Archives: Difficulties

It had been my intention to sit down at some point and fill in the blanks of the past months with an epic, multi-post entry to tell my tale up to today (or up to whenever I got around to posting).

Luckily for all of you guys who are still bumbling across the site in the vain hope for a new entry, I’ve decided against it.

There are many reasons why I should and shouldn’t give up a full account of the last 4-5 weeks during which time I’ve managed to post a grand total of 0 times.

Over the months since I started this blog just before Christmas, I’ve shared a lot of the ups and downs, highs and lows, peaks and troughs of everyday life and tried to use this site as a tool to force myself to keep a bit of perspective on the whole thing – life in general and my health.  Sitting here now, after quite possibly the worst month of my life, it seems strange to say it, but I want to focus on moving forward more than raking over the past, even the not-so-distant past.

So, what you get is the shortened, edited, cut-down, weight-watchers version:

At the end of May, after my birthday, I was running pretty low, energy-wise.  In the middle of this low, I managed to pick up a cold.  Fighting the cold was one thing, but as is almost inevitable with CF, the amount of time and energy my immune system was expending  on fighting the cold virus meant I had no defences left to look after things in my lungs.

Before you could say, “seriously guys, I don’t feel very well,” I had collected myself a roaring infection and an inability to extricate myself from my bed.

After a bit of family decision making, I returned to the warm and caring centre of the family fold for my Mum to switch back to nurse/carer role in looking after me 24/7.

Even that wasn’t enough, though and within a week I was on the ward  in Oxford, having spiked an impressive temperature and gathered the mother of all infection markers.

Levels of infection in the body are most easily assessed by measuring the levels of C-reactive Protein (CRP).  Don’t ask me what it is, I just know that it should, in a normal person, be in the 0-4 range and that in PWCF it’s frequently around the 10 level, as we are often fighting low-level infection constantly.  Anything over 10 gets worrying and 20-30+ is cause for proper concern.

When I was admitted to the ward, I was told that the labs doing my bloods had stopped their CRP count when they got to 160.

Now, while I should be monumentally freaked out by all of this, I still can’t help but feel slightly short-changed as my good friend Emily once managed to mark up an impressively gob-smacking score of 400 – but they obviously like her enough to keep counting and not just give up when they get past “bloody high”.  Oh well, Em’s always done things more impressively than me, anyway.

In the midst of all this, there were lots of antibiotics being hurled around, different combos being tried here and there and various other drugs being tossed in my direction.

Most upsettingly for me at the time was being put onto a short course of steroids, which, at the dosage they were giving me, all but removed me from the active transplant list – my one chink of light in a world of enveloping blackness was being blotted out and I had no control over it.

June has been a true nightmare month, in every sense of the word.  From beginning to end I was struggling through every single day and at times it seemed like there was nowhere to go.  It is, without doubt, the closest I have come to meeting my maker and there were times over the last few weeks when I have honestly believed that someone was waiting outside the door with a conveniently held bucket for kicking.

One of the reasons I can’t take myself into much more detail than I already have is that a lot of the last few weeks is already a haze, my mind working it’s magical ways to blot out the middle-ground of strife and tedium and leaving me with but a few key moments lodged in my brain.

Thankfully, most of those key moments are the ones which give me the spur to push onwards and upwards and to keep fighting for my transplant.  There have been times in the last month when I’ve been in a darker place than I’ve ever been, but the knowledge that it’s possible to pull back from that and to recover to some semblance of normality again is reassuring beyond expression.

That’s not to say life is all sunshine and roses now – there’s a lot of things which are still a struggle and my world can still be a lonely place at times.  But I’m still here, I’m still fighting and I’m still able to laugh – at myself and others.

It’s been fitting that over the course of my last battles I’ve not managed to post anything on here, because smiling was the last thing on my mind through most of it.  Now, though, I’ve got something of my mojo back, and I’m revving up for the run-in to my new life.

Bring on the lungs, baby, I’m ready to roll.

I’ve never really but much truck in jinxes, or quirky twists of fate, but I’m struggling to convince myself that I haven’t jinxed myself all over again.

It seems that whenever I talk about what projects I’ve got going on and what I’m getting accomplished and what I hope to achieve, I take a huge dip in the form the next day.  It happened back in March/April when I was excited about pushing forward after Laughter for Life, and it’s happened again this week, after I proclaimed my success at getting back to writing.

