Getting towards "that" time

Almost a year ago when I was told I'd have to go in again. That was about now but the Op was 18th September I think. That was the one where I should have been in for a day and when I woke up they'd turned me into RoboCop :-0 well, maybe not.

That was the one that prompted this blog but, if I am truthful about it, that was probably the defining operation and meeting as it showed that the cancer was limited to the bladder, showed the kidneys were OK and the operation got rid of nearly all the really nasty stuff that was in there. I then had the treatment, the next operation and this last lot of treatment. It is amazing to me that a year has gone by already and that I am going to be back in for yet another operation. It seems a lot shorter time than that but the dates don't lie.

So heading towards anniversary two - that operation was a complete surprise to me but - it is standard practice so I understand to re- do the area and whilst I was somewhat beaten up after that - at least I was given every opportunity to survive. You can't ask for much more.

I'm nowhere near as worried about going in this October. I'd rather not but there is no option. It now becomes a matter of fact going in for operations. If anything, it gets slightly easier because you know the worst is over (unless they find something nasty you wont have to go through the hell of the first two ops). There's still the stress to deal with but that is probably manageable now and again, because you know what to expect, you can work your way around that too.

It will also be fun trying to find out what "rules" they will apply this time before they let you go home! I must remember to ask what the rules are so I can cover that one - they changed each time so far depending who was in charge. Inevitably, once I do get home I'll be laid up for a week anyway but let's hope that it is good news and this is the last time I need to go in under general anaesthetic. Mind you - having this sort of thing done under a local is no fun either.

Having said all this - you do start to get stressed out a bit as you get nearer the date.

Same old same old

Had my mum phone up yesterday saying that I sounded a bit down on Thursday - which is true. I'm a bit better now than I was but it is a combination of things that are working all at once.

Not enough time - but when I do get time it gets wasted on trivial things like PCs which are still irritating the hell out of me especially as I can;t get pictures off of my video camera onto the PC - heaven alone knows what is going on with the PC as I can hear it whirring away and there are no programmes active! Then there is the unofficial help desk - another friend needs their PC sorted out - that takes time and I don't say no often enough.

Somewhere along the line I have got to put my foot down and also drop off some of the things that I am doing.

At least some good news on the job front with my first partner signed up on Monday and with a bit of luck my second later in the week. That will be a relief.

I may be repeating myself repeating myself

I had a long chat with my mate again today and we were commiserating about our current lack of physical and mental strength and the things we are doing to pull that around.

It isn't crushingly depressing or a feeling of being totally wasted. An imbalance perhaps we felt, listlessness and tiredness. Then there is the get up and go - which has done just that and got up and gone :-)

He is getting a lot of physiotherapy and nutrition assistance. I'm not but it is interesting nonetheless how similar we are feeling and when you consider that we both went through our procedures within weeks of each other, it makes you wonder whether there is a pattern to surviving or perhaps comabtting cancer. We are in a similar state time wise but he had far more radical surgery than I did and he no longer has to worry about whether or not he will get cancer back as there is nothing left there.

And our conclusions? Well - We went through the experience and we have changed (a lot) but no one else around us has changed. It is difficult to carry on as normal when normal is no longer normal to us. It is like entering a very slightly parallel universe. Only you know you've moved slightly out of synchronisation with everyone else (like a badly dubbed movie).

It is a most peculiar thing to explain but it does feel as if day to day there is something not quite right about things - perhaps we feel we shouldn't be here or worse still - we felt we may be "frauds" as we didn't have all the hair loss and bag of bones looks so many people seem to believe that you should when you have cancer?

Anyway - it gives us plenty of reasons for talking and going down the pub so that is alright then! :-)

Further exploration of the dark side

The Black Dog - as my friend explained is now called Toby. The Black Dog visits every now and then and I suppose is his version of the black or dark cloud or the grim reaper or some such thing.

When the Black Dog turns up you can:

• Burst into tears for no reason at all
• Get all choked up watching emotional stuff on TV or Cinema
• Get all choked up when you see someone achieve something (like an athlete winning) you know what they went through in a way
• Go very quiet and hide away from people
• Have to get out of rooms quickly when you get all emotional
• Act less than rationally when confronted with something slightly out of the norm
• Get horrible dreams about things that happened, haven't happened, aren't likely to happen
• Wake up in the middle of the night and cannot get to sleep - then wonder why you feel so tired when you are at work the next day but you still can't sleep when you get home
• Start to worry about what may happen when it hasn't happened and may not be likely to
• Worry that any ailment whatsoever is cancer of whatever area of your body is suffering at the time (this can get tiresome). Have a cough or a sore throat or your arm hurts or you get an ache and immediately it is cancer (I kid you not when you are in this sort of mood everything is like this)
• General malaise

I'm sure there are lots more and the level of these emotions goes from mild to extreme. They can come and go with alarming speed. The Black Dog can get you when you least expect it to.

It happens less these days of course but you get occasional visits which can take you unaware and shake you to your core.

My recent nightmare? I'm being led out to the scaffold to be hung. Preacher and guards and all. My crime? Apparently I survived - that is it. That's a pretty shaky one to wake up to and I've had this one at least 4 or 5 times this past month.

You don't really need that sort of thing but your brain decides that you probably do and torments you with it anyway.

I'm certain that it is quite normal for survivors to go through this sort of stuff and so I'm not worried about it but it is worth saying it happens and it is something additional to watch out for.

On a lighter note

At least the internet hasn't gone down for 6 days now!

Exploration of the dark side - revisited

It was strange talking to my friend last week about how work was running us down and that we weren't as fit as we thought we were. To look at us you wouldn't notice but long term things like stamina both mental and physical aren't there.

It is easy to drop into a state of "being the victim" which I know sounds crude but is meant to be the state of mind you get into sometimes. I think people survive things because they believe they can and there are documented cases on that - not too many on those that just played the victim though I guess. Things like the job the lulls and the disappointment - yes disappointment of getting back to work. Things no longer meet your expectations and that includes work, family, friends, and just about everything else. You've gone through loads of stuff, you want and deserve better. That is what coming out the other end does to you as well. The only person that actually got you through it was yourself (sure there was support - but did you take the shots?).

I said before that there was a lot of "Self" in fighting the disease, a lot of me, me, me and the combination of all these things. It is strange that I'll be beating myself up for not meeting my expectations and I'll be feeling down because something didn't happen as I wanted or expected it to.

