Hurdles I have leapt

A few months ago I found that I had a lot of cancer in my stomach that had various consequences

* I could eat only small meals 

* My stomach was often painful

* I got bouts of severe nausea  roughly every second day

Dealing with that meant that I took painkillers (Tramadol) as a palliative measure.  But the painkillers had two troublesome side-effects:

*Vertigo

*constipation

So I suddenly had five hurdles to overcome instead of one.

* Then came a further problem.  I have always tended to insomnia  and that suddenly became worse.  Some nights I would not sleep at all.  The doctors gave me the strongest sleeping pills available (e.g. Zolpidem and Alprazolam)  but they did not help.  Sleep deprivation is however destructive to both one's physical and mental health so cancer was suddenly the least of my worries.  If I was to solve my insomnia I would have to do it all by myself and I would have to do it in a matter of days.

I took a lesson from my pioneer ancestors: Grit.  Medical help was often not available to them so they simply ignored the problem until it either went away or killed them.  

I have got nothing like the grit they had but I do have some.  So I simply threw away all my pills and just lived through the insomnia.  If I was awake I was awake and if I could sleep I slept. I let events take their course and simply accepted that I could not control them.  I hoped that once free of chemicals my body would return to a healthy default state.

And it did. One cannot expect a complete cure of a life-long problem but I do now sleep at night at irregular intervals  and I get a couple of hours of naps in during the day. It's enough.

....

So what about my cancer?  I go to a private  oncologist and he got me into a clinical trial of a system designed to alert my immune system to the cancer. The immune system then attacks and destroys the cancer. It costs a bomb and sounds fanciful and it does not always work but I have always had a good immune system and it has worked for me after just two months.  I am now well on the way to slow but complete recovery. I now take no pills whatever. I have successfully leapt all six hurdles

A BONUS

My illness has had one good effect. I have lost a lot of weight. So I am no longer a fat man. I am of fairly normal weight for height. Behold below a photo that Jenny has recently taken of me