Ironic, really, I suppose, considering I wrote so specifically on the ups and downs of life and how I could cope with whatever was being thrown at me.  People call it tempting fate, something I’ve never really agreed with, but am starting to question my conviction.

The concerning thing about times like this is that you never quite know where it’s going.  It’s the same for most things in life, I suppose, but it seems all the more important when reserves are low and the littlest molehill can so rapidly escalate to the mightiest mountain.

The last couple of days I’ve been under the weather – nothing too drastic, just very tired, low on energy and slightly achey.  My head is swimming a bit with a feeling like I’m getting a cold, but I know that it’s more than likely just hay-fever, which I suffer from every year and always starts out feeling like I’m getting a cold.

So more than likely, there’s nothing really wrong at the moment – my chest, although slightly more productive than usual, isn’t causing me significant problems, and the only real “symptom” of anything wrong is a little glandular swelling, which is more than likely hay-fever related.

That knowledge, however, doesn’t work to exclude the possiblity that things could be on a downward slope.  More often than not, in the past, all this would hang around for a few days and make me feel a little rubbish, then sort itself out and go away.  Now, though, everything carries a greater significance.

It’s hard, at times like these, not to worry about what comes next, but at the same time, my mind is bugged by the knowledge that the more positive I stay, the less likely anything is to take hold and drag me down for proper.  I don’t want to sound like a crazy “mind-over-matter” nut-job, but I strongly believe that your mind can influence your body in more significant ways than people always consider.

So I’m spending my time at the moment in bed, resting, trying to take on as many calories and possible and make sure that whatever has got me on a slow-down doesn’t become something which puts me at a stop.

This is why I don’t like tiredness. My mini-rant (was it mini?) yesterday has been playing on my mind all day.

I stand by what I say, because it is all incredibly annoying and occasionally morale-sapping, but at the same time I feel a bit petulant for having brought it up in the first place. I suppose it’s the “suffer in silence” side of me coming out again.

Lest anyone get the wrong impression yesterday, I don’t hate my life. I have a huge number of very positive things going on in my life and I’m surrounded by wonderful people. I enjoy every day (some more than others) and like to make the most of what I can do with each one.

Although I may not be able to do the things I did this time last year, and although I may get a little down about being in a different situation which places more demands on my sense of sensible-ness than it has previously, I still manage to do the things that matter most to me and living in this way has given me a wonderful sense of my priorities in life.

I received an email today from someone who had obviously got my address from the message boards and wanted to ask me a couple of questions about life etc. In my reply to her, I realised just how much of a positive thing being on the transplant list can be.

Rapidly declining health, or a low-health plateau such as I’ve hit at the moment, is wonderful for really hammering home what really matters in your life – what you choose to expend your energy on.

To use an analogy, a day’s evergy is like a bottle of water: every day you wake up in the morning and you fill your 2 litre bottle up to the brim with fresh water. Over the course of the day, the various things you do each require different amounts of water. Make breakfast takes, say 100mls. Do some exercise and you’ve spent 500mls. Sit as your desk working for a few hours and it’s a few hundred mls more.

When you get the stage I’m at, suddenly you’ve not only got less water – a single litre, maybe – but it also takes more water to do things. Cooking a meal becomes 250mls, which is 1/4 of your daily allowance taken up already. Walking anywhere, for even the shortest amount of time may be up to 500mls – half your day’s worth gone. And on the worst days you can be doing as little as possible and still find that you’ve got a hole in the bottom of your bottle and you’re leaking energy all over your shoe.

So when I wake up and fill my bottle in the mornings now, I know that my ration is that much less than I’m used to, that I need to make sure that the water I am going to be pouring out of the bottle goes in the most sensible of places.

Sometimes it’s not even the most sensible place – sometimes it’s just the place that matters the most. But you know that if you’ve only got a finite amount of energy for the day, there’s no point wasting it on things of little consequence. It means you spend it on the things that really matter.

Yesterday, thanks to a busy weekend, I had a very small bottle of water. But I knew that the most important thing to me was to see and spend time with my Godson. I only manage a couple of hours before I ran myself dry, but those were two of the best, most enjoyable, most pleasure-focused hours that I’ve spent with my Godson for a long time – because I knew I was using my ration for him. It didn’t matter to me that the rest of the day was a total wash-out and that I would be incapable of doing anything else: I was more than happy to use my ration on him and him alone.

