Tuesday 10 September 2013

The Story Unfolds


Firstly, an apology. I found out some good news on Friday and it only occurred to me that I should tell you all about it today - in my defence, granted a weak one, the good news was overshadowed by some terrible headaches which are now, thankfully being kept at bay by painkillers. So here it is *drum roll* the bone marrow transplant has been successful! The results from the bone marrow biopsy I had a few weeks ago shows that there are no cancerous cells and that the graft has taken. As I'm sure you can imagine, it is a huge relief to hear this news. The smoothness of the bone marrow transplant has been nothing short of a miracle, God never ceases to amaze me.

Today is day 46 post transplant and I thought i'd catch you up on what's been happening. Well, I've now moved to headingley but, you'll be glad to know, still resisting the temptation to go out all the time and have wild parties. I'm still going to hospital on tuesday and fridays for bloods and clinic. I've got a few endeavours that I'm working on at the moment; unfortunately, I can't publicly disclose their nature, so for now, I'm just going to leave you hanging. It's funny, because originally, I was only supposed to start off with three projects, but somehow they have miraculously increased to six; it really is a wonder to me how these things happen, maybe it's one of those feeding the five thousand things - but not to worry, I'm still taking it easy. In other exciting news, I'm teaching myself to play the piano and I've started off with Bach's Prelude No 1 in C Major from the Well Tempered Clavier. I've only every played the keyboard, but haven't played properly in eight years, and I've never played or read base clef before. What can I say? I like a challenge..

I'm still getting use to being on the outside. In a way, it feels like a dream, in another way it feels like a nightmare. The usual fears that I have talked about in my previous posts are still there, but don't bother me too much. But another challenge has arisen. How do I get back to being normal? Once I'm better, will I be able to get back to my usual life? But for now, I am content - I think. I am still waking up at 2am and 4am in the morning, but I have devised a clever plan to outwit and mock the sleep thief. I do a bible study during those times, topped off with listening to a sermon which, without fail, sends me off to sleep. For those of you who think that's incredibly pious, I assure you its not. It's simply a method for filling my head with something good. Plus the sermons are a much more effective sedative than the individual or cumulitive effect of codeine, morphine, zopiclone and lorazepam; but maybe with the exception of levomepromazine which sadly I'm not allowed anymore - something about making me too sleepy and happy, I dunno, I think they were just being grumpy. The down side, is that I have to listen to the same sermon two or three times to get the full content because I normally fall asleep in fifteen minutes. A wee disclaimer - I am not in anyway suggesting or endorsing that sermons are boring and they put you to sleep; I am merely using the sermons in another way for a different purpose.

The blessing and the curse of waking up in the early hours in the morning is that my mind is fully awake and I usually have my best ideas come to me or material for this blog. I was thinking last night about change, leadership, success and failure. It was a long drawn out conversation in my head but this is the summary of the conclusion I came to. The way to make change happen is to lead by example with humility, integrity, knowing your limits and a teachable spirit. The way to succeed is to first learn how to fail well. Multiple setbacks, builds up perseverance, resilience and teaches you to learn from your mistakes. If you learn to take the blows of failure and get back up again, then you will succeed at pioneering and leading change. I have been told many times in my life that I'm just chasing after the ideal and the world doesn't work that way. For some reason, this has always added more fuel to the fire for me and gave me a reason to pursue the ideal and not settle for less. You can call me a dreamer but there is one thing I know for sure. Nothing is impossible for God. The numbers of the opposition do not matter. God always counts as the majority, even when it is just God or God plus you. After all, if God is for us, then who can be against us.

1 comment:

  1. We are all so thankful. Susanna and Phoebe just both reminiscing about the time you were 'the star' at Christmas at SP. Phoebe hardly remembers SP but she remembers that, and you.

    We'll be praying for you in your reverse culture shock.

    love Judith, Simon, Susanna and Phoebe

    ReplyDelete

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