This stage of things is quite strange and I'm in this sort of no mans land at the moment. In a month I'll have my pre-op assessment and 5 weeks away is the next operation so I'm beginning to see that looming large on the horizon. I'll have to take it easy all over again and then wait for the results. Those results are pretty important this time as a positive result will get me onto maintenance. We don't want to know what a negative result will bring do we :-) So there's doubt there as well to contend with.

Will all this change the world? Probably not - so it isn't worth worrying about really!

An Interesting Web Site

Recommended by a friend of mine

An alternative take on your health

Mercola

Bladder Cancer Bioinfomatics Research in Australia

Perhaps some hope for future sufferers?

One to grind out I feel

This week that is. I'm a bit better than I was yesterday. It is like walking through treacle at the moment. Business is so slow but it is peak holiday time and so it is to be expected but it would be good to get some momentum going and get something achieved.

It looks doubtful that it will happen this side of the weekend and so I'll keep plodding away and perhaps next week will be better.

So how am I feeling?

I'm not feeling particularly confident or my usual buoyant self this week. There just seems to be so much to do and I really cannot be arsed to do it. I'd be quite happy to take the rest of the week off and start again next week.

SO far just about everything I have touched has turned to poo :-)

I'll probably feel a bit brighter in the morning.

Slow slow week

Some people still on holiday and some back but catching up on what has happened whilst they have been away. It makes for a long hard week of little or no contact, people not wanting to answer phones or call you back.

It is going to be one of those weeks I am afraid.

Crossroads / Decisions / Future Directions

Yes - it is that time already.

Almost three months are up soon and that is the decision point I set myself on this new job.

I need to make and take some key decisions soon as I ought to be thinking whether I want to have an easy life, an exciting one or just "retire" now :-)

Procrastination sets in already and I'd like to give myself a further month because of all the time I lost with the treatment and the loss of Internet service.

Do I need to convince myself, those around me, you or all three?

That sounded worse than it was

The previous post that is. It wasn't meant to read quite as depressed as it did.

I'd had one of "those" days when I wrote that and was on my own most of the time. Today that won't be quite the same as we are all going out later to a friend's barbecue.

I suppose it did expose some of the frustrations of everyone else getting on with their lives around you and sometimes no one knows what you went through. That's my problem by the way - not anyone else's.

The Importance of being Me..

I realised more today than for a while quite how "lonely" I am. I'm far more insular these days than I was whether by design or accident. I long for some attention but if no one understands what to say or how to say it to me then it may prove difficult.

Friends are fine and are great to be with, not being with your family for hours at a time is not so good. I'm normally happy with my own company but today I could have benefited with a few more minutes of seeing the family.

Saturday

Bored stupid today. Everyone doing their own thing, I've given up getting the PC to record a video properly - I have no idea what has happened to it - it used to work fine. I really cannot be bothered to do much about it or to fiddle with the settings yet again.

It is too nice outside to be in so I suppose I could go and sit out there and read a book. It has been one of those weeks I think, I've taken a lot out of myself and I don't really want to do anything at all and yet I've this nagging voice at the back of my head chastising me for having a lazy day.

Further thoughts on the dark side

Strange as it may seem, I tend to get quite long periods of feeling down and equally long periods of being very upbeat. What I also get, and this is the more disturbing, are random thoughts and almost taunting, cruel thoughts at any time of the day or night, without warning.

The darkest and nastiest being things about how that little cough is probably lung cancer or throat cancer or how I've somehow let somebody else down or treated someone bad or that sort of thing. It doesn't sound like much when I write it down but these thoughts are made up in my own head and you'd have thought that I was cursing my worst enemy the stuff I think about.

I think we all think things that are critical of our behaviour or things, that with hindsight, we could have or should have done better at - but this is nasty stuff. Down to "you cheated death" and that sort of level!

I don't know if beating yourself up mentally is part of the normal territory - I think it probably is. It works on many levels of course and flash backs and re-living things is one, putting stuff out of your mind is another and this taunting is another. I'm sure I'll think of some more stuff as well.

Somewhere there is an upside which is the relief at getting over some of the horrible stuff. I'm also feeling that more now than I did at the time, either I need to as I shut it out or I've heard so many people telling me what horrible things happened to me I am beginning to believe it :-)

I'm glad I only did people and work psychology. All this stuff may mean that I need a shrink :-)

You don't get counselled

My friend and I were chatting about this and whilst he was told a lot about his condition and what was going to happen he had plenty of information about the procedure and the recovery but very little about the emotional side. His cancer would produce perhaps a more emotional response as it would affect his life and activities. I had an inkling what was going on but I learnt more afterwards. I was told enough to know what I had and what was going to be done in my TURBT operation and also the IVU. So neither of us received a "here is how this will mess with your brain" talk.

At no point though did anyone one talk to me about "living with cancer" or what it means to me or what I ought to be aware of. It is different to other things you get as I've mentioned before, it isn't as if you have one operation or two and that is it. There is something far deeper going on. The dark side (OK I sound like Darth Vader) but there is a lot of mental stuff to deal with. It isn't like those movies you see. There is the healing process of the body and the mind. However, you just get on and deal with it. In fact - I'd have liked to have known a little more. I knew enough to know what I was going through at the time but not what I'd go through afterwards. All of my knowledge has been gleaned from the Internet and downloading some very good NHS and other pamphlets.

But nowhere have i found the bit to deal with how you react to this yourself and how you affect others around you by your behaviour.

It is almost as if it is an elitist club - unless you have had cancer you have little idea what someone has actually gone through. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have gone through what my friend had but some parts were common and not nice. To have had any of these things happen is bad enough but to experience the dreams and thoughts and dark moods are a part no one tells you about.

I've always viewed "counselling" suspiciously but having now been forced to sit on the other side of the fence I can see why it can be useful.

Here we go again

The Internet went down again last night and I eventually managed to get things restored about midnight. The disruption this causes is amazing as so much of my work centres on having a stable IT environment to allow me to do my work. Whilst I have a number of PCs which I've logically separated into various businesses and personal the effect of not having the internet on the way I use my applications and the way not having the internet destabilises those applications does make me acutely aware of how much we or perhaps I rely on technology to be able to do my job.

Maybe I should pack it all in and go back to being an electrician? Mind you I'd probably need digital test equipment and a PC to do the work there as well :-(

It could be an interesting deterrent for people - if you do anything wrong they would take away your satellite TV and PC connection and mobile and land phone!

Cheered a little

I went out with a friend who also had surgery for cancer at about the same time. He is still recovering from the actual operation but has no cancer now.

It was a nice lunchtime meeting in this dismal weather but I was interested that he is also having a bad time at the moment, dreams and nightmares and lots of concerns and worries.

