We are just back from a long weekend at Southwold, on the Suffolk coast. Living in a landlocked county, I don’t get to the coast as often as I would like and this summer I have been desperate to swim in the sea, all the more so given my health situation. It’s long been my favourite form of self-medication. It is possible that I might get there again, but in case I can’t get to swim - either because it’s getting too near to the winter or I’m simply not well enough to - there was a sense of urgency to this visit.
The sea was rougher than I have ever known it there but I got three good swims in. The third was particularly brutal. Before I could get past the breakers, a huge wave knocked me clean off my feet and dragged me underwater, my left shoulder scraping against sharp pebbles. I just had time to surface and gasp a breath when another one smashed into me, and then another. Scary and thrilling at the same time to be suddenly that helpless.
In early 2018, I was found to have bladder cancer. Originally, I thought I would have cancer for only seventeen days before it would be dealt with. Then, at the last second, the procedure was cancelled, as something bigger had been discovered: the kidney cancer. And now I have been sideswiped by the arrival of pancreatic cancer.
Uh-oh. Here it comes. The wave that’s really going to wipe me out.
I'm not a swimmer. Never have been despite spending the first seven years of my life in Dovercourt (I'm very firmly an East Coast person). At the weekend we watched, via YouTube, fifteen year-old granddaughter compete in the East of England championships, impressive and proud-making, but this, in the untamed sea, sounds much more of a challenge, and enviable.
ReplyDeleteHello, Sandra. Impressive and proud-making indeed, how wonderful! I’m sure she had a great day.
ReplyDeleteThe sea certainly has all kinds of challenges. On the day before, I got in to the sea opposite the beach front café where my family was waiting. Even swimming as strongly as I could, I was simply unable to stay level with that position, the current relentlessly dragging me back along the beach in the direction of the pier. In the end I just had to get out and walk quite a way, shivering, back up to where they were 🙂