I beg forgiveness for all the letters I have not answered – I will get round to it … eventually.
But there is a good reason why I haven’t and why book 3 of Dark Glass Mountain is going to be a little-ish late (how late depends on me right now).
For close on 6 months I have been feeling shocking – it got dramatically worse 4 months ago since when I haven’t been able to work at all. Even making a cheese sandwich to eat has required monumental mental and physical effort. Doctors have spent a lot of time and a lot more of my money trying to decide what was wrong with me, coming up with roughly a different diagnosis per week, but fortunately (or not, as the case may be) they finally managed to settle on a firm diagnosis about 3 weeks ago, since when my life has been turned upside down several times over.
I have been diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer, so now I am on a course of chemotherapy, to be punctuated with major surgery in January-ish of next year, followed by more chemotherapy. I am happy to have a diagnosis (although I did try desperately to renegotiate back to one of the earlier ones!) and more than happy to now have a course of therapy and A Plan for the future.
Happily the chemotherapy has been working fairly well – even though I have just the one course of it thus far. I had a hellish week following the chemo, but the week following that has been rather good – yesterday I cooked myself a pork roast and vegetables! You have no idea what an achievement that was for me – not simply being able to eat a meal like that after months of constant nausea and vomiting, but finding the mental and physical energy to prepare it, too. I have been happily snacking on delicious roast pork ever since. So I am feeling fairly positive. Pork does that for me.
I have an amazing team of two oncologists (one surgical, one medical), one oncology nurse, one set of chemotherapy nurses and an awful lot of support from my friends and family, which has been awesome. Sometimes you don’t realise just what is out there for you until something like this happens. I am very positive for the future, but I am also looking forward to taking at least a year out to concentrate on me rather than write. Sara Douglass will be taking a break, so Sara Warneke can concentrate on herself for the time being.
But there is something some of you might like to do for me, if you wish. I have many friends who live very far away, and all of them wanted to do something, but what? Well, many of them have joined my Rake Squad.
I have a visualisation thing I do regularly. I visualise I live in a beautiful walled orchard. It has only six trees, but that’s enough for one person. There is emerald green grass and white daisies growing between the trees and stretching to the sandstone walls, and the sun shines down on the orchard with a soft, lovely light. But a gribbly black monster has taken up residence in one of the trees, and he’s casting down all kinds of black fungus-laden leaves about the place.
Each day I go in there and I rake all those black leaves up and then take them out to the incinerator through the cast iron gate in the wall and burn them to white ash. I can do that much, at least. I can’t do much about the gribbly black monster just yet, except poke him with my rake and curse him in words I can’t print here and tell him he’s not going to get my orchard, thank you very much, and wait for my tree surgeon (Penny the surgeon) to come on in and cut him out, but in the meantime raking up the fungus-laden leaves is important. I was explaining this to a distant friend and she said, “I’ll come in and rake, too!” and suddenly I have lots of people in there raking and manning the incinerator and the table of tea and cream puffs and whiskey (someone insisted on the whiskey) set up for the rakers by the raging incinerator.
So if you’d like to join the Rake Squad you have no idea how much I’d appreciate it. Those black leaves sometimes accumulate a little too quickly, and some days I am too sick and too down-hearted to go in and rake myself. I am unashamedly asking for a bit of help with the raking. You can send me an email at sde@oldlondonmaps.com just to let me know you’ll be in there raking occasionally – the Rake Squad could always use a few more rakers!
Anyway, I can’t stop thinking about that cold pork in the fridge so must dash for now. Thanks to everyone for their patience regarding their letters – I will get about to replying eventually, but likely not for a little bit yet.
Please help Sara with her raking. I have anohter friend fighting this disease at present. Believe me, she'll need all the support she can get.