It must be something to do with cancer and how last year we both refused to believe or worked out that all the nastiness was happening to someone else. Perhaps now - it is dawning on us that we had pretty serious things happen to us which were a lot more than we made out.

We also concluded that we were quite different people now, less tolerant of stupidity and time wasters and less worried about things in general. The trouble was that we were probably beginning to show that to people and were becoming quite dismissive of some of them.

We sort of concluded that you probably wouldn't have thought like this unless you had been through the stuff we had. Expecting anyone who hadn't had cancer to understand what we were feeling was quite difficult.

Not having the greatest week

I have to admit to being somewhat down in the dumps these past few days. I'm concerned that the job isn't going as well as I'd like it to but it is holiday season and people aren't around and no one wants to make a decision.

Additionally I'm sure that the sheer frustration of my PC problems and also the phone went on the blink yesterday also contributed to a pretty dismal August - the weather isn't helping either.

Getting things done is like walking through treacle at the moment. A bank holiday weekend coming up and so perhaps I should just abandon all of these problems for a few days and come back "refreshed" ready to sort it out on Tuesday?

6 hours

It is 2:30 or so in the morning and I have been waiting 6 hours for my PC to burn a DVD - that is not how long it took to put the stuff into the program it is how long it has taken to encode it and finally burn it. However, feeling the heat coming out of the fan I decided that I couldn't let it run unattended.

I hate IT sometimes.

Who would have thought

That in this day and age it would be so difficult to get things done? So far today it has taken some 6 hours to download 40 minutes of digital (digital) video, convert it and burn it to a DVD. I have enough computing power at my disposal to tackle most thing but (apparently) digital video manipulation is different. I've had codecs interfering with converters and I've got AVI and MPEG files all over the place.

I'd like to tell you what the DVD actually looks like but so far it has taken an hour just to encode it!

You certainly don't want to hold your breath on these. It used to be easy with VCR - plug in the camera, turn on the tape - job done. DVDs need chapters added and encoding and converting and all that good stuff.

It never ceaes to amaze me just how difficult we can make easy things. Perhaps it is the IT industry doing a "Jobs worth" on us?

The little nag at the back of your mind

I think this is something to do with the "territory" that once you get something like cancer and you (kind of) get away with it - there is a nag at the back of your mind that suggests:

1. You are susceptible to getting cancer so you could get some other form
2. This will come back
3. You are more likely to get something else serious
4. Your life will be shortened.

Yes - I know - but that is how you think. I know that I cannot have this particular cancer spread and that I am monitored more now than I ever have been. It is just one of those things, like the sword of Damocles.

It sort of worries me but not enough to keep me awake at night, it just nags away when I have too much time to myself.

Getting back on subject

Has been pretty difficult these past few weeks. The trials and tribulations of the network problems are just about beginning to shake themselves out and slowly things are returning to normal but ever so slowly.

Today - two weeks on I am still having to run utilities to clean up the PCs.

So I hope that after today the blog can get back on track a bit.

Nothing is ever easy

Still I am messing around trying to get my PCs to behave themselves. It has been two weeks of messing around that I could have done without and I've had to undertake a number of re-boots and rescans. I've almost had to rebuild my main PC.

I#m hoping that tomorrow I can get back on with some work as the disruption has been marked these past two weeks and with the holiday I have lost a month's effort almost.

So - I need no more trouble with my PCs from tomorrow onwards.

Catching up

I have been trying unsuccessfully to sort out the photos and videos from the holiday. The PCs going on and off have totally scuppered attempts to capture videos, change them to the right format and to burn them to DVD.

The worst thing is you have to wait so long and often the results are variable to say the least. Silly things like an e-mail coming through or opening up an application can throw the recording and so you have to leave the PC to go and do its own thing. Then the PC decides to hibernate and the next shot is ruined.

I shall keep persevering, the videos and photos look great - getting them onto external media so other people can see is the difficult bit!

Some Drink

Wow.

Well - it is gone midnight! There is very little money in my wallet. I have just had to have cooked myself:
A Toasted Bacon Sandwich, with grated cheese, tomato sauce and just bordering on the crispy side - back bacon.

Now that IS a great night out n'est pas?

Cheers K! I wish my wife would come and pick me up from the pub at chucking out time - you don't know how lucky you are. It was also very civilised of you to give me a lift home even though I said I would walk :-)

OK - Who's next?

Hic!

Off down the pub

Well it seems like the only civilised thing to do on a Friday night after the two weeks of chaos I returned to. I've had 4 or is it 5 blue screens from one of my PCs today. Each time that is a full systems check to make sure nothing is broken (software wise).

So a friend phoned and said did I fancy a pint. I nearly ripped his arm off - do I ever fancy a pint. I'm off in 5 minutes

Yippee.

Two weeks trials and tribulations

I hope have now come to an end as the internet has behaved itself for 24 hours now. I had a look at some of the forums online and many people were suffering problems. Some reckon that it is all to do with the new upgrade to super-speed broadband coming later this year.

Whatever it is - it is a damned nuisance as my productivity has been at best a few hours a day and trying to catch up when all you have are crashing PCs and various stuff in a state of being powered up or down has been tiresome to say the least. Today, finally, I have been able to get a few hours of uninterrupted work done. With a bit of luck by this time next week I will have run far enough, fast enough to have caught up.

At least it keeps my mind off of other things I suppose :-)

The song in my head

Finally we tracked it down. On the Ship they did introductions to your ports of call and there were slide shows with nice photos and "this music" that just seemed appropriate and fitted with the scenery and the "mood" of the holiday. I think the holiday can be said to have a mood or a feeling about it.

Anyway, we had been racking our brains. Id heard it before and A had taken a snip on her mobile phone so we managed to pull out a few lyrics. So it snapped yesterday that I thought it sounded a bit like Enya and I played a bit of Caribbean Blue and Orinoco Flow. We then looked it up and our "theme for the holiday" turned out to be......

Enya and "Anywhere Is" - so with one of my birthday vouchers we purchased "Paint the Sky with Stars" or Enya's Greatest Hits and now we have played it to pieces.

However, it really does still bring a bit of a lump to my throat and makes the hairs stand up on my arms when I remember the photos of Iceland set to this music - Cool!

F1, F1, F1

Or as the IT types might recognise Help, Help, HELP.

This morning it finally looks as if the internet is back properly and the past few day's worth of e-mails are happily downloading and I can actually get in to see this site and a number of others which appear to have remained hidden.

