PART 8 of MY STORY OF GOING BLIND

Following the appointment with the Medical Rehabilitation Consultant I think I was in some measure of shock. The way in which things were presented to me it seemed as though this was quite normal for someone who had gone through my particular form of chemotherapy. Yet there were questions in my mind as there was a young man undergoing chemotherapy at the same time as me who managed to keep working right the way through it. His cancer was not as advanced as mine was, and yet there was some doubt as to whether the chemotherapy would work on him. Chemotherapy affects everyone differently. So does cancer. I will call him Phil, though that is not his real name. I could never understand why he was able to receive his chemotherapy in a chair whilst I had to receive mine in a bed because I could hardly sit up and was very weak. In fact, Phil seemed quite normal, though of course he could not have been as he did have cancer. I often used to compare myself with him and feel angry because I was unable to be as normal as him. I spent eight months in bed, whilst he was still able to go to work. Sometimes I would be brought to tears but, in a way, I knew there was no point in becoming bitter about it. I had to get through it, and try and stay positive. There was, however, a great deal of fear inside me. I struggled with my emotions, and in the end had to drink deep from the well that was inside me. I had learned, during my childhood, to have an iron will, but that does not mean I did not feel the fear. Often, when I woke up in a morning, I wished that I didn’t have to wake up to this nightmare. Somehow or other though, I found a way of going on. In a way, being given this news by the Medical Rehabilitation Consultant was nowhere near as bad as being told that I had cancer and it might kill me. Since then, however, there have been many times when I have thought and felt differently. As the blindness has begun to bite, and I see nothing in front of me, I have often felt that I would rather have died than live like this. How does one deal with such powerful emotions? I have no answers, only my own story such as it is. We all do what we can with the cards we are dealt. For me, I knew that I needed to be able to walk if I was not to be completely dependent on someone else, and so I still tried, despite what the Consultant had told me, to walk. It was not, however, to be, in the end.