Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
Spike Milligan
I received official confirmation that I will be given an early pension based on ill health. How does it feel? Where to begin? An old friend from Israel (who clearly hadn't been following my blogs, hmm) asked if I had won the lottery. Well here's the thing...
Life is a lottery, it really is. Not one of us knows what is going to happen, for good or bad. I didn't think that I would be giving up work for good at the age of 42. Had someone told me this may happen it would have been incomprehensible. Obviously my circumstances are adverse but can we really take good from bad? Again, I would not necessarily have believed so just a short time ago. However the saying that life is what you make it, is the truth. Without adopting a new perspective I would not have been able to cope very well with what is my life today. Olivia asked me the other day if I would still be here this Christmas. I was able to reassure her that I would, because I will, as far as I know, unless something happens outwith my control between now and then. This is the case for all of us. However when she then asked me about the following Christmas I was less confident of my reply. Instead of giving a yes or no answer I told her that as it was a long time away let's not think too much about it, but instead focus on the here and now. She seemed pretty happy with that answer, oh the wonder of being ten.
This is the problem we lose ourselves as we leave childhood. As adults in modern society we are often not living in the present, but instead projecting and thinking of what we will do next. Now, being in the position that I am in is a bit like being a child again. Every day is lived without giving too much time to thinking about the next one. It's very healthy and very liberating. Having confirmation that I will not be returning to work enhances that freedom. I am about to close one chapter of my life but at the same time I am going to open a new one. I will miss certain aspects of working life but I will enjoy the new aspects of being retired and I wont look back. This is all part of what I suppose is acceptance. My cancer diagnosis, subsequent NHS fuck ups and my somewhat precarious health condition today is what it is. I cannot change it. I can only do the best with it. If I wallow in it my time will be wasted. Today I recognise that. A year ago I could not have contemplated retiring. It would have seemed too final, too much like the cancer had taken my life. It has not, not yet. It has instead put me on a different path.
I will now, thanks to the SPPS and other finances put in place by me, have an income, which while by no means extravagant, will afford me a decent life. In this crazy busy life that we lead, not everyone thinks about bad news being bestowed upon them. It's no surprise, it's a bloody depressing thought. However with cancer on the increase and affecting younger people it is perhaps advisable that we do take stock of potential health problems both cancer and otherwise. Life is hard when you are terminally or chronically ill and finances should not add further to this. My advice is for people to ensure that should they become unwell, they have some financial cover in place. I took out policies many years ago on the advise of others, that as a single parent I would be best placed to have financial cover should anything happen. The difference in monthly outgoings was minimal. I wisely acted accordingly. This, thankfully has helped me through these unforeseen circumstances and allows me to retire and live a different life to the one I imagined, it allows me to accept what is going on. Money is a vital part of our wellbeing both mentally and physically. The philosophy of "it will never happen to me" is a good one and probably the only way to keep sane and actually live life. However, when it comes to protecting yourself should it happen to you, it's not a bad plan. At the risk of sounding like an advert for Aviva (that's who I was insured with), I would strongly recommend that people think about safeguarding themselves in times of illness. Over the years I would contemplate cancelling policies, with a why am I wasting money attitude. Thankfully I never did and I look back now and realise that the money I would have saved would have been spent on irrelevant things. I am aware that not everyone can afford to insure themselves as much as they would like but I would say that it is worth investigating. MacMillan research has shown that the people worst affected by cancer are those in full time employment. Government benefit agencies are not very compassionate to those diagnosed with cancer. Just in the last 2 years changes have been made to Disability Living Allowance, in that cancer patients are far less likely to be eligible for it. This, sadly will only get worse. It's not so dissimilar to my warnings about the NHS, take action, look after yourself. I can accept my life today and make the best of a bit of a bad hand, that would be harder to do if I had my life turned upside down through financial hardship. No one wants to think that they will get cancer, and hopefully you won't but there's no harm in dipping your toe in the murky water, protecting yourself and then carrying on with living life as happily as you can. So instead of buying the scratch card or the "winning" ticket every Saturday, perhaps it's wiser to invest in the most unpredictable lottery of them all... the one that we call life.
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