A Guid New Year
It was a year ago today that I had my first PSA test and got the phone call to say that it was high (24.8 ng/ml). Naturally, the first thing I did was to go online and find out what the number meant and what it meant was that I probably had prostate cancer. It took several more months of tests to confirm that I do have cancer, for a long time the consensus was that the high PSA (it had stabilised at circa 20 ng/ml last time it was measured) was a result of an enlarged prostate and a prior UTI; an MRI was inconclusive.
Be that as it may, the possibility of cancer triggered a week of wrestling with the idea of a somewhat more imminent encounter with mortality than I expected.
What was a surprise, and, surprisingly comforting in its own way, was the realisation that I was OK with it: not happy, but accepting. It also triggered an extended period of self-reflection through all of 2025 which shows no signs of letting up.
I’ve made a series of changes in my life since as I figured out what is important to me and what isn’t: it’s why I stopped watching and reading the news as there’s no point in getting caught up in things I can’t control. I am more appreciative of family and the mundanities of living. Also, I read and enjoy a lot of poetry, something I’ve neglected for decades.
One particular consequence was that I began an occasional journal for what I loosely call ‘spirituality.’ I say loosely because the focus is on Self and Being (and by implication Non-being) rather than anything overtly religious. The theme is to question the essence of the ‘I’ is who is writing this. I haven’t put any of it online yet – although hints have surfaced – because there isn’t a lot to upload and I am wary of uploading woo, but I do hope to do something with it eventually, perhaps here. Aside from the risk of woo, the other danger is that clichés lurk behind every sentence that I might write, and it isn’t as though life and death and being and nothingness have not been themes of human thought and writing for as long as they have existed. I don’t presume to originality, but, cliché alert, however early caught and however treatable, cancer concentrates the mind on life, the universe and everything and, me being me, I write about it, longhand with a fountain pen.
And I have other things to do, a novel to finish in draft, heaps of family tree research to write up and one or two other odds and ends.
I’ve been blogging since September 2002 (my first post on this site was in June 2009 though I’ve since copied in one or two earlier posts from the old site); what appears here is mediated, of course: I choose what to publish and what to keep to myself. Over the years, my choice of what to publish has changed, not least because for most of that time I was working and I was conscious that employers would have a view. I’m no longer under that restriction and the ‘inner’ me – what Chris Jary at the old Civil Service College called ‘the real Ian’ or ‘the whole Ian’ – is likely to come to the fore. I’m not sure if that is a threat or a promise.
Next week I have a final scan prior to radiotherapy starting at the end of this month. I mentioned previously that the main impact on my daily life of the hormone implant has been weight gain; I’m also aware of getting tired more easily and last week in Glasgow Kirstin asked why I was walking more slowly than usual. I get my second implant next week too. I’m trying to keep life as normal as possible while all this is going on. I’m not sure how frequently I’ll be writing here but I do intend to use this as a central point for news.
Happy new year.
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