Bugger it, I'm coming out

Yes, I am. I'm tired of hiding it. I'm tired of pretending that everything is fine. I'm tired of keeping two blogs - one that actually gets published, and one that I write just for me. Frankly, if you care enough about me to keep reading my blog, then you deserve to know the truth. Just as long as no one tells Nana.

My main reason for not going public is that I don't want everyone at work to know. So if, oh colleagues o'mine, you are reading this, please know that I do not want everyone to know. It's very difficult to process, and the last thing I want is for people to start treating me differently.

But by not talking about it here, I'm not able to express myself and therefore deal with it myself as well.

So, I'm just going to come out properly. At least, I think I am. I'll save this as a draft and have a bit more of a think about it. I am currently just writing 'personal posts' that I'm not publishing, but it's not the same. I'm not inclined to do it if it's just for me. But at the same time, I'm a bit wary of sharing too much with everyone.

So I guess here's the warning: THIS BLOG IS GOING TO BECOME VERY PERSONAL, AND IT IS NOT GOING TO HAVE A HAPPY ENDING.

Yes, it's true folks. Unfortunately, what I haven't been saying in the last couple of (stilted) posts is that my cancer is not curable. The reason it doesn't matter when we do chemo is because the chemo is designed to control the cancer, not cure it. There is nothing that modern medicine can do to fix or get rid of my cancer. Eventually, I will die from this.

Now, we are talking years here, not months. But we are not talking decades. Basically, the cancer has spread too far to be able to stop. Eventually it will keep growing and we won't be able to stop it.

The hardest part is that we don't know how long or when any of this is going to happen. Which is why I'm going back to work - my challenge is now to live a normal life with this hanging over me. But that is what I want to do - live a fairly normal life. My biggest worry is that people will start treating me differently. There are two options - we can all focus on the fact that I have a terminal disease and will eventually die, or we can focus on the fact that I am alive and happy, and live each day contentedly. I am not dead yet, and I really don't want you to mourn for me as if I am. It's really hard when people look at me like I'm a puppy who needs to be put down. Please help me to keep things normal.

So now that all that's out in the open, I can start talking about what's really happening, and what I'm really feeling, rather than the artificial happy chirpy stilted stuff that has characterised my last couple of posts.

It's good to be back.