Living With Gladys Full Time

Well, its certainly been a busy week for us after the curve ball news last Thursday.

The Universe worked its magic again and as hoped for, we moved into our beautiful garden flat on Good Friday. Our army of helpers also worked their magic and, within the space of a few hours, the furniture was arranged (Alistair’s seat as ever came in first only this time round we all decided he had good reason to sit watch the whole move unfold from the comfort of his sofa), the kitchen unpacked and organised (thanks to my beautiful radiantly expectant daughter) and the bed assembled (thanks to uncle paul) and generally made like home. We are so blessed, our family members batted not one eyelid at changing their plans, clearing their diaries, driving for miles out of their way and generally being bloody brilliant all round to both of us. Thank you guys so much we appreciate all that you do for us.

We spent Saturday literally weeping and generally needing the wambulance in gratitude for our new home. I found Alistair wondering around, in and out of the garden, back and forth in the flat almost in awe and overwhelmed with gratitude. It feels like its meant to be. Ive sort of hoisted myself by my own petard there as I often say to my clients “because something feels like it, it doesn’t mean its true”. However, I feel in this instance it is true 🙂

So, Easter Weekend was spent mostly with family, a flat warming of sorts, lots of laughter, lots of love, lots of joy and a sprinkling of tears.

That sprinkling of tears though became a river of tears as this week unfolded. An ex client of Alistair’s who is high up in the echelons of charity work heard about the curve ball, and together with Hannah, spear headed a crowd funding campaign to raise the funds necessary to get Alistair to Germany.

They worked so hard between the 2 of them and, by late Monday evening, the campaign “Save Alistair” went live.

My goodness, humankind, ladies and gentleman, is well and truly alive and kicking. The kind affirmations, sincere good wishes and messages of hope that we have received have been amazing. I am not surprised, Alistair is truly a great man, but like many great men, he doesn’t see himself in the same light. He is private, unassuming and never in his wildest imagination believed that people would vote for him in droves. But they have, they are doing and I have no doubt they will continue to do so I am sure until the target is achieved. £30,000 to send him to Germany, for a chance of survival, to beat the odds and continue to bring joy, love, warmth and healing to those that love him and those that need him.

So, I hope that this blog post will reach an audience far and wide and that the members of the audience will hold Alistair in their prayers, in their own private spiritual beliefs, to believe in his ability to heal and if they are able to do so to contribute to the “Save Alistair” campaign.

The link is:

http://gogetfunding.com/project/save-alistair#/project_details

You can also follow on the Facebook page, Save Alistair.

And please, keep sharing this link, share it every day, tweet it, email, text it, and help to Save my man; loved by many and nowhere near ready to leave us x

The Curve Ball struck us a low blow on Thursday when we were told Alistair has metastatic Prostate cancer in some of his bones. To be honest, the possibility that this was the case had been on both of our minds for quite a while although we remained hopeful that the pain was due to other reasons other than cancer.

Let me first state that right from the beginning in 2011 when Alistair was first diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer, his choice was to be involved as little as possible with the established medical model and the non curative treatments it had to offer him. On our long walks through Epping Forest in the early days of his diagnosis he would say to me ” Rebeks, Ive learnt so much, I’ve changed so much and the changes we have made in our life make so much sense to me, if this thing takes me out, I still wouldn’t have done it differently, Im glad Im walking this path, its the right one for me”. And that is still his position today. You cannot bend someone and force them rigidly in to a treatment plan that not only disregards their inner most beliefs but also along the way assaults and breaks their spirit.

Its difficult to help people understand what it is like stepping into a world that completely contradicts the philosophy of health by which we try to live our lives each and every day. Every time Alistair gets sucked into more tests, more treatment plans, more cynical responses to our choices he loses his beliefs and strength to continue on his own path a little more. His sister Gillian calls it, ‘the cycle of intervention’,  it takes over and his individuality and uniqueness goes out of the window.

Alistair honours many of the principles of Naturopathic Medicine such as treating the whole person, first doing no harm, believing in the healing power of nature, promoting wellness even in the presence of disease, practising as much preventative medicine as possible, finding and treating the cause of the illness and taking responsibility for his own health and wellness from those qualified to impart their knowledge.

These principles that we both honour and Alistair deserves are not to be found in the waiting rooms of the old allopathic hospitals that we have frequented over the past  year. They are sorely lacking in the consultations we have sat through, and, although we got lucky with a fairly respectful consultant radiologist  on Thursday, we came up against the epitome of all that assaults and batters our souls in the embodiment of her colleague, a consultant senior oncologist who spoke at us for 2 minutes, totally disrespected our values, had zero interest in Alistair as a whole person and really just saw him as a specimen for his study on people who are medically fucked and could be used as research fodder for his trial.

