Today as I sit at the top of Mt Chemo my limbs are stiff and the after effects of St Eroid's last hurrah leave me rather weary.  As I look back whence I have come, it is remarkable how quickly and how slowly the last sixteen weeks have elapsed... in one sense I can no longer remember a time before I entered this strange new world and I have forgotten what it was like not to live with a diary full of medical appointments; there are moments when I'm not even sure I'm the same person who began this climb.  It has been a strange time for sure, and one from which there is no returning to life before it began.

I realise now I am part of a 'one third world' within the western 'one third world' - for all our wealth and prosperity, a third of us live with cancer, and it is, it feels, a world within a world.  I have been surprised how upsetting it has been to hear of the deaths of Brian Hanrahan or Peter Postlethwaite, fellow inhabitants of this world within a world.  It's not that I ever met them or knew much about them, just the knowledge that they, too, climbed this mountain but for them it was not enough... the vulnerability of those who travel this path is all too evident and yet so commonplace that from outside it slips by almost unobserved.  A strange new world indeed.  I have so much to be grateful for - my climb seems to have been successful and largely struggle-free and it is a strange moment to celebrate that with appropriate humility.

Along the way I have already learned a lot of 'stuff' about this world and how to live within and beyond it.  At some point it will be right to share some of that, but for now it is good simply to pause, to look back down the slope and realise that it is now behind me.