Looking at the service page there appears to have been some very serious outages and some areas lost their TV as well as their Internet. The disruption - almost two weeks of it has been incredible and it worries me that I am quite as reliant on this technology for communication and work as I am. What are the alternatives? Well we used to do fine with letters, phones and telex, no mobile phones, bleepers, PDAs, PCs or anything - now I am sounding old - I can even remember all gathering in amazement around my mate's desk when he bought his first calculator - it was a week's wages and was brilliant. Now you can pick these up for a few pounds.

I must stop this I am obviously getting old - which reminds me - don't the policemen look young. Doh!

Short of

Bolting a thumping great copper cable to some server - I can't see that my internet chums - Virgin Media or NT Hell are doing that well. Let me see it is now 10 days of disruption and I have no e-mail and I've been without the internet for perhaps 6 hours or more today.

I'm resigning myself to the fact that this will probably continue for a little while longer.

Short of pinging their server every few seconds I'm not certain how else I can keep the connection from crashing and making me go through a now - well rehearsed routine or routines to get service back.

"Our engineers are aware of and working for a resolution to this problem" hardly seems reassuring. A glance at their web site shows massive outages all over the country. Lord alone knows what other NT Hell and Virgin Media customers must be going through.

My blogging activities are being seriously curtailed - sorry about that. If you would like to complain about that - then I have set up a premium phone number that you can ring and pay an extortionate amount whilst I slowly take your details, check your account, ask you some stupid security question and then take you through all of the steps you've already been through (because you aren't stupid are you?) and then at the end of that I might agree with you that your opening statement was in fact correct!

Getting Started

It is really difficult to get myself motivated to get going. I had two meetings yesterday which were very good, a bit longer than I wanted them to be and so another day went begging.

Today I am trying to catch up on the lost production of last week and the difficult thing is prioritising it. Last week it would have been quite easy to sort out as all I needed to do was to tackle things in order and get one out of the way at a time. Now - well everything needs to be done at once. Oh the fun of it all. The fall out from the IT problems is also that I have been fiddling around with the IT settings to ensure that firewalls and the like wouldn't block getting me reconnected. Now I have had to reset all the settings and to learn a few new skills especially now that I have a remote firewall.

All good fun :-) NOT.

I beginning to feel a lot better as well now. I've lost almost 1 kilo this week and sensible eating and a bit of exercise seem to have helped. Anyway, I can't keep on chatting to you all day - back to work!

Health Update

I appear to have 'gotten over' last week's dizzy spells and just not feeling me - "A Change in the Water" as my Mum would have me believe!

I think it was getting my land legs back and the massive change in eating habits. You really can eat for your country on board. I also have had it confirmed that the ship shouldn't have been that bad and vibrating as much as it did - which I'm certain is the root cause of all of this.

So other than that I've realised it isn't too long to go until I get back into the swing of things and get my next lot of tests. I haven't done my exercises since I've been back but I intend to change that in the next day or so. I've cut back my food to what I used to eat before the holiday and so now I need to get back into the routines I had before.

That is about it for now. The Internet has been up all day so far and let's hope it stays that way. I'm hopeful of actually getting some work done tomorrow.

And on the seventh day

He was still re-booting PCs, routers, cable modems and reviewing the status notices which still do not mention this particular problem.

Seven days! So apologies for no real meaningful posts apart from those aimed at keeping me sane.

I hope that this will change this week..

Still Having Connectivity Problems

Sorry folks,

I am still having intermittent disconnection problems with the ISP. So far today we have suffered about 10 outages. I am DEFINATELY going to have a sense of humour failure tomorrow, I've worked hard for it, I need one and I just deserve it. After all - I believe that NTL or Virgin Media should have the benefit of my experience of being a customer of theirs.

Hopes for a calming weekend

After a week of battling with minor officialdom and people who are not paid to use their initiative and with businesses who upset their customers I think that I ought to take a calming down weekend.

Frankly I lost the whole week to having no real IT and I have written that off ready to start on Monday. It looks to be set fair for the weekend so beer and barbecue would appear to be the order of the day.

I'm going outside now - I may be some time!

Faroe Islands, Iceland and Norway

Wonderful destinations and each different. Of all though Norway was how I thought it would be, steep fjords and waterfalls. The Faroe Islands were just enchanting - very quiet and peaceful and a nice quiet place to go. Iceland was by the far the biggest surprise. I'd expected all the geysers and boiling mud etc but it was a land of huge changes - almost every turn or valley took you to a different landscape. You could be driving through a green valley, pop over the hill and be confronted with miles of lava fields or perhaps some geysers letting off steam. I'd love to spend more time in all three places but as an independent traveller next time.

Dodging the tourists would be the difficult bit in Norway - in the Faroes and Iceland I reckon you could easily dodge them all day.

Could it possibly be

That the internet has been up all morning and that the problem is now fixed? Am I tempting fate?

I can hardly believe how much this has affected my work this week. It is now Friday afternoon and I cannot claim to have had one substantial call or conversation or to have managed to get more than a few minutes work done at a time. What with re-booting the complete network and getting all the PCs working - then finding that the internet had gone down again and having to keep on re-logging in and resetting everything I have had a total sense of humour failure this week, no work done and I am going to write off this week entirely.

Ho hum!

Owww - Cramps

2 am. One leg and then the other, fell out of bed in agony! It still hurts this morning. It has been threatening all week and I have been feeling my calf muscle twinging but blimey did that ever hurt. I haven't had that for years and years.

It could be related to this cold/flu/dizzy stuff or perhaps the Statins which apparently have cramp as a side effect :-(

Anyway - I suppose the better news is that the internet is back working and I am not having to spend all day booting and re-bootings PCs, Routers and Cable Modems! Will have to see how that goes on today.

Peculiar

Still feeling quite peculiar - still a little dizzy and disorientated. I'm sure the IT issues haven't helped but I'm sure this has to do with finding my land legs again.

I hope so I sure don't want to feel like I do at the moment for much longer it is quite disturbing as when sitting you can feel your body shaking and when standing moving from side to side, almost imperceptibly but you can definitely feel it.

NT Hell

What an utter nightmare the last few days have been. Trying to resolve what should be an easy issue. Finally, we got somewhere today and had to "bite the bullet" and pay 25p to report the fault. This after having checked the service announcements (looked at the service announcements online - helpful but if you can't connect a bit pointless).

After dealing with whoever from Mumbai - it turns out that IT IS NTL/Virgin Media's problem after all - it isn't on their announcements on the phone which I have diligently checked. The Internet is back on line now (not sure for how long though they expect another 48 hours worth of trouble).

To say I was getting irate would be an understatement - some-body's head was going to get chewed up the way things were going and no one was interested - customer support is now outsourced at 25p a minute, reporting a fault - 25p a minute - what is that all about.

