Procrastination and the ticking time bomb

Since the outset of this blog, I always promised myself that I would write the truth, I would let everyone reading this blog feel my very real emotion, they would walk this journey with me, and they would feel my fight. I have not and will not hold back my emotions in order to make this a less turbulent read. Those emotions that I feel are the real, raw, unhindered emotions that I face every single second of every single day, and it would be a gross injustice to lie to you, but even more to to lie to myself.

The most beautiful yet at the same time hindering lesson I have learnt so far is that to procrastinate is to put off the inevitable, and when we are all fighting a battle against our primordial clock, it seems pretty illogical. When you accept that there are certain things you can and cannot control, you get a greater perspective on life.

I have learnt to accept some pretty massive life lessons in a very short amount of time. We all meander along in life, some more driven to obtain something, a desire planted in the back odour mind. Even if we are not sure of what it is, how we hope to achieve it, or the means of obtaining it, it may be an objective, we may not be sure what that objective is, but some day we hope to have a moment of where the toils and struggles amount to something. It is then that our lives hope to make sense, where everything and everyone we have met in life serves to meet this objective, and we then know our purpose.

As I lay, with my bottom on the freezing theatre table, surrounded by equipment that far exceeds my mental capacity, I asked myself, "Brad, if you don't wake up from this, what can you account for in your life... ". That's a pretty big question for a 24 year old to answer. What I am referring to is not material, it is not something that can be obtained through material wealth, I have now learnt that that is very insignificant. I am referring to those moments we look for in life that we will remember for the rest of our lives, the moments where we witness majesty, or something majestic. Have you seen everything you want to see, in order to account for a life well spent. As my friend Stuart Kidgell puts it, "the medical sword is hanging over all our heads", I just have to acknowledge my enemy sooner than hoped.

We all get stuck in moments of limbo, the moments when we wander between a place we may be comfortable with, to a place we hope to be going. Of course it is easy to get settled into a routine, see the same scene every day and go through the same motions, but we witness the great things in life when routine is broken, and all too often people are afraid of breaking routine. We like routine. All of that gets completely blitzed when you have to do the same thing when you are knowingly sleeping on an active time bomb.

I do not mean that in a negative way, because I maintain my positivity throughout, this tumour is still in my head, and I am still determined to fight, and win. I have my next batch of scans and tests in April, and I can live inside a padded room for the next month and a half, or I can see the people that mean the most to me, do the things I cherish above all others, and hopefully laugh continuously for the next 2 months. We are all guilty of forgetting about how valuable life is, we procrastinate and in so doing we lose out on the things we should be doing.

I am also guilty of procrastination over the last week or so,I have been so involved with this whole thing, that I forgot to take stock of the battle that has been fought, and the people who have fought it with me. My family, girlfriend and friends have been through this entire battle with me. They have pulled me out of the darkness, and at times it felt like I was crawling out of a hole dug in the sand. The walls felt as if they were caving in, my own drive and determination to get out of the pit was making the walls crumble faster.

 I have not been sleeping well, I spend most of the night trying to find any subject that will drive my mind far away from the current reality. In the end, I find solace in my own thoughts, and at least I still have the mental power to think.

 I have been up and down, and that is the road you ride when you fight this foe, you learn to accept that time is a precious commodity, and the price we pay for it is so so high, because if you sit on your laurels trying to fight time, you miss out on life. I go to sleep every night knowing that I will ply all of my mental strength into pushing this thing out of my mind, both physically and mentally. Perhaps it is just wishful thinking, and positive interpretation, but those 3 operations, and countless hours spent with doctors, nurses and specialists could have gone down another route entirely.

It's only looking back do I realise how close everything came, when I read the reports on my surgery do I shudder, as I imagine those doctors huddled over a 24 year olds motionless body, but not dead, inside that body there is all the fight left in the world. If you lose your will to fight, the battle is already lost. After surgery I, at times, have felt different. I, in essence, am the same Brad, yet I interpret thing differently. I procrastinate less, and live more. We are so afraid to lose out in case another option opens up, a more favourable option. I go to bed tonight knowing that if I had procrastinated with that first MRI, I wouldn't be here today. I am now living everyday, and I am so incredibly grateful for every second.