I'm back!

Cancer is something that happens to other people... until it happens to you.  That's why I haven't posted a blog for such a long time: I spent 11 long days and nights in hospital enduring painful major surgery and have been home slowly recovering and pondering my future.  It seems I'm extremely lucky to be alive and I feel... well I feel different, I guess; I've had a brush with death and it's changed me somehow.  All those clichés about seeing things from a new perspective, suddenly appreciating the commonplace and ordinary and realising how precious a gift life really is, all that stuff about spending time watching a sunset or lying under a tree listening to the breeze moving the leaves, all those stories from people who have survived a trauma looking at their loved ones with grateful wonder for having been there for them... all that stuff - all that stuff is true.  It's been a humbling journey and now it's time to begin again; because that's sort of what it feels like really, a kind of second shot.  I have no idea what difference it will make in the long run... maybe after a while life just becomes, I don't know normal again and routine. We'll see...