Looking Up

I know I have to lift my eyes and look to the mountains but, I admit, I am in the valley at the moment. My fingernails all dropped off a couple of weeks ago and my hands are sore. My eyes won't stop running, to the point that I can't see properly for most of the time. And when I try to do anything half way normal I am soon exhausted.

This week, for example, I decided to take my daughter to an Open Day at Oxford where she could look around one of the colleges. I also volunteered to pick up my son from his boarding school in Ipswich. I knew it was a long drive from our house to Oxford, then onto Ipswich and then to home, but I love driving my car - I don't do it enough - and I was looking forward to racing along with the hood down and some Robbie Williams on the CD player.

And, apart from losing the volume on the sat nav and having to spend a few miles driving along with the sat nav held in front of me so I didn't get lost, it all went quite smoothly. We found the college OK, I negotiated my way around the lanes of Suffolk quite successfully and turned up at my son's school in time to watch the parade - the entire school turned out in naval uniform marching along to the band on the school quad.

I am always moved by this occassion. My dad loved marching bands. As a child, I remember him taking himself off to Kneller Hall in Twickenhamd every Wednesday in the summer to listen to the music. Hearts of Oak, Men of Harlech, Rule Brittania. In the winter it was off to the Albert Hall to listen to the Welsh Male Voice Choir. Such was the soundtrack of my early years, inseparable from the image of my dad humming along as he lathered up his bristly face and drew a silver razor across his chin. He would, I am sure, have loved to have heard these tunes again as he watched his grandson in full naval regalia marching with the guard, rifle over his shoulder, so smart, so proud to be selected to be part of the elite band of students.

After the parade, and after my son had been "cleared to go", it was back into the car. But by the time we met the M25 and the hour long tailback I was exhausted. I kept it together until we got home, and then I flaked out. I really couldn't keep my eyes open, even though ALL of the Osmunds (including Marie, who hasn't been seen on our screens since Paper Roses) were on Jonathan Ross.

And how I have paid for it these past two days. Flat out on the sofa. Zero energy. Feeling sorry for myself. Yes, this is a deep valley and sometimes the walls are very steep.

But it is my last chemo on Wednesday and from then on things should start looking up. We know from the trials of the drug I am on that people generally have a reasonably long period of remission once the chemo finishes. Nobody can say how long exactly. The average is fourteen months before "progression" - an ominous word if ever I heard one. But when I ask at the Marsden what the longest period of remission is, they tell me they don't know. I was only the second person at the Marsden to sign up for this particular trial (there are a few more now), so in many ways I am going to be setting the odds. They tell me that they hope I will have longer than average before the cancer starts to grow again. They have been pleased with my response so far (a "very good partial response"). And my tumour load is low - just a handful of small lumps in the lymph nodes rather than a big tumour growing on an important organ. But I have learned with this disease that there is no certainty. I may last for years. I may last for weeks. The trick is, as my good friend Carol tells me, to live a day at a time and, if that's not possible, an hour at a time or even a minute at a time.

So I nurse my poor fingers. I wipe my eyes. I sleep. And soon, please God, I will scale the walls of this valley. My tears will cease and I will, indeed, see hope again.