Luckily they have decided to refund the cost of my phone call - bit it was a known fault and frankly it was driving me utterly mental trying to solve it as the acknowledgement page said that all was OK and yet after re-booting PCs, Modems and Routers (all in sequence) the same provisioning screen kept turning up and then every now and then the Internet would come back and I'd re-boot the PCs around the house and re-set everything only for it to go down again.

I am one very unhappy camper. You'd have thought Branson and his army would have brought some sense and sanity to the customer service department - perhaps some over ambitious number crunching, greasy pole climbing spotty Herbert after consulting his life coach made an executive decision to screw up the people that pay for the service. Perhaps I should go back to BT? Now there's something I never thought I'd say!

Holiday

The holiday was great, no doubt about it I am 3 Kg heavier :-(

There is a lot to be said for cruising and - possibly because we have always independently travelled - quite a bit that we didn't particularly like as well.

The stuff we didn't like included:

Excursions - a necessary evil to give you a flavour of the places you are visiting - you are at the mercy of the other 40 odd people in your party.

Lots of people - we are used to staying in remote farm houses or on board our own Canal Boat or in an RV or something similar. We are not used to so many people being around us. Not that the ship was crowded just lots of people.

The Ship was a "bit tired" it shook and rolled more than perhaps a larger or newer vessel.


Stuff we liked:

The ports of call were fantastic

The food was good

You were made to feel special

The scenery came to you at a slow pace.

So where did he get to?

Well.......

My Internet router died on Sunday and I could just about use the Internet as long as I was three inches from the wireless antenna!

On Monday we got a new Router and then my trouble started:

1. I really haven't felt well since I got home - I felt a lot worse on Monday and yesterday
2. My provider (not recognising the MAC address of my new PC(s)) wouldn't let me connect
3. When I did manage to get connected it wouldn't let me set up the router and I had to go through the re-connection process again ( a BIG pain as it demands renaming PCs, re-entering Pins and passwords and all that, re-booting PCs, Modems etc.

So finally today I used my old PC and set that up downstairs and managed to sort out the router, the pcs and now I am back to where I was on Saturday afternoon/Sunday morning trying to catch up with 1500+ e-mails.

I'm feeling a bit better but still quite dizzy and with a sore throat. A friend reckons that the dizziness is having come off the Ship and getting used to being back on land - which may well be right. I remember that even when we have been on Canal boat holidays.

I could do without the swaying which I am still doing now!

Back on Dry Land

Trying to get used to this sun and heat here. We had a great time. No time to put too much on here now -more as the week goes on as we are off to a birthday party now - my friend's 60th!

Needless to say - had a great time, fascinating places we visited and things we got up to.

The Quiet Blog

See you all soon - cruise awaits.

In all the excitement

I'm not sure I actually said what I meant to say at the end of my party.

At the end I said that I had been diagnosed exactly a year before and that I'd got the clear about 10 weeks ago. I think I said how glad I was to be there and celebrate that with everyone.

However, what I don't think I said and I had planned to was to thank everyone for "looking out" for me and being there and sending e-mails and calling me and taking me out for a beer and all the good things they did to help me out. It was very important to me then and is important to me now. I think they know and I'll thank them individually when I see them as well.

Sense of Humour Required

As some may know we are off on a cruise tomorrow.

Tonight's film on TV was..................


Titanic

:-)

What a great night

Twas my 50th Birthday party and I shared that with an old chum of mine from school days.

What a brilliant evening. I had a great time and celebrated my birthday in style surrounded by family and friends and I didn't get too squiffy :-)

I got some great presents too - people are really imaginative about such things - I wish I was sometimes.

Right - that is enough from me for the moment - I hope to spend the rest of the day doing next to nothing except packing.

1st Anniversary

By this time last year I knew that I had bladder cancer and was probably reading the leaflet the gave me. I had by the early afternoon a phone call giving me an appointment on the following Tuesday. Those days were a blur. Explaining to my Mother that I had Cancer wasn't easy. I remember using all the soothing and upbeat words and actually thinking the opposite of what I was saying.

So tonight - should I wear the "I'm not dead yet!" Tee Shirt? I think I should.

Curious

I've been looking at this label and - is it me - or is this just plain obvious?

Bizarre!

Sleep - As evasive as ever

I didn't have the problem I normally have on a Tuesday night (there's a clue then!) as I didn't have treatment on Monday.

Tonight though I'm yawning away but can i get to sleep! No chance. I think I have done the usual and worked all day long on the PC and that has just meant that my brain is too active doing figures and answering e-mails.

I have no doubt that I will sleep Saturday night and in to Sunday!!

Some sort of anniversary

Tomorrow - when I have my birthday party with my friends it will be a strange old day.

By 10 a.m. on the 21st July 2006 I knew that I had Bladder Cancer and my journey began. It seems a strange quirk of fate that Lynne's memorial service will be tomorrow and also that my party will be on the same day. The next anniversary is the 25th July when I had the operation to take out the tumour. My the year has flown by really and it hardly seems possible that all the things that have happened to me - actually DID happen to me.

Anyway, I shall try not to dwell on that but rather on enjoying my party tomorrow.

Winding Down now

I really have had enough now and I have a few more work tasks to do and then I am going to get on to the personal ones.

Tomorrow is going to be hectic. I want to enjoy my party but the organisation and logistics make it that I'll probably be knackered by the time it starts.

At least Sunday should be good as I can relax with the F1 Grand Prix, the Open and Tour de France (unless it is a rest day).

Treatment fades into the distance

But quite surprisingly I can still feel how tender everything is. I should have remembered from last time that it took a good few weeks to slowly build myself back to my exercise regime.

The Ship has a fully fitted Gym and so I am planning to spend a little time in there slowly building myself back up to fitness. Although I will only be going very slowly as I can feel pulling now when I walk up and down stairs especially.

It is quite frustrating having to wait for things to get back to normal - it just seems to take so long.

Party

Yep - my 50th on Saturday - it should be fun. The food has mounted up in the house, in the Fridge and Freezer. I have 3 days work to fit in tomorrow already.

This weekend is going to be utter chaos but then I meant to thrive on that sort of stuff.

I hope to be a bit livelier tomorrow than I was today!

I'm still not getting any younger

I keep saying that to myself. The problem is that I still think I am as fit as I was a year or so a go. Obviously not, I find a full day out - like yesterday - leaves me very tired the next day. I'm only 50 for goodness sake! I'm not out of breath or physically finding it difficult to walk or whatever, far from it.

