This Too Shall Pass

The next few days became a whirlwind of tests and appointments at both the main hospital and local community clinics. Looking back at my diary as I write this, I attended six separate appointments in the space of just ten days. Before long, it became a logistical challenge simply keeping track of where I’d been, where I was supposed to be, and where I was going next.

Emotionally, though, I think I’d become strangely detached from it all.

A couple of years earlier, I’d spent many months researching the wartime experiences of a relative, Ted Mayhew, who was captured during the early months of the Second World War and remained a prisoner of war until 1945. Suddenly, I found myself reflecting on what those first few days after his capture might have felt like. He had done everything expected of him, yet in an instant his future was no longer his own. He wouldn’t have known where he was going, what would happen next, or what life had in store.

I’m certainly not comparing my experience with his. But I did begin to understand, in a very small way, what it feels like when your life is suddenly no longer governed by your own diary, but by other people making decisions on your behalf.

I know that by this time I wasn’t sleeping well and was having vivid, unsettling dreams. Looking back, I’m not surprised. My brain was probably trying to make sense of a torrent of unfamiliar information while quietly processing emotions that I hadn’t really allowed myself to acknowledge.

As the clinical side of things gathered pace, the administration sometimes struggled to keep up. Appointments appeared, disappeared, and changed with little warning. The final straw came when I carefully prepared myself for my very first chemotherapy session, taking the steroid tablets exactly as instructed, only to arrive at the hospital and discover that the treatment had been postponed until the following day. Nobody had thought to tell me.

It was terribly upsetting. I’d spent days preparing myself mentally for that first chemotherapy session, only to be sent home again.

Fortunately, twenty-four hours later, I was back.

And this time, there was no turning back.

If you want to read Ted Mayhew’s POW story, you can click on the button below (link opens in new tab)