It has been a while since I posted anything, but I was recalled for a CT Scan  this past week, so thought I would start again.

A slight abnormality was seen on the scan I had back in January and they wanted to check it out. A ‘nodule’ in one of my lungs. Probably nothing, I am told such things come and go in lungs), but if it is still there in the same place after three months it could be a problem. I am feeling fine and don’t think there is anything wrong with my lungs, but I thought there was nothing wrong last time … Anyway we wait for the results now and take things as they come.

Yesterday, at our Good Friday all age No Limits! service from 12 - 1.00pm we were invited to write how we respond to the Cross. One question was: ‘What will you offer to Jesus in response?’ I wrote that I would offer my ‘… aging, damaged and recovering body …’ Later Helen and I went for a jog and I pulled a muscle and had to walk the last couple of hundred yards! Aging and damaged, indeed, but still the one I like to live in!

Easter is the BEST time! We had a real sense of sharing in the meaning of Good Friday yesterday - fresh interpretations at both No Limits! and the ‘Last Hour’ and they worked beautifully. Now I look forward to tomorrow. It always means new beginnings. Sorrow, loss, pain, even dying will NOT have the last word in my life. That is the offer for any of us.

I shall get them to sing (unaccompanied)  ’Jesus Christ is risen today’ at 8.00am Holy Communion, I am preaching at Parish Communion, and we are going to sing the Tim Hughes song ‘Oh Happy Day’ at No Limits! - I can’t wait!

Christmas Day was good! Church was special, lunch was delicious and the beer tasted great. In fact, the whole weekend was great!

Since then I notice that taste has returned to the point where, at meal times, I forget how hard it was just a month ago. Other things will return to normal in their own good time.

So it is time, I think, to wind up regular entries to this blog. If anything interesting turns up I’ll do an entry, but the regular updates are not now needed.

Thanks for keeping me company over the past nine months. Let’s pray that 2011 is a great year for us all.

I don’t think I suffer from ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’, but over the years I have grown to dislike the last couple of weeks of November and the first three weeks of December. It just gets darker and gloomier (and this year a lot colder). During those weeks I sometimes find myself counting the days to the winter solstice. Wikipedia says this year the exact moment of the solstice was 11.38pm on 21^st December. Since that moment, we have been heading back towards the sun - and I feel brighter already!

 There is nothing ‘New Age’ about this, it is simply that from then I can begin to look forward to Spring and Summer once again. I do love Springtime and Summer.

 The latest on my progress is that taste is getting back to normal. Wholemeal bread and marmalade (normally a staple for breakfast in our household) is back on the menu as from this morning. Gravey and other sauces with cooked meals have been a ‘No, no’ for months, but yesterday I tried bread and gravy for lunch (that takes me back to my childhood) and it tasted just fine. The odd pint of ale is also going down rather well. So I think I am on track to enjoy my Christmas Day - and I’m really looking forward to it!!!!!

 Other symptoms are taking a bit longer - my finger tips and feet are still pretty numb. I had to run a few steps on the way to Morning Prayer, to get out of the way of a car, and it felt very odd. Everything worked the way it should, but nothing felt normal about it - very odd in fact.

 A friend sent me a You Tube clip yesterday - the best digital ‘take’ on the Christmas story that I have seen so far. Take a look at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=GkHNNPM7pJA&vq=medium

 I have been pondering the future of these Blog entries. The autobiographical journey through surgery and chemotherapy is over, and life is beginning to feel something like normal. I’ve been glad to log my progress for the past nine months, but I’ll probably stop regular Blogs sometime soon after Christmas.

Three weeks since the last treatment and things are looking good for Christmas.

I ate my first Sunday roast for five months last Sunday, and it was good - not quite tasting the way I know it should, but 90% normal, as are other things now. Last Friday I could actually get the taste of Tomato Ketchup for the first time in months.

A bottle of ale tastes 98% the way it should, and a friend gave me a really good bottle of ‘Single Malt’ the other day which tastes perfect - couldn’t wait til Christmas to try that!

There are bits of me that still don’t feel right - lingering side-effects - I still get out of breath going up stairs, and the Warfarin dose I’m on is a third of what it has been for the past three years, so there is still stuff circulating in me that hasn’t cleared yet.

I’m still taking a lot of things gently - my colleagues continue to do a great job at church.

Years ago I would have been trying to do five mile runs by now to get back in shape. But I’m not going there. I will wait until the New Year before doing anything, and then take advice on some gentle rehab. to get a decent fitness level maybe by Easter. The thing I really want to get back to is jogging outdoors again on warm sunny Spring/Summer days - I love it!

Our ten month old grand-daughter stayed the night for the first time last Saturday night - that was a first for Helen and me, an she was amazingly good! She has been a bright ray of sunshine for Helen and me, even through the most difficult times.

On the darker side, it would be very easy to start blanking out the last year as if parts of it hadn’t happened but I must live with the on-going reality of no more than a 60% chance of long term survival. That is what the expert told me, and that has to be my reality for the next few years until someone gives me a different prognosis. The narrow line between confronting the brutal facts and the faith that I will prevail in the end needs to live on in me for some time to come. My seventieth Birthday party in 2019 is the goal - that is, if nothing else gets me in the mean time!

