Breathe

The first thing we as humans do when we enter this plane is breathe, after our mothers spent a long period of time breathing – “short breaths – hie hie hie – loooong breath…”   We breathe to calm ourselves down, to relax, to focus. With each breath we take oxygen into our lungs, which then – very cleverly – put the oxygen into our blood, which takes it to the rest of our body so that each cell, which needs oxygen to survive, can carry on living, so that we, the amazing amalgamation of billions of beautiful  cells, can live. 

Normally we breathe involuntarily; you can’t stop yourself from breathing – even if you try.  I read a funny article once about a ballerina (ballerino ?? – male ballerina) who in the final act jumped (very elegantly of course, probably doing several pirouettes) onto the stage, but in the process lost the knife, with which he was supposed to kill the female lead and, remorsefully, stab himself with, afterwards.  Improvising, he strangled the girl and then, to the amazement of the audience, proceeded to, very dramatically, strangle himself. 

We don’t think about the fact that we are breathing, and when we do, it is because we’re actually in need of thinking about the fact that we’re alive.  We breathe great gulps of life into our lungs every few seconds.  Over the last week I sat and watched a graph, visually showing how the man I love drag great gulps of life into his – now slightly reduced and quite recently deflated - lungs.  “Every breath you take – every move you make ..”  who sang that?  Rod Steward I think.  It was painful to be so helpless, so worried – I felt stunned, shocked.    But his recovery has been remarkable.  He has been in ICU from Wednesday evening till Saturday afternoon when he was transferred to a regular ward. 

I went to my parents’ place in Saldanha on Saturday evening - our sanctuary in this storm - to see Louis and Skye and arrange the logistics to get them back into school.  It was terrible not to be with Tinus.  Fortunately his mother flew down to come see him and with all the visits from friends and other family he never had to be alone.  During the operation on Wednesday the doctor removed five glands from his lung to do further tests on, to see if the cancer spread.  On Monday morning the results came back from the laboratory - the cancer had spread.  I went numb.  Where Wednesday night was one of the longest nights in my life, Monday was the longest day.  

Monday late afternoon I called him again, knowing he was scheduled to see the oncologist during the day.  The oncologist explained that of the five glands that they have removed only one had cancer cells in.   One too many, but apparently not uncommon and not something we should be too concerned about.  They have decided that he will have chemo or radiation in about six weeks, four sessions, three weeks apart to make sure they kill all the remaining cancer cells. 

He was discharged from hospital on Tuesday… less than a week!!  We have decided to come and stay at the River Cottage here in Hopefield while Tinus recuperates.  What we need right now is peace and quiet, to take stock of what happened and to plan for the future, to be together, to take time out … and just to breathe.