The thing I dislike most about tiredness is that loss of perspective that it delivers – how it takes away your ability to see things in the light you normally see things. It’s not about losing the facade, which I seemed so keenly aware of yesterday, it’s about losing the bright side – losing the very positivity which drives me forward each and every day.

I try to keep my water bottle as full as I can and I try to replenish it as frequently as possible. But some things are worth emptying it out for – and it’s when you realise what those things are that you really strike gold.

It’s been, all in all, a pretty good bank holiday.

I was feeling a little run down at the end of the week – not sure why as I’m not sure I’d been massively active – so Saturday was spent very much in chill out mode not doing anything beyond reading the paper and sitting on the sofa.

Sunday I went over to Mum and Dad’s for the afternoon to watch the end of the Championship footie season, willing on the Saints to their playoff place, which they secured thanks to a handy 4-1 win over Southend (was there ever any doubt…?), after which we had a gorgeous roast, shared with my bro and his other half. It was good to catch up with them, and nice to see them again so soon after the last time, since I’ve got rather used to not seeing my bro for pretty extended periods of time.

Today’s been a bit harder, largely because yesterday took it’s toll. My Godson came up to visit with his parents, my mum having laid on her usual lunchtime spread for guests, and K and I popped over for food and games.

Sadly, my chest only lasted for about an hour after the meal before deciding that sitting on the floor playing loud, shouty games was not in it’s order of the day, so set about making me feel decidedly uncomfortable with a dedication that really should be admired.

What really hit me today, though, is how some people choose to sympathise with you when you feel unwell. My problem at the moment is that when I get tired (which I do, very easily), I very much lose my ability to put a happy face on things.

I’ve thrived – as some of you will know first hand only too well – on always keeping not just a stiff-upper-lip, but one that’s ever so slightly curled up at the edges; a mirthfull demeanor no matter the inner “turmoil”. Now, though, my reserves are depleted to the extent that any moment of flagging in the day means that the positive spin and happy vibes are the first energy-drainers to be lost.

What I think that means to people on the “outside” is that for the first time they are seeing me in a different light – I guess for the first time I look like I’m suffering. And boy do I hate it – there’s nothing worse in my eyes than other people seeing how hard things can be.

I’ve no problem with telling people how hard things can be, as long as I can do it with a smile on my face and do my best to laugh it off in the process, but when people can SEE how much it sucks, that bums me out like nothing else and there’s nothing I can do about it, because I don’t have the energy to fake it.

What’s more, some people seem to think it helpful to show/tell me how much they appreciate the shiteness of the situation. I know it’s good-natured and well-intentioned, but when people tell you that they know it must be horrible, or say “it must be really shit right now” – it really doesn’t help at all.

I’m well aware of just how completely, head-screwingly, eye-gougingly, heart-breakingly pathetic my life can be on my bad days at the moment – I don’t need someone to tell me it must be horrible. It is. I live it.

I know, too, that much of my reaction is just tiredness and not being able to rationalise the thought process, but it just seems like a spin-off of the affected sympathy you get where people try to explain that they know how you feel because they once had a cold so bad they couldn’t breathe through their nose at all, and that the doctor thought that if it carried on any longer they might need ANTI-BIOTICS!

I know it’s well intentioned, and I know people can feel awkward and that they have to say something to show their support, but please, next time you see me, don’t tell me how much you appreciate how hard my life is: just give me a hug.

The funny thing is, I know that the opposite extreme annoys me just as much: the people who try to belittle what I’m going through by comparing it to other people’s problems. The whole, “everyone has something to worry about,” line.

Again, I appreciate the attention, but actually, frankly, in a game of “How cruddy is living in your world” Top Trumps, I think I would probably take some beating. So telling me that you’ve got a friend who’s got an in-growing toenail AND has to walk the dog twice a day AND has to look after a child alll the while needing to make sure they can Sky+ the football doesn’t do a whole lot for evening out my perspective on things.

Like I said before, I know that much of this is tiredness, but the fact is that I’m a tired old grouch a lot of the time now, so I guess I’m thinking of this as a primer for how not to make me throw things at you the next time we talk. Or at least as a warning to duck once you’ve finished speaking.

