And another first!

I don't recall the last time I walked past the hospital where I had surgery last December. It isn't the same hospital that I went to for radiotherapy or where I have my regular check-ups. Today, however, I had to go to the city and found myself walking past the red brick edifice that marks the entrance to the vast warren of buildings that go to make up that hospital. I find it hard to imagine what happened last year. I wonder if, somehow, we simply 'forget' things that are too difficult to think about? Walking past the place today brought the memories back but, although I can see the scenes leading up to diagnosis and surgery, they're happening to someone else, not to me at all. I am merely an observer.

All the buildings in this city trigger memories for me, some from my childhood, some from young adulthood. Last year's experience, then, has been relegated to the place in my mind where the flashbacks to those earlier times reside.

The memory isn't painful. I appear to have blocked out too much from that time to find it at all disturbing. But then, I have never really felt connected to my cancer or to my treatment. It happened to someone else, it seems.

Reflecting on all this made me realise that the last time I used today's car park was just before I became really ill. I would leave my car there and head off to the course I'd enrolled on at the 'old' university in the city. By the end of the day, I would be so tired that I could hardly drag myself the 400 metres or so from lecture room to car park. Today, the walk that took me around 25 minutes then took roughly 7 minutes. How could I have become so feeble so quickly and not noticed? What a difference a year's made!