The last two weeks have followed the usual trajectory. The weekend of 27th and 28th November was bad - a real struggle. Helen and I had done it all eleven times before, but that somehow made it harder. I ticked off the days through last week keeping as busy as I could. I actually felt less ill than I had after the previous two treatments, and the side effects began gradually to subside. We’ve had a good weekend since then, and already I am two weeks on from the final treatment. Tomorrow is a little milestone for me as it would have been the start of another treatment - that has been the relentless cycle of our life since last June, but not any more. Tomorrow will be a normal day and I shall continue to grow stronger as the toxic effects of all those treatments wear off. The words: “the first day of the rest of my life” come to mind. The chemotherapy has been a marathon for Helen and me. (I ran the old Kingswood Marathon in 1985. and after twenty miles found myself running further than I had every run before, with still another six miles, an hour of running, to go.) The last few treatments have felt a bit like that, but we have got to the finish line now, and we know we have done everything asked of us. I know I am ‘cured’ of the particular bowel cancer I had, and Oncology and I have done all we can to prevent secondary cancers beginning anywhere else. That was what was available to me last Spring, and I believe I have given myself the best chance for the future. The rest is in the Lord’s hands, and I am content to leave it there. It just happens that last year tomorrow was chosen as a our next St. Stephen’s Day of Prayer. So I shall be spending most of tomorrow in church in quiet and waiting on God with others. I love our prayer days as I get to do that knowing that up to sixty other church members are signed up to 15 minute slots all through the day to be praying as well. Tomorrow is definitely a new day as we seek God’s purposes for us here. As our Bishop has said: ‘When Christians pray, no one knows what will happen next.’ Well, I think, from tomorrow, I’m up for just about anything God offers us …

An email turned up the other day from someone I hadn’t heard from for years, and it was an encouragement to me: … I stumbled across your blog a few months ago and have been following the progress you have been making with your illness. I just wanted to send you my best wishes for the future. I also wanted to let you know that you were a positive influence on me when I was a teenager and you managed to command the respect of all the young people you came into contact with at St Augustine’s (Whitchurch, South Bristol) by just being yourself …

I’m very grateful for that email. It arrived on a tough day for me and lifted my spirits - thank you, Dave.

Last Sunday was a good day for me. The Band played well at No Limits! in the morning and then (with a different line up) at HEART in the evening. Everyone did well.

By the end of the evening I was flagging a bit, but then had another good day yesterday -I’m making the most of them while I can!

I now feel as though I am on some kind of spiritual trajectory as well as a medical/therapeutic one. The spirituality of St. Ignatius has been a help to me for years, and it is helping me now. In fact I am re-reading Margaret Hebblethwaite’s book ‘Finding God in all Things’. I find that kind of stuff really helpful in meditating on the Gospels.

So in my own inner journey with this last treatment, and not wanting to make it sound more than it is, I feel as though I am meditating on my own period of ‘Passiontide’ that is leading me to the new beginnings of Christmas.

It is helping me to have perspective on the next two weeks of treatment and recovery. My meditation began therefore with sharing communion with my friends at church two days ago. Now I’m somewhere in the Garden of Gethsemane. (About every half an hour for the past three/four days I have had this little fantasy that my consultant or an oncology nurse will ring to say: “You don’t need to do the last treatment, Ian.”, but it isn’t going to happen - not my will, but Yours …). Tomorrow the ‘crucifixion’ begins, and then resurrection will begin a couple of weeks after that. I just may find a meaningful way through with that journey to make.

I’m not expecting to be over it all in a fortnight. Helen and I are planning a month on, for a great Christmas weekend - that will be enough. As long I do well enough with the Christmas Services, and the turkey and beer taste normal on Christmas Day I shall be happy!

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The last week has been tough - a mixture of growing exhaustion and other side effects. There are days when I can hardly walk in a straight line - I feel this and think: ‘I’ve been a runner/jogger for over thirty years, and now I can hardly walk.’

Today the more disruptive symptoms are beginning to lift.

So I’m sitting here knowing that in seven days I begin the final treatment - Hallelujah!

The problem, however, is that I know all this too well now. I know exactly how I will be feeling next Wednesday evening, Thursday morning, Thursday evening, Friday evening and on into the weekend. I know that by next Friday evening I wont feel like eating anything, and on Saturday I shall have to make myself eat food, whatever it tastes like. That will then go on for another three, four or five days. There are other things, but too much detail is depressing!

What can I do about this - nothing. I have tried everything I can think of to make it easier each time, but it is a steam roller that just takes over and does what it does to me. I know all this now. It is the last one, but I understand it all too well.

Last Sunday morning I sat in church wanting to be there, but just surviving to the end of the Service. As I sat, I read about the crucifixion, and Jesus’ ‘cry of dereliction’. It occurred to me that Christians often get all theological about these words, when maybe the humanity of Jesus needs to be seen here too.

One of the struggles of faith is that at our most desperate moments in life, it seems as though God is most absent. CS Lewis described it in ‘A Grief Observed’ - just at that moment of greatest need it is as though God slams the door in our face and bolts it on the other side. Was Jesus’ cry that same human feeling of abandonment - trying to pray, but there is nothing, no-one there?

What do I make of this? This is as far as I can get, so far:

Jesus was reduced to helplessness, vulnerability and agony. Knowing this would happen, he ‘gave himself up’ to it all voluntarily. I fight against that stuff with all my being.

Jesus accepted it all, cried out in despair and abandoned himself to the moment. Somehow, his obedience in all this released the power of the Spirit to raise him to new life.

Perhaps I should do the same next week. Maybe I need to go into treatment twelve accepting my vulnerability and helplessness; accepting the loss and yet staying in the moment (but that is so hard to do!). Maybe it is at that point that the Spirit begins to work new life. If so, that would be the most powerful and counter-intuitive reality in the universe, wouldn’t it? Life overcoming death.

Next week is coming whether I like or not. Will I fight it or look for a better way …? The question is: Am I capable of trusting THIS much - acting as if THIS is true? We’ll see next week …