I guess the whole thing comes down to the simple things in life. If in doubt, hug it out.

It’s been a bit of a gap again since I last posted – I seem to have lost my blogging momentum, although I have a feeling it’s because the evenings are much harder for me now than they were. I used to write my blog posts right before I went to bed at 10 or 11 at night, but now I’m usually struggling quite a bit with breathlessness by then and sitting at the computer is about the last thing I want to do with my bed calling me.

Still, I’m sure I’ll work myself back into a groove somewhere.

I had intended to sit here this morning and launch off into another rant about Allied Respiratory (yup, still rubbish) but I’m not sure I can summon the energy or the bile to do it proper justice. I’m doing so well at the moment in terms of energy levels, happiness and all-round doing-things-ness that it seems silly to waste any of it venting my fury at Allied. And it’s such a glorious sunny day outside that I don’t want to spoil it with grumpiness.

I will say, however, that yesterday I was not quite for circumspect or forgiving when they failed to turn up with my oxygen delivery for the 2nd working day in a row. Having expected it on Friday, only to have it moved to Monday (that’s a weekend with no spare O2) and then pushed back another 24-hours yesterday, I was seething. Particularly as no one from Allied deigned to call me to tell me.

The way they treat their patients/customers/fools is completely reprehensible. When I phoned to ask about my delivery at 3pm and asked if anyone had been likely to call me to tell me not to wait in for it, I got a nice, curt, “No, I don’t expect so, not at this time in the afternoon.” Cheers guys.

Do they honestly think that just because I’m transplant-listed and dependent on 24-hour oxygen I don’t have anything better to do with my time than wait around for cylinders of oxygen to let me leave my house? It’s pathetic.

Anyway, I took it upon myself to draft them a letter expressing my regretful displeasure at the standards of the service they were offering and I eagerly await their response. Not that I’m expecting them to do anything.

But I’m not going to let that dominate things today (well, not unless they fail to deliver this morning and mean that I have to scrabble to find K an alternative lift to her appointment in Northampton which I’d not have enough oxygen to run her to). Instead, I’m going to enjoy looking out at the sunshine and contemplating the next move in my rather unhurried life.

The last week or so has been quite nice, as I’ve had nothing really to do or to focus on, having not come to any conclusion as to what I’m tackling next. I’ve just knuckled down to finishing off the next CF Talk, but most of the copy for that should be done by the end of the week.

I know, though, that if I don’t pick myself a project soon, I’m going to drift off into a little no-man’s-land of indecision and boredom and get into a vicious circle of boredom/tiredness/negativity.

The best thing about the last couple of weeks has been finally working out the ins and outs of my body as it is at the moment and finding the balance between activity and rest – knowing what I can and can’t manage and how to deal with whatever exertion I do undertake without running myself into the ground. It’s been a much longer and trickier learning process that last time I was doing it back in December, but I finally feel like I’ve grasped it now. Famous last words, I know, so keep your fingers crossed.

Now I’m off to sit and watch the clock tick round till Allied turns up with today’s delivery.

And Sunday’s show was spectacular – with a capital Spec.

Undaunted by a day spent running here there and everywhere trying to fit in as much technical work as possible and still have a chance to rehearse their pieces, all of the groups absolutely shone and truly showed the talents with which Suzanne and I have been working for the last 5 years.

In the whole process of seeing all of the kids and young people on stage, I even managed to forget all the things that were most bothering me about my input (or lack of it) over the last few months and actually take in and appreciate what a huge achievement this show has been not just for the groups involved, but for the whole creative team.

That’s not to say the endeavour didn’t come without it’s price – two days of being laid up in bed not able to do anything more than stumble to and from the bathroom and occasionally as far as the kettle for tea seems to be a pretty high price to pay, but then if it gets me through the rest of the week with no ill-effects then maybe it just proves that I’m learning to listen to my body.

Physically, I handled Sunday really badly. Intent on showing my support to the oldest group by being their for their rehearsal in the afternoon, I completely overlooked the fact that the scheduled break between tech and performance almost never materialises. Rather than getting an hour to take myself back home and recover/carbo-load for the evening, I instead found myself staying at the Theatre and “working” through it.