This morning I took ages to get going and could quite happily have laid in bed for hours as I just felt so tired. I need to keep reminding myself that despite the way I look and I feel, that I am probably not as fit as I think I am.

Holiday next week - bliss - I don't have to do anything if I don't want to. I intend to just chill out for two weeks.

What a long day

Home about 30 minutes ago. Like it is the next morning :-)

It was a brilliant evening and I am so glad my friend organised a reunion. Last year I was all set to go and had - a few good reasons not to :-) I still have to dash to the loo more often than normal but - then I was in dire straits and couldn't be away from a toilet by more than 20 paces :-)

Anyway a great evening and I had a lovely time.

Some people are so

Thick.

Like how many times do I have to tell someone "no, I am not interested" before the meaning of my words actually gets past their ear drums, converted to electrical signals and actually stops them following their banal sales scripts? According to Danial (from Mumbai) about 10 times before he got told where he could shove his script, what was wrong with repeating himself 10 times to someone who actually could speak English and how mighty unimpressed I was with his ability to translate my words into sounds that he could actually hear and could actually understand.

When you hear the BURRRRRR you have lost the sale dummy!


BURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

No doubt he was still trying to find out who his auto dialler had rung and why he wasn't speaking to the "responsible adult" of the house. Good entertainment though - and cheered me up no end.

Whatever it is

Get over it. I'm still feeling these little sad pangs. No idea what it actually causing them apart from the earlier blog ideas. Perhaps it is the looking forward to being away without having to worry about anything. I don't know - I'd rather not be getting these little 10 second chokers though. It has to be a guilt thing or something like that.

Rationalise this

I do a lot of that. I'm beginning to wind down for my holiday already - I'm looking forward to it, I definitely need it and it is this - not being busy to distract myself - that I imagine is going to give me more time to think, to be glad I'm here, to be as fit as I am and so on.

I'm sure there is some fancy psychological terminology for it. No doubt someone would be able to stick me on the Kubler Ross chart somewhere :-)

It feels like the end of a battle or a war and after all that has gone on, all the things you did with all the noise and in the heat of the battle now past. All that is left is the quiet of the field and then you see all of those who didn't make it. Miraculously you stand there, hardly scarred whilst many of those who went in with you are lying on the ground around your feet.

The benefit of time to let you think about it isn't always a good thing to have. However, mind and body quickly forget the experience and you do heal and you do get on with it.

And that, dear reader, is enough of that for today!

Wiped out

Oh dear. With Lynne dying and so quickly, my Friend's tragedy and also some other friends also passing away - July has just been just awful.

I sat down tonight and watched The Green Mile, I've never seen it all the way through before and it is a bit like the Shawshank Redemption, from absolutely nowhere at all I felt ever so sad, really tearful and quite upset.

Now as most people will tell you, that isn't really me at all, I'm not particularly your blubby type nor do I get easily phased. I can't tell you what it was tonight but there you go. In pieces towards the latter part of the film.

I'm OK now but I was somewhat taken aback by my uncharacteristic emotional crumbling act.

Just another step

I suppose it is just another step - finally Lynne has finished this journey. Lynne's blog was one of those that I read regularly and it seems sad to realise that in a few more weeks that there won't be too much added content. It would be good though if these blogs are allowed to stay and be tapped into in the future.

Here is the announcement.

Thinking of squeamish

My youngest has just got contact lenses. She looks very different with those on but - urgghhh, putting them in and taking them out I am afraid really gives me the willies. Shudder!!

No, you can stick a catheter where the sun doesn't shine but don't ask me to do anything with eyes.

Not going through the routine

It is quite strange not doing something when you have been doing it habitually for six weeks. So I didn't have to stop drinking and eat early, nor have I had to go and shower midday and get changed into "appropriate" clothes, prepare my bed and the bathroom and get my appointments card and stress balls together.

My wife has made good use of today by going up to London with the eldest to see some art and photographic exhibitions.

I am feeling like I am missing something which of course are the routines. I have to say I am not missing the other things one has to do though.

Compressing my week

This week is a little chaotic. I knew it would be and I moved a lot of stuff into this week so that I could pressure myself into getting some work done that actually does need to be done.

Sounds strange to stress up my week? Not really - I don't normally need to do that but recently I find I cannot get the enthusiasm up for mundane tasks anymore (not surprising) and so bunching them all up together and putting a deadline on them should (well this is the plan) mean that I can get a good run and some momentum up to complete all the things on my list.

Mundane things like some outstanding meeting minutes, tidying up some paperwork, filing some old reports, doing my expenses and that sort of thing!

All this stuff is really broing but has to be done.

Did nothing at all

I feel quite tired by the end of the week - of course I had forgotten what sort of week I had - it seemed to go on so long and be a week of bad news.

So today I just let the TV wash over me and didn't do much at all.

It will all start again tomorrow and I expect there to be a certain amount of brown stuff hitting fans as well - at least I can keep my head down for a few days and then have some celebrations and go on holiday.

Getting going is proving difficult today

I just can't get the motivation to either sit here at the PC and get my outstanding stuff done or to go through the two mounds of paperwork on my drawing board and desk. I know I must get on and get them done by next week.

I really just can't be bothered today. I have also found another complete waste of time - a bit of a laugh also - www.facebook.com - it is great fun but whether or not you actually get any work done is another story.

No Title

I couldn't think of one

Lynne's Blog says it all HERE.

It seems to be nothing but bad news these past few weeks.

Lynne's Blog

Is entering a new phase and her blog has taken on an almost spiritual aura.

I am beginning to find it quite difficult to read as Lynne has been keeping her blog going and was one of my earliest correspondents urging me on. The latest blog is HERE.

Whilst there is a sadness here there are also some calming inspirational moments and some fun in there as well. I almost feel I know Lynne through her writing and it hurts me to read this too often, I find it compelling and disturbing at the same time.

Across the world everyone is feeling different things and going through different trauma but not everyone takes the time to set their experiences down and especially not at this time of Lynne's life. I feel like a moth that keeps flying towards the flame.

Forgot

Party tonight - that should be fun as a precursor to ours next week.

Suddenly things have got urgent with just a week to go. All the organising is done now to put the plans into execution.

It is also a wake up call as I have so many things that I must do - tomorrow is organising day.

Reassurance and recognition

I met someone that I hadn't met since - September last year. The reactions and their body language said it all. How well I looked, you've lost weight, you're more upbeat, happier, forward looking and forward planning etc.

