Keep on Keepin' On

"Relatively low survival rates for lung cancer mean that despite high incidence rates there are fewer patients alive who have been diagnosed with lung cancer relative to the other major cancers". A quote from the Cancer Research UK website, which discusses a new report they commissioned on the importance that lifestyle plays in whether you develop cancer or not. Sobering reading, as ever, although I take cheer from the fact that the long-term survival figures for lung cancer only went up to 2006 and 2008. I hope that for people like myself, those figures have changed as the new targeted drugs have been introduced. Why do I hope? Because I need the encouragement. I need the belief that lung cancer is not just a one-way ticket to the Big Sleep. I need the role models, the people out there, still alive. The people who still have the occasional tipple or iced bun, that say "This is how I will live my life, how I will fight the demon inside me". My lead oncologist is a glass-half-empty person in her assessments, but I guess that you would be, wouldn't you, if you had to go to work every day doing what she does. But...

...Attending the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation's advocate's conference in Manchester recently I met and saw numerous examples of people still here, still carrying on the good fight. To quote the movie "The Road": Carrying the Flame. But what makes some people live, some die? Is it luck, determination? In my own case I see it more as good luck and timing, tempered with a stupid inability to realise the seriousness of the situation. I plod along from day to day, trying not to think about the bigger picture. When things change in my health I see it/them as the next in a row of challenges to face, to do my best at dealing with and hopefully beat. But if it doesn't work out like that, let's take it as it comes. All you can do is to do your best.

Another day, another Wainwright, something to be thankful for.

Recently I've been reading a book that my father bought me, entitled "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why" by Laurence Gonzales. A catchy title maybe not, but an interesting read as it seeks to rationalise why people live in survival situations and why, to put it simply, others don't. Analysing anything from fighter pilots crashing to mountaineers making the wrong decision, it seeks to outline the mental states which people can utilise to survive when the brown stuff hits the fan. Over the next few blogs I'll try to distill some of it down into readable chunks, but for now here's the concluding paragraph from a list of twelve key factors which have been shown to help survivors, which I felt was pertinent food for thought:


12. Never Give Up (Let Nothing Break Your Spirit)
Survivors are not easily frustrated. They are not discouraged by setbacks. They accept that the environment (or their business climate or their health) is constantly changing. They pick themselves up and start the entire process over again, breaking it down into manageable bits. Survivors always have a clear reason for going on. They keep their spirits up by developing an alternate world made up of rich memories to which they can escape. They mine their memory for whatever can keep them occupied. They come to embrace the world in which they find themselves and see opportunity in adversity. In the aftermath, survivors learn from and are grateful for the experiences they've had.

Rich memories. A place that I return to when the need arises...

Wet AND dirty - perfect! Purdey clocks up another Ennerdale peak

I would never want to be grateful for having cancer or some of the experiences I've had, but as I mentioned in my last blog you do get to see people at their best and worst – and maybe that is an experience worth experiencing...

A Walk on the Wild Side

It truly has been a beautiful Spring here on the Devon and Dorset border, with the slopes of the hills blanketed in flowers and the woods resonant to the sound of the world coming back to life. There's been times when I try to capture the sunlight beams shafting through the trees, or the sun shining through the hedgerows – but simply fail every time to capture their true beauty.

Epye Down with its beautiful rolling hills, just outside of Bridport, is one of our favourite places to go walking. A great circular route is to walk via the Secret Garden Cafe down to Eype Beach, then back up to Thorncombe Beacon. On one day the sunlight was lighting up the woods and leaves in a simply stunning manner, like fairys had alighted on the Bluebells, leaving a magical essence of light.

There's magic afoot in the woods at Eype Down

We tried shooting the light coming through the leaves, but failed miserably. I sometimes feel that maybe that's the answer why, that the only way to see the world is to be out seeing it for real. To capture it would ruin the magic, like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Courtesy of Hugh Stoker, West Dorset's answer to Wainwright*, I have been out exploring the beautiful West Dorset countryside which sits on our doorstep. Every one of Hugh's walks takes my breath away, with their surprises at every turn. A walk I expect to be ordinary turns out surpassing my dreams, with its rolling meadows, the unexplored woodlands. The farms where time has stood still, the farm machinery rusting in the hedgerows hinting at an agricultural hey-day long past.

We are blessed with a multitude of long-distance trails around our home: The Monarch's Way, the Wessex Ridgeway, the Liberty Trail, the East Devon Way. All of them seem to pick out the best of our local countryside. One of mine and Purdey's recent day walks was to start at North Chideock, walking part of the Monarch's Way. It was one of those days where the sunbeams filtered down onto an ancient path, a ridgeway route used over the centuries; The holloways (or hollways) of Dorset, that Robert Macfarlane has written about so beautifully. Once again, the camera simply could not capture the day's beauty. Like a secret tunnel of light leading to something beautiful, the only way is onwards...

In the words of Bilbo Baggins, "The Road Goes Ever On".

Purdey questions why we have stopped

*Hugh Stoker was a local man, living at Seatown (home of one of our favourite pubs, The Anchor), who self-published in the mid to late eighties a series of guides to local walks in Dorset and East Devon. I discovered my first one in a bookshop on Honiton for £2, but they're readily available on ebay for next to nothing. I can't recommend them highly enough, with every walk being a joy.

The Joy of Life

We had a much loved, and now much missed, temporary house guest recently. Answering to the name of Meg, she liked to go walking whatever the weather, especially when the leaves were blowing. Most of the time Meg displayed human qualities, and indeed thinks that she is – but once a rubber pig or chicken was introduced she became a wild thing, as much a wild thing a Springer Spaniel can be. For those that have never had one, Springers embody a lust for life that maybe we should take note of…

Meg loves rubber chickens and pigs. And Naomi's hand.

I know that walking helps the pain in my hips and back, a result of the cancer’s spread to my bones; It doesn’t care where it goes, just as long as it can get somewhere, anywhere. Radiotherapy at different times has helped me regain back mobility – there have been moments when I couldn’t even get out of the car, wincing in pain; A far cry from the man that would walk happily in the Lakes for ten to twelve miles a day.

I can walk now, which is a blessing, a fact that I thank God and my doctor for. But there are days where I’m just happy to sit on the couch, feeling lethargic, devoid of energy. All symptoms that cancer sufferers are so familiar with, and I count myself lucky that the side effects of Tarceva are ‘relatively’ slight.

But Meg indicated that sitting on the couch just isn’t allowed, that whatever the weather we must get out to enjoy the world, to take part whilst we still can. That even if the weather is cloudy and grey, like my spirit sometimes, that to see the world for all its beauty is to understand that life must be lived. So as we kicked leaves and walked amongst the swaying, dancing trees, looking down on the valleys of Dorset stretching to the sea I felt happiness in my heart. From the hill-tops to the sea, in the clouds, in the sun, we walked – Meg and I.

Meg, contented after a hard day chasing leaves

 She has now gone home to her owner and I’ve gone back to being inside too much, but I try to remember the joy we both felt from the world out there. For to be in it is to experience the reason we’re here: Not things, objects, or possessions – for the beauty of life, however it may reach out and touch our hearts, is to be rich indeed.