Happy Birthday to

Well the blog actually....

2 years old already - perhaps the "Terrible Twos" will set in now and the blog will become unmanageable?

What a lot has happened since 2006 as well. At that time I had just started the BCG treatment for CIS having had two operations (I wasn't expecting the second one to be a TURBT) and was coming to terms with the unknown and the uncertainty of the diagnosis. Sure, I knew by then that if the treatment worked I'd have a good chance but the Treatment needed to work.

So much has happened in my life since that time as well. There is no way I could have envisaged I would end up working for a charity. I worked for that other bunch of low lifes who screwed up more than one person on their rapid, tragic and amazing climb to the heights of insignificance and lost the respect of everyone who dealt with them. Should they ever happen to find their consciences - I hope that it gives them a migraine for years.

There have been some amazing highs and lows and the emotional and physical roller coaster associated with getting cancer and recovering have been surprising to me. No one really ever talks about what cancer does to you. You see it on the news maybe and someone does something amazing with their remaining days or someone famous dies of it but you don't get under the skin of it, you don't pick the scab and let it bleed and really get under the hood and see how it works (am I mixing my metaphors?).

I am still trying to tell it as it is for it isn't a case of having it, getting over it and getting back to work. Someone recently published a paper saying that cancer was now so well understood for certain types that it can be treated as a serious life threatening disease. HELLO!!!! No it isn't like that at all, not one of my Doctors or Consultants have ever talked about the emotional side of the disease nor have they ever spoken about the side effects and imbalances in your body, the "other" side effects just don't get a look in. Realistically given the pressure on them they can't but somewhere along the line there ought to be the "handbook of cancer" or "Cancer for Dummies". Perhaps this blog and Steve's in the US will be a start to telling everyone - how it really is.

The stigma attached to cancer is going away although I still notice that some aren't particularly comfortable with it. The fact that you are more likely to survive is, I am pleased to say, gratifying. The not treating the whole problem must be addressed soon, it must be adding to people's stress levels and costing the health of the nation more if it remains ignored.

Today, after 2 years, I am very grateful for all the work the National Health Service has done. They got me in fast, did what was necessary and treated me OK. Sure there were a few things I didn't enjoy but, let's face it they are trivial and I am here to complain about them :-)

These days I am coming to terms with how ill I have been and I've put up this massive defence (defense in US) mechanism that acts as a force field to be able to take the treatment and operations. The personality force field isn't particularly one I like although I am controlling that to some extent now. Both are there to take away the horrors, make you feel positive and to protect yourself from people and from treatment itself, there can't be many times in life you actually let someone stick a pipe into your penis, without an anaesthetic so somehow you need to block it. Again, no one will tell you that the cancer patient will have done this and that the way they talk and react to you is different because of these sorts of things.

Anyway, after 2 years, happy birthday blog. Sometimes I don't know what I would have done without you. Other times, I've published and be damned and occasionally I've been too open and pulled my posts. I do however feel that the in general the stuff I have left up here is what it is like. you get 90 or 95% the remaining bit has to be mine and is too dark or too incorrect or full of bile to let you see. It really is the swearing, cussing, PC Incorrect stuff we all have hanging around as baggage and I'd rather not share that on this forum.

Has it been therapeutic? Yes it has it lets me let off steam and be informative. I don't speak for all of the sufferers of bladder cancer but this is what happened to me so somewhere, if someone gets one good bit out of it, feels they aren't alone or wants to know warts and all what it is like then this blog will have done its job.

28 months since I got the first signs and now - much to my relief and surprise - it will soon be time to close the book and open the next one.