You don't tend to see changes happening when you see someone a lot, they look the same to you or you look the same to them. If you haven't seen anyone for close to 9 months then you see quite a change. It was interesting to even hear myself talking about things I was planning 5 years down the line, what I was going to do, how that was going to pan out, my short term and long term objectives and my still hesitancy to say that I am cancer free - I still think I have BC! I just can't come to terms with the fact that I don't at the moment. Perhaps, I am preparing in case it comes back and (unfortunately) that is what it does - I was warned about that.

Anyway, feeling quite uplifted by the comments and let's face it, I needed some sort of lift after yesterday.

Having a bit of delayed shock and sadness

I'm a bit of a "cold fish" not my ideal description of myself (someone else's) but it will do. Strangely for me then, I'm feeling really quite upset now after this morning. I think I was brassing it out a bit this morning but coming back and seeing my daughter and talking with her has sort of triggered me off now.

No one ever said it was a fair world, it can be horribly cruel though. Cracking a few heads and making people realise this is an uphill battle, it doesn't matter until it touches you. The constant is you know the guy you are going to talk tomorrow is a "Dick" and will remain so and you know that some idiot is going to cut you up on the motorway doing 80 who hasn't thought through the consequence of their actions. These are all the people who should be introduced to tragedy but we all know they wont change you can't easily adjust people's attitudes and behaviour like that. It would be good if you could though!

There is quite a bit of anger about my feelings though, things like injustice and human rights and doing the right thing and yet these people, who have had enough problems to go through in the past, get this to contend with. Surely they have been tested enough and neither deserved or warranted such a cruel twist of fate. I could go on but I've rambled enough about fairness.

One too many

As my friend said to me - "If I ever have to go to another one, it will be two too many".

I cannot even begin to tell you how sad it was today. The drizzle persisted at the grave side and I don't think I have ever felt such sadness as I did for my friends. Life can be downright cruel. One baby dead the other in high dependency. Every time you look at the survivor, what would go through your mind, every sports day, every prize giving. It sends a shudder down my spine just contemplating it.

I'm glad I made the journey and provided what meagre support I could - didn't say much - what can you say? Just a terribly sad day.

I am not looking forward to tomorrow

I've never been to a child's funeral before let alone a baby's one. It is just so tragic and these things happen even in this day and age and advanced procedures and medicines.

The trouble is, with all these things, you feel so utterly helpless. There really isn't a thing you can do to help. I was thinking about that with what I went through and the reactions I got. I met a firend - haven't seen her for 15 months or more I guess - so she had no idea that I had had cancer and why should she, I didn't tell everyone. She was sorry and what for? I'm sorry but I decided to use my body like a refuse cart for years and I can feel sorry for being a bit of an arse but why should someone who has no control over things be sorry? So it is a bit like that tomorrow, what am I going to say and how am I going to react? Don't know, I'll have to see how I do and report back.

And my Doctor

Who I like to pieces is unable to be funded for more than a day a week at the Surgery. He is the best communicator and most amiable GP I have ever met. I don't know - we should be encouraging people like him not messing them about.

Why can't we do the right things right anymore in this country? The wishy washy politically correct liberals ought to be lined up and kicked in the genitals. In fact I reckon I could impress them with my catheter insertion technique. In all the confusion I can't remember if I used five or six catheters. Well do you feel lucky punk? :-)

What is it about July

I heard another person I know died on Saturday. Three funerals this week, there were three or four last week, now one next week. Perhaps it is my age and I've reached that age where people that I know are getting towards the end of the journey?

I also notice on a number of membership lists that I am now in the top third on the list.

I suppose the next steps is to complain that the Doctors and Policemen are looking younger and I can be welcomed to old age! :-)

Tuesday Night Again

Very little sleep and the previous post too - my brain is in a whir on a Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. I hope that goes away now I've completed the treatments.

A tiny bit of overreaction on re-reading the post below perhaps but we will see. I'll keep an eye out for this. Perhaps I need that holiday after all?

A Mixed Evening

I ended up going out and enjoying the evening but not enjoying some of the observations about me.

I've changed - there is no doubt about that. However, what I took away tonight was that my "clarity of vision" is perhaps not in every-one's comfort zone and not what everyone wants to hear. Not to every one's taste perhaps.

OOops.

I do tend to forget that I speak a language that I didn't even a year ago. Still English but a more direct version! Even at this time a year ago I only thought I might have cancer - I was still hoping it was a Kidney infection but deep down inside I knew what it really was. So - back to this language thing. I couldn't have coped with someone like me back then telling me about ramming things up my nether regions and all that blood and gore - I'd have had to excuse myself and leave the conversation as I'd have felt quite ill. I'd probably never have told people - to their face - how it was - how I felt - what I REALLY felt or whether I agreed with them or not. I was in those days a diplomat. I found out tonight that I probably don't do any of the "people friendly" or "politically correct" stuff anymore.

To some extent, there is a freedom piece in me that says - why bottle it up anymore, why be the "nice guy" when I have a new angle on things? Not that I am right, just that things to me look so different now that it doesn't matter? That, perhaps, is an over simplification of the thing I am trying to say. Which is (and I may change this subsequently):

• That I am not entirely comfortable with the person I am at the moment. I am more brash, self assured and in your face than I ever have been. I'm pretty good at reading how things are and knowing how to tackle these but, it appears, that I now freely let people have the benefit of my insight.
• That like it or not, there have been some major changes in the last 12 months that I don't see
• I'm probably not the nicest person to be around anymore as I do things that please me not anyone else
• Worse still that I probably don't give a sh1t about whether or not it matters (although I'm not sure I am that bad or that selfish).

I hate this sort of soul searching stuff. I know I'm a bit more outgoing, a bit more brash and a bit more likely to take a risk than I was before but I hadn't thought I had changed that much? Well obviously I have if I managed to p1ss my mate off tonight then maybe I have.

As much as I like to think that I've "learnt a thing or two" I'm actually quite injured to find that I might be upsetting people along the way. I do find myself stopping at the "shock" stuff these days. I honestly don't think it is that bad - I had a rough time of it yesterday but, it isn't that bad compared to what other people have to suffer.

I probably need to go and think all this through as it would disturb me if I was really like that.

Getting better

As the day wears on but I've also gone and had some more pain killers at lunchtime and that appears to have done it I feel a lot better now although still beaten up a bit.

I'm really quite pleased that this is the last one of the 6. I can see how some people would want to give up if it does this to you on a regular basis.

Gradually

I am getting back to some normality. I wonder if sticking that Catheter into you straightens you out or bruises or scratches you. I don't know but it is darn difficult to go to the loo at the moment without it making you go Ohhhh or Owwww or some such expletive.

