What's in the bucket?

One of the "Apostles", Port Campbell National Park.
Not so big that you can't fit it into a bucket.

It’s now just over four years since my blood took a dislike to me and decided to try and kill me. I’m not sure what I did to upset it; I took it to nice places, the best restaurants (well, the best of the middle to lower range restaurants). I’m sure we could have talked it through, sat down and discussed what was upsetting it’s little white cells, but no, it just seemed to want to mutate.

I am fortunate in some respects though. The rest of my body seems to have stayed on my side of the argument. My kidneys, liver, heart, brain are all playing together nicely. It’s just the bloody blood that’s cracked the $%#@ with me.

 
Before chemo came to the rescue with its arsenal of TKIs, four years was about how long it took for blood to win the battle and wipe out everything.  For some people, the TKIs don’t work as well and they still lose. There’s a Facebook group I sometimes look at – a closed group only for those who suffer from CML. And there was a ‘death in the family’ in this group recently. No-one I’ve actually met or really know, but someone I feel for; the pain of the hospital, a pain of having the treatment fail, a pain I have so far escaped.  

The woman who died had a bucket list, which included visiting the Great Ocean Road through the Otways and seeing the Twelve Apostles. I spent much of my youth surfing along the Otway coast – places like Lorne and Wye River. I loved the way the mountains dropped down into the ocean, the rivers that fell out of the hills in numerous waterfalls before carving out valleys into bays, and the surf that broke over the reefs that guarded the bays.

I haven’t been down that way for many years but I still remember that sitting on the Wye River pub balcony after a day surfing is as good as it gets. And I’m glad I learnt that, experienced that, before my blood turned sour.

I understand the idea of the bucket list but I think it’s important to remember what has already been ticked off as well as what is waiting to be experienced.