Christmas and New Year have never been a particularly remarkable time. The usual fare: Christmas food; quality time with friends and family; a bit too much wine; you know, the usual.
However this year was marked by two completely different events that have elicited the same response.
Firstly on New Year's Eve the house was broken into and the new television, blu-ray player and my laptop were stolen amongst a few other minor things. I wasn't at home at the time, but my mother had been a home.
After being told of the theft, I was first struck with the unpleasant discord of not only losing all my items, such as photographs from travels and all of my work documents from the last 6 years, but also the horrid feeling of having your privacy invaded. To have all your personal and private photographs and documents looked over by complete strangers, and not particularly nice ones at that, leaves a queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach.
But on New Year's Day I received an email from an old client, one I'd seen only once on Queen Mary 2, asking for help. A friend of hers is suffering from prostate cancer and is trying to do all that he can to battle the disease. Is there any advice that I can offer?
Receiving this email, immediately took me back to the time I was diagnosed with testicular cancer (my second diagnosis of cancer, the first being a fibrosarcoma on my right arm) and the treatment that followed. The consultant oncologist presented me with two treatment options after surgery. Chemo or no chemo. The advice he had to offer went along the lines of "if you have the chemotherapy, you reduce the chance of the cancer returning to 2%. If you don't, there's a 50% chance of it returning, and if it does return it'll most likely be stomach or lung cancer". Despite never really knowing my father, I knew he had died of lung cancer when I was 18.
To most people, it would've been a no-brainer, but I chose the option that to this day has seen me well. No chemotherapy, along with a huge change in diet and lifestyle and the use of alternative therapies.
The advise I offered to my client and her friend was that of not just good nutrition, but super-good nutrition. Upping the intake of vegetables and fruit from 5-a-day to more like 15-a-day. Buying organic only. Juicing the veg and fruit and taking it with wheatgrass, barleygrass or spirulina. Exercising. And taking apricot kernels (which contain the cancer cell fighter vitamin B17) as advocated by cancer journalist expert Phillip Day, author of: Cancer- Why We're Still Dying to Know the Truth.
Over the next few days, the effects of the robbery had started to settle (after all, there IS nothing that can be done) and I was left with a profound feeling of gratitude.
It's generally when big things in life occur, you start to ponder on the bigger picture. Stuff, is just that. It's stuff. And it's generally meaningless. Sure the missing photographs are a real shame, the missing work documents an annoyance, but thank goodness I still have my health. 8 years and counting, if you were wondering. And thank goodness my mother didn't wake up during the robbery, I hate to think what could have happened if she'd attempted to intercept. Thank goodness the dog DIDN'T make a sound. And thank goodness I still have my friends and my family.
If you take only one thing from this blog, don't make it sympathy, make it gratitude.
Be grateful for the gift of life, and live it to the fullest. You've only got one shot at it.
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