"Please forgive me if I have not commented on your many posts over the past two months or answered your daily queries, but quite honestly, my body has been tired and in need of total relaxation throughout the day in order to keep me going from one chemotherapy session to the next and my mind has been taxed sufficiently by simply composing my morning post.
I am, however, managing to negotiate the treatment despite the constant muscular pain it produces in my feet and hands. Sickness is being kept to a minimum although my body requires constant warmth and can be found in front of the fire most of the day. Sheila says that the lounge is like a furnace.
To say that I have had three separate cancers diagnosed in my body since early 2013, and am presently three-quarters of the way through my second course of chemotherapy, I am so greatful still to be alive to deliver my morning posts. There was a period of six weeks hospitalisation after I was admitted as an emergency on Boxing Day just past when it looked like I wouldn't make it and unknown to myself or Sheila a 'Do not resuscitate' (DNR) was medically placed on my hospital file. Thanks to all of your daily prayers and thoughts I did make it and have been fit enough to battle on since.It is good to be alive and is better still to be alive and to know that one is much loved and is in so many people's daily thoughts and prayers.
While I have believed in God, the power of prayer, miracles and the love of my wife and family since embracing all, there is presently within me a will to live that defies the very circumstances that surround me daily. I know in my own heart and soul that my time has not arrived and it shall not be this year; and I give my cancer full notice that though it gives me stomach ache from time to time, however much it disturbs and plays havoc with my inside, it will never prevent my determination to see out another spring, enjoy another summer, prevent me kicking autumn leaves one more time and see through another winter.
It is not much different to the story I was told as a youngster when a fox trapped a child and threatened to eat it. In his entreaty, the boy offered the greedy fox a deal he'd be unwise to turn down when he said, 'If you eat me, Mr Fox, I will only give you a stomach ache and you shall still require more food to satisfy your appetite. But.......if you spare me, I shall tell you where the fattest chickens roost and are to be found in abundance.'
There are so many of my Facebook friends who are visited by cancer and whose daily existences become the hardest of struggles. Please do not give up your heart or life to the greedy predator who wants to devour you. Instead, take a deep breath, pray for a sunny day and give warning to your cancer that if it wants to take your life, first it must take your 'will to live.' Like the reformed alcoholic, the person with cancer or other terminal illness has to learn to live each day one day at a time, and in the full knowledge that every sunny dawn one wakes to is God's blessing and mankind's reward. Have a good day, for I intend to make the most of mine." William Forde: April 22nd, 2017.