The Matter of my Health...

Hi there Finn Fans. 

Lady Ann's Folly came out last week and the afterword goes into quite a bit of detail of how my health is faring now. 

I thought it might be worth posting it here too just to make sure that anyone who's interested can be up to speed on what's happened and what's likely to happen. So, if you are interested, read on... 

Afterword 

In which shocking truths are revealed about the future

Things can change before you know it and sometimes the plans you have get altered as a result. Priorities that seemed crucial once upon a time can simply fall instantly away and it can take some time to find a way through for them again, if ever they find it.

Last October I published a book called Wishing Well and in the afterword there I chatted about the challenges of fitting in the writing time; about staying up into the wee hours to get it done and my plans for future books. I was very much in the throes of my drive to go on publishing a new book every month until my hundredth birthday. 716 books in total was my mission. 716 books.

But there was a fact that I didn’t know about at the time that was creeping up on me; something terribly insistent and insidious that had other plans for my future.

Only days later I started to get these funny little pains in my stomach you see, and the pains got worse and more insistent.

Pretty soon it got so I was in real trouble; real agony; but the doctor wasn’t bothered. Not at all. It was just a tummy bug, he said. Eat some dry toast. I saw another doctor and she felt the same way. They weren’t too bothered about the fact that I’d filled the toilet up with blood late one night. That was just a flash in the pan (heh heh). It was just a tummy bug.

Except I didn’t believe these doctors and thankfully my partner didn’t either, insisting I get further help... an insistence that might just have saved my life.

I went down to Bournemouth Hospital’s A&E department and even there my doctor had me on the phone, trying to persuade me to come away and let him look after me. Maybe eat some dry toast. I was past listening to him though, thank God. I don’t know why he was so desperate to keep me away from anyone else’s help but if I’d done what he said then things would have gotten worse.

Much worse.

But even the A&E doctors said I was fine. They told me to go home, even though I needed a wheelchair by this time to get anywhere close to the hospital exit. They sent me via the pharmacy to get anti-sickness medicine and I filled two vomit bowls up while I was waiting to be served before I went back and asked them to please have another look.

So reluctantly they kept me in and finally, after much hanging around, I talked to a surgeon who I guess had time to look properly and know what he was looking at.

It was this guy that told me the news. And it wasn’t good news.

It turned out that dry toast wasn’t going to solve the problem. Nor was anti-sickness medicine.

I had a growth inside my bowel; a growth that was as big as a cooking apple. There was only a little hole left for the food to get through and that food had been backing up inside me for some time. Something was going to rupture if I wasn’t careful and I was running out of time.

This cancerous thing had been in there, growing and festering for a long time, and something had to be done. Right away.

So they took me into hospital and they cut the fucker out and with it seventy percent of my bowel. It was like being in Hell and these strange, claustrophobic visions snatched at my mind, trying to suck me down. I’d been unwell for a while but suddenly I was practically an invalid, all the strength and vitality knocked out of me.

But I started the long road back to recovery. And thank God for my friends and family, coming round and being there; especially that one special person who has never left my side. I guess I’m very lucky to have someone I can always count on, and no matter how tragic and difficult life can get, it seems it only serves to draw us closer together.

I was well and truly knocked off my feet by all this and there were more challenges to come.

But what about the writing? That’s the subject that we’re here for after all. That’s the question drawing us on.

Was the writing going to continue?

Because suddenly I was in excruciating pain in a hospital bed and the chance of me getting the next story episode out was looking bleak. Even when I got out of there I was exhausted, and then the next batch of good news started to roll in.

Because it wasn’t over. It wasn’t going to be as simple as that.

I had cancer and it had spread to my liver.

In fact the way people started to treat me gave an oblique impression that things weren’t looking too good. The government was there with a very generous monthly payout and I was given a disabled badge for the car. Clearly they seemed to know something I didn’t about the path awaiting me. One doctor, whom I rather accurately renamed Doctor Death, painted a very grim picture of my future regarding statistical chances that seemed low enough to weep over. So I did.

I enrolled in my chemo and started the treatments and got a bit better and a bit worse and a bit better and a bit worse.

But going back to writing was hard, even though it’s right up there as one of the most important things in my life.

You see the drugs and the discomfort were working their grisly magic on me, destroying my concentration and sapping my energy. The grim pronouncements of Doctor Death were scratching away at me too.

It’s hard to plan to write a series of novels or even just one if you aren’t sure you’re going to be there to craft the climax. That 716 book target didn’t seem possible anymore. Even a three book mission seemed likely to be out of grasp.

But things actually started to pick up.

The chemo did well. Even Doctor Death started to talk more optimistically. It looked like maybe I could have some more surgery; cut what had spread into my liver out and maybe; just maybe; get a clear bill of health... for a while at least.

Except the pain started to get worse again, and worse again, and I ended up back in hospital just to manage it. I’m dosed to the gills right now on painkillers.

Because these things aren’t cut and dried. There isn’t a ready answer to how things will proceed.

The latest tests show that there’s no point cutting the liver cancer out because it’s in my lymph nodes causing trouble and threatening to spread out elsewhere. So no more surgery for now (which is good) but more chemo to come (which is bad).

It’s all kind of up in the air and nobody knows what will happen. I’m carefully not asking too many questions. The doctors don’t know what will happen anymore than I do and speculation can be... frankly terrifying.

We choose to be optimistic, my family and me. We choose to be happy. We choose to plan for a future.

And I plan to go on writing for as long as I can.

Fuck the pain. Pain is something I can ignore as long as the writing juices are flowing. And when the pain gets too bad, well I just signed up for Netflix. Netflix will get me through.

It’s a very interesting thing, having this happen; learning you might die. It really makes you think.

Lying in my hospital bed I put a lot of thought into the nature of that elusive happy ending we’re told will be waiting for us when we’re children.

And you know what I realised?

I realised that I was living it. I am living happily ever after. I have a wonderful partner who I just married. We have two perfect little kids.

There’s this thing hanging over us that might get better... or might get worse. But each day we’re doing the stuff that makes us happy. Little things. Happy things. Just spending time and being close and making the very most of each day.

And it also got me to reflecting about my writing.

You see for many, many years I didn’t make it as a writer at all. I was trying to get published conventionally and nobody was buying. That was kind of depressing. But things are different now. My transformation stories found a little home on the internet and people came to find them. And to enjoy them.

I don’t make millions from my book sales but what’s more important to me is that I have that creative outlet, to share the stories I come up with. I post my episodes on my blog and get loads of feedback and appreciation and I can publish any book I want, whenever I want. I’m living the dream I always dreamed and have no regrets whatsoever.

Nobody can say what the future holds. Maybe I’ll get worse and worse now and drift away into oblivion and maybe things will turn around and I’ll still be pumping out those 716 books when I’m a hundred years old.

I choose to believe it’s the latter and live my life accordingly.

So let me pop a couple more pain pills and bolster my back with a cushion, then settle back to work on my next little tale of transformation.

Keep on living and dreaming until there’s no breath left to do it with. That’s the plan.

And maybe; just maybe; I’ll reach my one hundredth birthday after all.

I hope you’re there to help me celebrate.