Sometimes you don’t want to write. Not about cancer anyway, it’s crap and depressing and I don’t feel it is a huge part of my life anymore. Other than scan time when I’m petrified, I generally think of it as something that happened to me, not something that is ongoing.

Through the support network, Ocumeluk, I have got to know many truly inspirational people, people that I would choose as friends in real life and not just because cancer has thrown us together. I put those people in compartments, those diagnosed at the same time as me, those further down the line who have needed more treatment for recurrence in the eye, those who have needed their eye removed, those with liver mets, those who had plaque radiotherapy. In my head I have people to turn to for every eventuality. Someone who has been there, done that and bought the T-shirt.

My favourite people are the happy people, people who never seem to let it bother them (although we know of course it does). People who always want a laugh and can see the funny side in such sh*t times. That’s my type of person, as humour has definitely dragged me through my darkest days. This blog is for one of those people and who I felt was the same as me treatment wise. David was in my box of ‘treated and doing well.’ He always sent messages of encouragement when I felt scared and was just a bloody decent guy. He would sometimes share  my blog on his page which I found hugely complimentary.

When I came off social media for a while after christmas, he had posted the awful news that his scan had shown spread. So when I returned to FB I immediately regretted it. I was shocked and sad. I messaged him and he told me in brutal honestly what the consultant had told him. He was looking at a maximum of three years. His Facebook page was always full of pictures of him and his family, happy pictures with his wife, a man in love. What could I say? Humour bypassed me. I just replied ‘that’s sh*t.’ I hoped that within three years treatments would change and offer him a lifeline, I told him so. Tragically he never even had those three years. His wife informed us all on Friday night that he had passed away earlier in the week. An extremely kind soul gone.

The loss of anyone just creates that confusion of how and where? The slow realisation that no more message will come from him. He is no longer with us. And if that loss is felt so powerfully by those just close through a cancer group, imagine the immense loss felt by his family and friends? But I don’t want to be doom and gloom as I know he wasn’t. I have just struggled to feel lighthearted  while writing.

I thought back to Friday night when the notification came through that there was a post from his FB page, I hadn’t managed to open it in time before I clumsily dropped my phone down the loo! So I would just like him to know, wherever he is, that when people were offering condolences on Friday evening, I was fishing around a toilet at a Robbie Williams concert trying to retrieve my dropped  phone. I’m sure he would see the humour in this.

So I raise a glass to you my friend, wherever you are.  Wishing desperately that this blog wasn’t about you, wishing you were still in my box of ‘treated and doing well.’ I will miss your kind words, your crazy ramblings and your comments on our eye cancer group. I haven’t posted for a while on the group, but I know when I do I will wonder where your comment is, wonder why you haven’t messaged or replied and then I will remember,  that you have gone.

You will be missed. Be at peace.

Cheers my friend xxx