An English Summer

While summer itself was a bit of a blur, there were definitely a few stand out moments. Within a few weeks in England, I quickly realised I had changed beyond all recognition - more fearful, more resentful and a little bit angry. I guess melanoma does that. So my standout moments weren’t exactly good ones.

I spent much of July praying about whether to go ahead with the additional surgery recommended by the Spire melanoma surgeon. My mum’s advice about seeking God and him always replying when we need an answer just didn’t play out for me. Sadly, all I heard was deafening silence. Therefore, in August, I conformed with the medical establishment’s advice and had more skin was taken away for the princely sum of £750. The result came back 42 days later clear of any malignant cells. I guess God felt the private hospital needed the money more than I did. 

In addition to private skin surgery, I’d tried to get back in the NHS system by re-registering with the local surgery and repeatedly asking them to run a repeat blood test to see if my liver function had returned to normal levels (from a test I’d had done in the Philippines). After several weeks, they agreed to the retest and, miraculously, the liver function came back normal. However, some other variables weren’t right at all (notably WBC was out of range indicating potential inflammation and cholesterol was super low). And that’s the way it seemed to go for me: a glimmer of good news before succumbing to yet another google search and the bad news that search result would inevitably bring.

In terms of work, I managed to get through six long days a week for two months. I learnt a lot about myself along with how to run a small store and manage the phones for the surf school bookings side of the business. While I was hardly a natural (I don’t like shopping or retail stuff in general), the store didn’t suffer too much and I managed to get on top of the bookings system. I didn’t want Ben’s business to lose anything due to my inexperience and, thankfully, I don’t think it did. And for me it was a bit of a refuge; the busyness kept my mind off other things. Of course, it didn’t all go well down there. Indeed, when the pastor of the church I’d normally attend in Norwich came down for his daughter’s surf lesson, he seemed fairly indifferent to my situation and just asked if he could get a wetsuit. Meanwhile, his wife didn’t even recognise me. In my fragile state, I took offence to these incidents and just felt they didn’t care less. 

It wasn’t a good weather summer either, but since I no longer cared for sunshine that was one of the better features of the season. More than ever before, I started to appreciate the clouds rolling in or thunder showers ruining a lovely day. That’s what melanoma had turned me into: a scared person in the shade or celebrating the onset of rain - a far cry from living my dream life on the tropical island of Siargao.