The quotation marks aren’t meant as a self-depreciating qualifier on the day’s activities, but rather an acknowledgement that for most of Sunday, I was a passenger. Here and there I lent a bit of a helping hand, but really there was nothing to be done that wasn’t a) already covered by someone else, such was the level of organisation or B) physically impossible for me to do.

Strangely, this last fact didn’t seem to perturb me as much as I expected it to. It did cross my mind a couple of times that this time last year I’d have been running all over the place and doing whatever needed doing, whereas this time I was simply sat on the sidelines watching others do the running, but I somehow managed to section it off from the rest of my thoughts.

I suppose it goes back to the train analogy I first wrote about here, and I clearly unconsciously managed to avoid getting on the train of negative thought and instead kept myself where I should be, making the most of the opportunity afforded to our wonderfully talented bunch of youngsters.

The last two days have been pretty tough, and I’ve certainly felt it on my chest, but I’m really hoping that I’ve handled it well enough that it’s not going to be a major set back. The problem with my cruddy lungs, though, is that you just never know.

But it’s another successful MKT production under my belt, another fantastic learning experience, and there is a world of possibilities still out there for me. Here’s hoping I find one to pick up soon.

It appears, having just flitted over to the CF Trust’s message boards, and by looking through my inboxes, that I’ve had people rather worried by disappearing from my blog for the last few days.   Oops.

I assure you, everything is fine.  Certainly improving.

To tell the truth (not sure why I needed to add that, since it hardly pays to lie to oneself on your own blog….) I was bumming myself out, which is why I stopped for a bit.

Far from reminding myself to Smile Through It and keep on finding the positives in the darker times of life, I found that every time I started writing a post on the blog in the last few weeks, it’s only been to say either that I feel like cr*p or that nothing’s changed for the better.  Even the times when things had changed for the better, the change seemed so infinitesimal and pathetic that it either wasn’t worth mentioning, or served only to lower my despondency about how I’ve been doing.

It’s been weird to find myself trapped in a vicious circle of negative thought, and not something I’ve been used to in life.  Most times, my dark periods inhabit the odd spell of a week or so before things conspire to kick me up the butt and show me the way to carry on.  This latest down-turn has been different, though.

I don’t know if it’s the increased fear of mortality (or, “Am I gonna kick it?” as I prefer to call it) or the impairment to my quality of life inherent in having sunshine blazing through the windows but not enough energy to leave the apartment and enjoy it, but I’ve been lost in a mire of negativity for the last few weeks from which I seemed to have lost the map that usually provides my guide.

Sure, I’ve had good moments – I’ve managed to share Easter with the families around me, I’ve shared a little laughter with friends, I’ve even managed a trip to Borders (hurrah!), but there has been an overwhelming sense of good, old-fashioned, Dickensian melancholy hanging over me throughout.

It’s not that I entirely lost perspective on the whole thing: last week I was sitting a the funeral of a young girl who’s been an almost constant fixture of my working life for the last six years, since she’s been coming to the MK Youth Theatre sessions since their inception.  Sitting in the packed church among many young people experiencing their first distressing taste of grief, I realised that the very day I hit my lowest point – Sunday 1st April, as documented here previously – her Mum, Dad, younger brother and Grandparents were waking up to a new world without their beloved daughter.  How could I complain about pain in my life when held up against the pain of a parent outliving their child?

I’ve still appreciated each day I’ve been given, but it sticks in my proverbial craw (I’ve never really known what that means, but it seems to fit here, anyway…) that “making the most of it” is limited to sitting in the chair at the bay window using the bright sunlight to read by, as opposed the to dim interior light all through winter.

Finally, though, after weeks of dragging myself through the rough parts of every day and persevering in ways I wasn’t even sure I was capable of, I seem to have made it out the other side.

That’s not to say things are all bright and rosy, but I have at least got the energy to pop over to my ‘rents and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine if I want to, or to sit in the study and surf the ‘net a while without completely exhausting myself and having to collapse into bed.

I’m able finally to contemplate looking at the next issue of CF Talk, which has been sitting unattended on my desk for nearly 2 months now and is in dire need of completion.  I’m able to think about the other writing projects I was looking at before and see if I can rekindle the spark that was there before.  I’m able to focus my mind on something other than how my chest is feeling or whether or not I should stay in bed rather than move to the sofa.