The trial, which totally obliterates another much needed system in Alistair’s body, would cease to be effective after about 18 months and then… oh well… keep taking these other pills for the rest of your life (whats left of it) as your body won’t be able to function without them as you have zero immune system left. The immune system for gods sake, probably one of the most important systems to keep functioning well when fighting cancer!!! But you see this is the problem here, in the eyes of the medical system in this country Alistair is walking the green mile.

Thats not true though for other cancer treatment centres in other countries. They see the whole person, wholly believe that cancer, no matter how severe the grading, is treatable and curable and they uphold all of the principles in health that Alistair honours. They also provide allopathic treatments but not in a stand alone capacity but alongside naturopathic interventions that will support Alistair’s immune system and limit the damaging effect of the more conventional treatments. All of these places offer hope, faith and understanding and not one of them is available to us here in the UK or on the NHS. What a sad state of affairs for all cancer sufferers who deserve more than the one size fits all approach that has consumed and dominates the field of oncology in the UK today.

So please, I ask you to think before you glibly say to someone with cancer “get the treatment here, extend your life, do what the doctors tell you’. It takes a very strong, brave and courageous person to go their own route and withstand the cynical judgemental looks from the medical profession and people who haven’t taken the time to understand. I am honoured to have one such man as my husband, and I will stand by him and every single decision he makes about his own journey into health and wellness until my very last breath x

Never ever judge anyones choices until you have walked for 40 days in their moccasins.

So, where to start?

You will notice if you read through my old posts that one of my favourite phrases is “life’s rich tapestry”. I use it a lot because I like it!

And, yet again our tapestry is being woven by life in a complicated and tricky pattern, its taking some balls to wade through it!.

After nearly 2 years in Gladys, sadly, the time has come for us to move into a more conventional place once again. There are a few reasons but the main one is for Alistair. He has taken a bit of a nose dive in terms of his health over the past few months and to be honest the comfort and space of conventional living is right now the most important thing for him. Its seems to have been forever that this bloody prostate cancer has been going on. Don’t get me wrong, there has been lots of time over the past 2  1/2 years when he has felt really well and looked amazing, but when these ‘not so well’ spells come along its really tough going. At the moment he is in a lot of pain and seems to be peeing blood on a daily basis. According to the last registrar we saw at The Royal this is normal, but I can tell you its disconcerting when its ongoing.

He succumbed to the request of his registrar and went ahead with some scans a couple of weeks ago and we are hoping to get the results this Thursday. For anybody that has been in this situation you will know exactly what this time feels like. We half want to know and half don’t want to know. Its been difficult for Alistair to keep his spirit up, especially over the last few weeks. It seems to coincide with hospital visits, he gets lost in the negativity of the medical model, seems to lose his power and fight. Thats no good, without his fight he will sink, not happening, no way, so I must rally myself , dig deep and keep positive for both of us. Not so easy but definitely achievable, especially having a few people that I can off load on to, that gives me a chance to unburden my fears and then regroup and get on again.

Tonight though he is a bit more positive and seems like he is getting his mojo back again. I think if we can get some pain management in place he will be able to see a way forward again.

So, back to our move. Synchronicity has been at its very best over the last 2 weeks to secure our new little abode. Saw it a good few weeks ago, loved it from the outside, no the landlady wouldn’t allow pets so we deleted it from our list. It remained on the market unlet so we asked again, would she consider a dog… yes she would think about… 2 days later….she’s thought abut it and No, she wouldn’t feel comfortable allowing a dog. So with heavy hearts but trusting the universe would help us find the right place we let go of it. 30 minutes later….there had been a change of heart could we go and meet her with Archie. So we drove off to Saffron Walden on the 5th April, met the most lovely land lady and were just delighted to view the most quirky and peaceful feeling garden flat, with,a long garden for Archie and a small overgrown vegetable plot for me to grow my own organic veg…synchronicity at its very best and quite a few prayers from my sister and niece no doubt.

Gladys has been an amazing home for us for almost 2 years, she has served us well and taught us so much, and those learnings will stand us in good stead as our new chapter  unfolds.

So on Good Friday aided by our little band of family helpers we will begin the next chapter of our lives…and hope and pray and ask all things in love and light from the universe that life is what Alistair has much much more of