Saturday 8th November

Today is Dad’s birthday. Would have been 90!

Day 33. (Or Day 11)

THE DRAIN CAME OUT TODAY!!

Finally. 🙂

As David pointed out – went in on my birthday, out on Dad’s. What birthday presents!

I can honestly say that I will not miss the drain at all. Most importantly, to me, is the fact that the site where it went in can finally be allowed to heal completely and the pain should all go now. The doc actually said that I can run and begin to paddle again as I feel like it. Not sure that I will be running any (literal) marathons very soon – but the door is finally open again! Yay!!

The doc said well done to me. Others have said, and continue to say, that too. I feel very humbled and a little confused by that: I am not sure how else to do any of this – except to kind of make the most of it. Well, perhaps, not ‘make the most’ of it, but to just go along with what happens and how I feel and to work around that.

It’s a kind of ‘going with the flow’, but not in the sense of being directionless. It’s more about allowing the necessary treatment-tide to sweep me along. Being the recipient / victim is not always pleasant, but it is manageable as long as one doesn’t allow oneself to sink below the surface.

I know full well that, if I’d taken to my sick bed and rested as necessary and allowed the pain, discomfort and nausea to dictate exactly what I did, then it would most probably all have been (and be) a little easier in many ways.

That would have driven me completely insane, though. And it would have been (be) so bad for those around me.

I know that life is not normal for me at the moment. I live with that all the time. The closest to normality as possible is good for everyone, though. I just can’t adopt  the ‘dying swan’ attitude, as much as I’d have liked to – and will still want to, I’m sure. I’m convinced that, either everyone will laugh at me, or it would just cause way too much stress.

Given that, though, it doesn’t mean that I don’t need it to be understood and appreciated that things are not normal for me. And that that frustrates me a lot.

It’s not always quite so easy to ‘just do it’ when there are physical and nausea-type hurdles to get over. Little-by-little, though, step-by-step – all comes to an end.

Even if the plateau seems endless, or the sudden new rise in the terrain seems huge, one step at a time gets us further and further up the inclines and along the straight.

And slowly, slowly towards the summit.