I can't get my head around the whole God thing lately.

Cancer challenges every belief you ever had.

It shakes your faith to the very core. Your faith in a higher power, your faith in your own body, your faith in friends and family, your faith in the medical profession at times too.

When I was first diagnosed, I was angry at God. I ranted and raved at him and demanded to know Why? Why had he smited me with this horrible disease? What had I done to deserve it?

I slowly came to the realisation that God didn't give me cancer. I started to think that maybe he'd guided my life so that when this happened, I'd be in the very best place to deal with it and get the very best treatment.

That faith stayed with me until my stage IV diagnosis, when I realised that it's utter bull. I had a doctor who'd taken a too casual approach to my situation, who'd brushed it aside, telling me that I was going to be fine and to go and live my life and they'd continue to screen me with their excellent follow-up. What a joke that turned out to be.

Stage IV opened my eyes about a lot of things.

So do I still believe?

I don't know.

I want to say yes, but as things stand now, just about the only things I have any faith in are my own backbone and the love of my husband and children. Everything else has been turned completely upside down and inside out. Those are my only constants.



I sometimes write on here about things I see other people say on one of my boards. That I do so is no reflection on them, it's more a case of what they said triggering my own thoughts and compelling me to write them down here.

Yesterday I read, the words, "We have a strong faith and he's not afraid to die..." It gave me pause for thought.

Let me preface my following statement by saying that I'm very happy for anyone who has that sort of faith, it must be so comforting.

But I just can't do it anymore.

See, I AM afraid to die.

Not only am I deathly (hmm possibly a bad choice of word) afraid of the end stage of my illness and what it's going to be like, but I'm terrified of the utter devastation that I will leave behind. Four devastated children and one devastated husband. I'm sorry, but to do that to them is beyond cruel. How can there be a God? How can this happen?

I think deep down I still believe, my faith has just been shaken more than at any time in my life.

I can't even say that it's something I'm struggling with. Cancer is struggle enough. I'm fighting to stay alive and it feels like I'm on my own. I want there to be a God. I still pray and I try to reach out to him, but I think he went on vacation, because he's not returning my calls.

Maybe I should try the other guy...


At the end of the day though, it probably just doesn't matter. You come into this world alone and naked and that's the way you're going to leave. If there's a Heaven, then I think I lived my life well enough within God's guidelines that I'll make it in. If there isn't and everything just ends when I take my last breath, then I won't know any different, will I?

I just hope that God doesn't desert my children and leave them stranded like he did me.

I was thinking the other day about the power of prayer, something which I have no trouble still believing in. Is it really about God, or is it due to the power of the human mind?

I don't know the answer to that, but I DO know that I feel the love and concern of all those praying for me and, maybe because that makes me feel less alone in all this, it really helps.