I’ve one more negativity-hurdle to overcome, and that will be over after the weekend.

This Sunday sees the Activ8 Youth Theatre show at MKT take place, an event which was to have been my first opportunity to get stuck in to directing a short piece for the Youth Theatre and to benefit the CF Trust.  If I’m honest, I saw it as something of a swansong with them, acknowledging as I have to the likelihood that my involvement is being compelled by my chest to end.

Rather than a happy ending, though, it’s going to be an extremely tough one to get through.  Not just physically, although I can’t pretend that that’s not going to be a challenge in itself,  but because I’ve ended up having almost nothing to do with the finished product.  Three weeks’ of rehearsal in a 12 week term doesn’t amount to a contribution, in my mind, and the work I had hoped to see up on the stage is now more likely to bring me down than uplift me.

I wanted so much to make this something to remember – an event that showed the Theatre’s support not just for the CF Trust, but for the whole Youth Theatre, and a true showcase of the talent which has been nurtured through Activ8 over the last half a decade.  And don’t get me wrong – it is still very much all of those things.

But it doesn’t feel like it’s anything to do with me.  I feel like a passenger, an outsider, something akin to a “consultant” who’s seen parts of the process leading up to performance and had a little input, but not someone who forms part of the “team” whose talents are being showcased.

I know that people will shout me down and will be quick to try to dissuade all of my fears and make me feel a part of it, but I can’t get passed the fact that I’ve not been there for them or with them for pretty much the entire term.  This is their show and their showcase, and it’s nothing to do with me any more.  That saddens me, and it’s going to be hard, but nothing will stop me being their to support them.

I am trying to keep my air of positivity and move forward from here – and I know I will continue to progress – but I also know that this weekend is going to be a really tough one to get through.

Thanks to everyone for your good vibes, your love and prayers over the last few weeks.  They really do make a difference, and they have helped me enormously.  I shall endeavour to keep up with my more regular out-put of the past, as I will endeavour to keep myself looking up and not down, forward and not back.

Keep on truckin’.

Traditionally, for my family at least, Easter has been a family-focused time – a chance for the four of us (plus significant others) to get back together for a weekend and catch up. Since I’ve moved out of home, it’s always been a weekend I’ve returned to Mum and Dad’s for the large majority of to sit and talk and eat and drink.

This year was, by necessity, pretty different, able as I am to manage no more than a few hours of doing anything other than sitting quietly on a sofa or in bed. It’s been pretty tough to have to force myself to ignore my instincts and natural predisposition to surround myself with family and instead make sure that I conserve the little eenergy I have into doing the most important parts of the weekend.

Those were, by turns, a family photoshoot (it having been nearly a decade since the last one and Mum was obviously getting itchy for some new smileys on her wall), a family dinner on Saturday evening to celebrate Easter an my bro’s passing his Commando course, then Easter Sunday spreading our time between our two family’s respectively, spending an hour or so with each trying to avoid exhausting myself.

I can’t say it’s been my best Easter – being limited to only doing what you can manage without making your chest scream at you is hardly a resounding indicator of a brilliant time for all, but I think we’ve managed to make the best of a bad lot and enjoy what we could of the weekend. And after all, time spent with loved ones should always be about quality not quantity – right?

Today has been a different story all together. I was pretty tired last night – a step up from exhausted but still struggling – and hit the sack pretty early, only to be woken after a couple of hours feeling tight and breathless and having to haul myself out of bed to do some physio and nebs.

What annoyed me more than anything, though, was that the whole thing woke me up and kept me up until gone half past three in the morning. By the time I finally fell asleep at 4am, I had just 2 hours till my alarm to get up and do my drugs, after which I managed little more than a fitful 30-40 minutes here and there until I finally gave up and got up just before 12.

As a result, I’ve spent the whole day completely wiped out and unable to consider doing anything at all, really. Mostly, I’ve been lying in bed and trying to relax and not focus on how completely shattered I am. I’ve not really succeeded, though.

My mind is pretty blank right now, if I’m honest – I’m struggling to find any words to string together today, mostly because I think all my cogniscent thoughts have migrated to sunnier climbs where sleep comes in glorious 8-hour stretches without interruption and leaves you feeling fresh, bright and alert.

Right now, I’m none of those things.

