for coffee when it struck our fancy. We could travel if we wanted to. We could get more involved in our community. Well, we did a lot of these things and more. But slowly, over the years, I lost energy. I could no longer accompany Carolyn on long walks. I could still putter around the house and fart around in my shop, but as time passed, puttering became more and more difficult, and then impossible. I knew that there was something wrong. I knew it for a long time. We tried to figure out what was wrong, but we came up empty handed time and time again.

Over the past few months, I became increasingly immobilized. I was short of breath after walking up the driveway. I was in so much pain that I was loathe to move. Then, in utter desperation, we went to see my GP. He ran some tests and from there it was just a matter of time before we got the definitive diagnosis of multiple myeloma. I was gobsmacked! It wasn’t supposed to go this way. But I’ve already written about this in past blog posts. What I have not written about is my new reality, as rapidly changeable as it is.

Most days now, I don’t do a hell of a lot of anything. I spend half the day in bed and the better part of the rest of the day in my recliner. Well, that’s mostly true, but not entirely. It’s strange, but it’s like I have a job again. Weekends are mostly free, but weekdays are taken up with visits to the lab, doctor’s offices, and hospital. For example, this week I have an appointment today with an orthopaedic surgeon in Campbell River at 1 PM to deal with the lytic lesions (tumours) in the long bones of my legs and the degenerative disk disease in my neck. Tomorrow I see the dentist at 2 PM because one of the very rare side effects of one of the chemo drugs I’m taking is a degenerative jaw thing. On Thursday I do the chemo routine again with pills in the morning and a visit to the Cancer Centre at the hospital for my injection and visit with the nurses. I have to check my calendar for next week, but I know that I have an MRI on the 19th.

I expect this will change as my treatments progress, but it will still be that my treatments, office visits, etcetera will be during the week and I’ll have weekends ‘off’. I should have fewer appointments with my GP and even with the chemo crew. Lab visits will still happen frequently so they can monitor what’s happening with my blood. Things will get very routine if all goes well. What we’re aiming for is remission within a few months.

Don’t get me wrong, remission is clearly an important goal. If I get full remission for three or four years that would be amazing. Still, it’s hard to free my mind of the verdict I know will not change. The multiple myeloma may not kill me, but it sure brought to the forefront the reality of my death. I’m almost seventy-three years old. I’ve had a very good life for the most part but I want more.