"Our revels now our ended," Or the Oncologist called.

Like all fools, I thought I could successfully argue with Death to leave me alone for at least a decade. But today, I learned time's loan shark is a miserable bastard. My oncologist called to speak with me about my follow-up CT scans for rectal cancer diagnosed in 2020.

I was able to read them online beforehand. So when he rang me this morning, I said "I regret I didn't study for them as if it was a final university exam."

To an oncologist, the scans are fine. There is no evidence of cancer anywhere in my body. I didn't think any cancer was going to be found. My surgical team was thorough with the cutting and radiation treatment before the operation to rid me of my cancer.

But there is a disease in me, killing me and not softly. The CT scan detected something that will extinguish me quicker and more harshly than I would like- “subpleural fine reticulations and ground glass opacities.”

I am showing signs in my lungs of the disease that killed my brother at 50 and my dad much later in life. Interstitial Lung Disease has no cure but generally extinguishes life within 3-5 years. Now that time scale was before Covid because as our 21st plague attacks the lungs; foetid ones are the first to go from a bout of the pandemic. There are drugs to slow the down the progression of the disease but it won't be a pleasant experience because this disease is incurable. I know what is ahead for me suffocation by increments, profound fatigue, confusion, depression, fear, anger and then release by dying.

I don't think I will stick around until the moment, I require oxygen therapy. You see, my great joy since I went through cancer during the time of covid is long solitary walks with my lungs breathing in deep, the clean air around the lake near where I live. To struggle for breath resting, or walking would be my line in the sand.

Now, I know some of you reading this may have interstitial lung diseases, PF, UIP, NSIP or all the other ones that quickly or slowly turn one's lungs to feel, as if they are paper lunch bags filled with wet sand. You may have found a detente with this disease, and I applaud you.

But I seriously doubt I will be able to. I am just too damn tired. The last 20 years have been long and arduous. At 59 closing, in on 60, I feel like Otzi the iceman making his final trek over the alps with rheumatic limbs and too many scraps with death behind him that he can't remember the last time he was allowed to rest.

I was 41 when I almost died from a heart attack, 46 when I buried my brother and became the sole caregiver to my dad, who was then at 86 years of age, almost dead from the acrimony of grief. Over the next ten years, I saved him and myself by repurposing him to become the "World's, Oldest Rebel."

Doing that gave some meaning for us to the premature deaths of my mother and brother. The work; we accomplished in the Harry's Last Stand project was a homage to them just as much as to the dead from my father's youth.

But no good deed goes unpunished because I drew another short straw with my health. Almost a year after his death, I was diagnosed with rectal cancer that required surgery and radiation treatment during the first months of lockdown in 2020.

Surviving my cancer, my treatment and then my recovery alone in the dystopian pandemic world knocked the wind out of me. Still, I continued preserving the work my father and I did during the last years of his life and even wrote a book about our life together that- despite being well-written and timely, may never find a publisher.

But I am not daunted. I persevere in keeping the Harry's Last Stand project on track. I am arranging my dad's final edits for, his first two books- that he wanted to reissue before his death. I publish at least five new essays a month and have started writing a new book that again may never find a publisher- not because it lacks merit, talent or timelessness but because I don't tick the right boxes. There is also a large multi-media project about Harry's Last Stand, nearing completion, which is work that I am very proud of.

Health wise, I am on borrowed time, and I know it. There is also a fair chance that I will go quicker than others with this disease first because I won't do oxygen therapy and secondly, I am tapped out financially. Death comes quickly to the poor in a society hollowed out by the 1% as if it was a tree to a pileated woodpecker.

My doctor has referred me to a Respirologist pulmonologist to confirm and assess the best options through more tests that the CT scans show. When will I be seen by a specialist; is the question. The covid plague has made Respirologists the in-demand specialist. Covid scars the lungs with the same cruelty as fibrosis and leads to the same breathless symptoms. It's why Respirologists are hard to come by during this era when our politicians are deliberately destroying public healthcare to enrich their hedge fund mates.

I am no fool. Any treatment for my lungs is about forestalling death, not defeating it. So, I better get cracking because I am laying odds I won't be around or want to be around in 2025 if this disease does what it did to my brother and father. My time for breathing is short. So I will use it wisely, to try to finish my tasks and grab some happiness from the air around me. For now, with deep strong breaths, I leave you to take my walk.

Thank you for reading my substack. Your support and subscriptions help me maintain my dad Harry Leslie Smith’s legacy alive as well as keep me housed. On February 25, 2023 Harry Leslie Smith would have been a hundred. I think he would have been sickened that his warning to not make his past our future became true. Take care, John