Followers of this blog will be familiar with the various ups and down I’ve experienced over the last months since I began writing, and friends and family of mine know about them from much before then, to varying degrees. So when I say that this last Sunday gone marks possibly the lowest point I can remember, it isn’t a remark I make lightly.

More than ever, this entry in the blog is a personal one – one for me to look back on in the weeks and months to come as I look back over the trials and forward to what may lie ahead and to be able to see that I’ve come through worse than I’m going through.

Smile through it was designed as a pithy phrase to help me remember that when it comes down to it, laughter really is the best medicine, and that taking the time to remember the levity and vibrance that life gives us can turn a perpective upside down. Through most of the things I’ve been through in my life it’s an ability to laugh at myself and situation that’s really pulled me through, and having family and friends who share my often bleak and black sense of the humourous that helps beyond words.

But sometimes, even though part of you knows that you can fix it all with a grin and a giggle, your body and mind won’t let a smile cross your lips; not the glimmer of a smirk or a corner of the mouth upturned.

This is how I found myself on Sunday night.

Sitting on the edge of the bed at half-past nine, four days after coming out of hospital to renewed hope and the excitement of a new car, I found myself fighting for breath with a new sensation of pain and exhaustion ripping through my chest and as I stared almost vacantly at the floor, I felt an overwhelming desire to give up.

It’s hard to reconcile the feelings of joy I had at escaping the confines of the hospital last Wednesday with the hurried turnaround once I reached home. Aware as I was of the fact that I was by no means fully recovered, I was anxious to get back to something – anything – which even vaguely resembled normality: being able to choose what time I did my drugs, being able to sleep for hours during the day if I so wished, not having treatment times dictated to me by staff with a dozen other patients to see.

What I discovered, however, is that home can feel like more of a prison than any hospital ward. In the same way that the four walls of my hospital room started to feel reassuring and safe, home began to feel like a well-decorated prison cell, with a world of wonders on the outside.

I’m exaggerating, I’m sure – home is never really a prison – but as the weather turned warmer and sunnier, I just wanted to be outside. Coupled with our recent automobile acquisition, my sense of adventure began to take over and K and I began to explore the bounds of my stamina and the car’s performance.

Had I been more disciplined with myself and stricter in keeping myself bed-bound upon my return, I doubt I would have landed in the position I did on Sunday night. But then, had I not landed there, I don’t know if I’d be on the up-slope to recovery I find myself on now. Sometimes you need to plumb the depths before you feel the benefit of the clean-aired heights.

Sunday afternoon took the biscuit, really, as K and I set out for a pleasant Sunday drive around the countryside to enjoy the spring sunshine and run-in the new car. After and hour and a bit of driving, I began to feel the fatigue creeping in and by the time I got home after around 2 and a half hours out of the house, it was pretty much game over.

What alarmed me, and what caused the moment of pause on the edge of the bed as I got myself ready to sleep, was the new sensation within my chest which burst into prominence.

Back in the days when Emily had her knackered old blowers (not the shiny new ones she has now), she used to write in her blog about her chest throwing hissy fits and causing enforced rests and lie-downs. I thought I knew exactly what she meant, having felt the overwhelming tiredness and sense of exhaustion after over-exertion. But sitting on the end of the bed last Sunday, I realised that I hadn’t even touched the sides of it yet.

I’ve had chest pain before, usually pleuritic, occasionally pneumothorax-related, but always of the same variety: a sharp, stabbing pain the side of the chest, usually around the lining of the lungs, where one can imagine a large chunk of infected tissue rubbing angrily against a chest wall which is struggling to keep it in check.

This, however, was something entirely different. This time it was a kind of internal stinging sensation which felt like the inside of my lungs had been rubbed raw with a grater and immersed in a vat of TCP. And unlike the pleuritic pain, there was no sign of it fading away with a few deep breaths.

As I laid in bed on Sunday night, with K lying next to me and sensing my discomfort and utter dejection, I tried to put into words what was going through my head. Sadly, I am not the same wordsmith orally as I am on paper, and in the heat of the moment, my vocabulary failed me.

I sat and stared straight ahead of me and desperately tried to recall a time when I’d felt lower – more hopeless and filled with sadness. For a second, a fleeting moment at my parents’ house in the build up to Christmas after my hospital admission last November entered my head, but that had lasted just a few seconds and this decidedly not so.

The truth was, I was tired. Tired of the fighting, tired of the same old stories, the ups and downs, the scrapes and pickups, the ever-turning and tightening vice around my chest. I was tired and I just wanted it all to go away. Nothing anyone could say could make a difference – something K seemed to instinctively know and chose to observe.

Then the strangest thing happened. As I sat and contemplated the worst of scenarios, I thought about my brother and what he’s been through. Not only the completion of 11 weeks of impossibly hard training and testing and fighting for the commando course, which he had just last week reached the end of and grasped with proud hands his Green Beret, which will go with him everywhere from now on.

But also the times he’s fought through everywhere else: through his year out in Tonga, when he so nearly gave up and came home after just a couple of months, but stuck it out and had one of the most remarkable life experiences anyone can imagine; through his year at Sandhurst, fighting through test after test, performing top of his class, but never letting anyone know how truly hard work it was; right through to his running of the London marathon last year on a few week’s training and the number of people he inspired to sign up to the organ donor register, all because he told them he was doing it for me: I still bear the medal he took home, framed on my wall with his inscription, “Live The Dream” underneath.

I thought of all of these things and I saw myself reflected in his eyes and I realised that I couldn’t give up. What kind of message would that send out to my friends, my family, worst of all my Godchildren, my two fabulous, wonderful young boys who I vowed nearly a decade ago to watch over, guide and protect in the name of God? How could I possibly decide that enough was enough, just because I was tired and it was hard?

As images of my brother washed over me, seeing him at his lowest points of the last 11 weeks, fighting for strength through everything and finding it within himself to keep going, I knew that I had to keep going too. What’s more, I knew that if my parents had passed on to him the ability to keep going and never give up, then I must have the same genes flowing through my body, too. If one of us can, I’ve not doubt in my mind whatsoever that the other can, too.

Sunday 1st April, 2007 will go down in my mind and my history as the lowest point I ever reached in my battle through life so far. But when I look back on it, it won’t be with pain or disappointment, but with a profound sense of pride and pleasure that not matter how dark it got, I was able to see the tiniest, remotest speck of light at the end of the tunnel – and I will make it there. Sooner or later.

PS – this has taken me nearly an hour to write in one sitting and, tired and emotional as I am, I’m not about to sit and reread it for typos. If I’ve spelled something wrong, that shall be as much my legacy as the rest of the sentiments in this page. Be well xx

PPS – following the above revelation, I discovered on Monday the quote which you saw posted earlier in the week, which blew me away because it basically said everything I’ve said in the post above, but in less than 25 words. Some people just have a gift for short hand, I guess…

This is going to have to be a relatively short one (I can hear the cheers already), because I don’t have the energy to sit at the computer for long this evening after heading back across to Oxford this afternoon for a progress check.

Last night I reached my lowest ebb that I can remember for a long time – I honestly couldn’t remember a time when I’ve felt worse in my head about how I felt in my body.  The advantage of hitting an all-time low, however, is that there’s only one way left to go.

Hopefully, in the next couple of days I’ll be able to sit down and put into words the experience of the last couple of days, but for now surfice it to say that the bottom having been hit (stop giggling at the back), the upward spiral is now unfolding.

At Oxford this afternoon (which is a very comfortable drive in the new Mazda), my lung function was a pretty static 0.75/1.35 –  not very impressive, but equally not too concerning, either.  The docs made the, frankly not very difficult, decision to keep me on my current IV’s (gent and cef for those who are marking the card) for another week and to get me back in after Easter to see how things are going.

I had more Gent levels done today, which is a fairly easy process of 2 blood draws spaced an hour apart to get a pre-dose and post-dose peak and trough level for the drug in my blood stream.  Gent can have some pretty dodgy medium- and long-term side effects if given in too higher doses, so it’s important to make sure levels are checked regularly.

The next 24-48 hours is going to be taken up with almost total rest, as I’m hoping to head to London on Wednesday to fulfill a prior commitment which means a lot to me and I really don’t want to miss.  Following which will be another 48 hours enforced bed-rest on Thursday and Friday, for which I’ve already cleared my diary.

Fingers crossed everything has now turned the corner and is on the up.  Perhaps sometime soon my life might return to normal – or at least I’ll get used to whatever my new version of normal is.