At least the pills kicked in nicely and so whilst I can feel somewhat sore around the middle at least I can move around without too much difficulty.

Future Treatment

I got a surprise yesterday.

The Urology Nurses always say that if we meet again that it is a GOOD thing as that means that you are on maintenance and can also tolerate the treatment. It means that they are keeping their eye on you. Maintenance (and I keep banging on about this) is where - if you are clear, you get 3 shots of BCG, they wait a period of time and you get a flexible cystoscopy and if still clear you get another 3 shots and wait a longer period and get another 3 and so on until it gets to a point that if you have had no recurrence in the gap in between (which is then measured in years) - you are nigh on cured.

So the surprise came when she said that I might not need any further treatments at all. Now that IS a surprise. I'm still of the opinion that I'll need them only because of the staging and grade of the original tumour. Whilst it was called "superficial" it was anything but.

I'll have to wait and see but no treatments just a peek and poke every 3 or 6 months. Given the working over I had yesterday, I can see that it would be nice not to but these odd days of getting the stuffing knocked out of you are actually doing you good.

Always thought it was a perverse thing to say that the stuff that was making you better does it by making you feel bad? Where was Mary Poppins when I needed her? Not that sugar in my medicine would have made it any better!

Trying to get back to bed was crazy

Phone calls, door bell.

So I've had a shower, had my usual morning meds and also now had some ibuprofen and paracetamol which I am hoping will take some of this throbbing (the only word I can think that describes it) away. I feel like I have been punched in the stomach or just below and am sore all around my middle. I daren't tell you what the other part of my anatomy is feeling but it isn't at all pleasant :-)

So thank goodness the last one for a while. I have a feeling this will take most of the week to recover from.

Ow - Knocked sideways

I've just got up and got myself a drink but I'm going to go back to bed. I'm still getting bladder spasms and it hurts to pee. This morning there isn't any debris or blood but last night was pretty bad.

More reports later. Probably the second worst side effects I have ever had. If I hadn't of had the pain killers then this could easily rank as the worst. I'm sure that is the nearest a bloke can get to feeling like he has given birth :-)

Not a good one

Are there any good ones?

Wallop - this is turning out to be a thwack with the man in the truck again. I'm just going downstairs for some food and some more tablets - my bladder is palpitating and it must sound like I'm giving birth when I go to the loo :-)

More tomorrow. Ouch!

Last time for a while that I need to do this

This? Going through my little rituals prior to having my treatment.

I cannot drink for 2 hours prior to having my treatment so I eat before 12 and have a cup of soup then. I will, in fact, not normally drink after 11:30 or earlier.

Other things like having a shave, getting ready, getting appointment cards and stress balls together, preparing the bedroom and toilet areas all eat up time in my ritual so that we can get to the Hospital, get in and get seen around about 2 pm and then get back and go through all the turning, pill popping and so on.

Curiously the things you miss are those little rituals - not for long though.

One of the things I don't do now is get down in time to watch the News anymore. I'm no longer ill or unemployed and so other things have taken over.

If all goes according to plan - then I should be back on the BCG regime in November or possibly December (I hope not then). That

Disruption

It is amazing how disruptive having the treatments has been. Monday afternoon and much of Tuesday can be written off through recovery. Occasionally I can get some work done on Tuesday afternoon.

I have been loathe to drive too far on Wednesday for comfort reasons and also that I'm still not quite right. I can work at home and I can travel short distances but I couldn't easily walk to the station - be on my feet all day or drive further than about 30 minutes and then not in heavy traffic.

It makes trying to get things done interesting. I was looking at my schedule this week and frankly it is a nightmare. Compressing everything into three and a half days and restricting travel to Thursday and Friday do make challenges for scheduling my time. Given that I only have 8 1/2 working days left before my party and holiday also have come as a bit of a shock so - I am spending a bit of time arranging a schedule to get everything done.

Perversely looking forward to tomorrow

The last treatment of this set of six. I can see why a lot of people find them difficult to live with but it must be the same for anyone on Chemo or Radio as well. I feel I just get myself back to normal and feel better again when I have to go and have another and whatever side effects you get.

Bizarrely I find the fact that I am having these treatments to be a good thing. It means that everything I went through has had some result and some outcome and that this, unpleasant as it may appear to most and as tear jerking and scrotum clenching as it may sound, is probably a better thing, given my circumstances than the alternatives. You have to have been there and reviewed the possibilities to understand this though.

So tomorrow is another one of those milestones. It means the end of this lot of treatment and the stop watch now starts for three months to go back in and have the next operation for biopsies. I don't fancy that of course but I (again) have no option.

So getting tomorrow out of the way means that I can - in a week or so - restart my exercise regime - yes I stopped - as I just didn't feel fit enough to do it - :-) I can also forget about having Monday and Tuesday as days out from work or anything else I do.

In addition, I can look forward to the summer off and perhaps spend some time with the family - if I've done nothing else this past year I deserve some time to spend with them considering all the time they have spent with me.

So - out of the way at last. I make it that in the 53 weeks since I first noticed the symptoms that I have had something like 12 weeks under these treatments, 9 weeks in operations and recovery mode, a week in and out of my GP and for tests for that and a lot of odd days here and there in between mooching about. That is about 22 weeks - goodness knows what I have done with the other 30 weeks - written this blog I've no doubt :-)

Not alone

I'd rather I was the only one suffering from cancer but you find that there are lots of you around. It is a bit like buying a Green Mondeo and then driving around and seeing every other car is the same as yours (well almost).

You talk to people and it comes out that you have cancer or are being treated to keep it away and then they tell you they have it or you talk to someone else and they tell you that someone else in the village has it and that comes as a shock. I almost fell into my trap the other day and said "they don't look like they've got cancer". I should know better. Both of my friends who's funerals are this week did - I am afraid to say - look as if they had cancer but treatment makes you loose your hair, jaundice and other physical signs also make you realise.

Apparently I just looked drawn and greyish. I was also a couple of stone heavier than I was when I went in. However I don't think I actually looked "ill"

So enough for now - the Tour is on the TV and I need to get ready to work out how in the household we can get to watch F1, the Men's Tennis (wife and 2 girls will watch that) and the Tour all at the same time! I have enough TVs and PCs with TV cards to do this - I need a plan that delivers the Wide Screen TV in the front room to me without it appearing that I planned it that way. If I offer to let the spend money at Bluewater - they'll smell a rat. Off now to work on my cunning and devious plan for World (no scrub that) total TV domination!!!

To go and watch the Tour de France or not

We cannot make up our minds whether to go or not. Too much on all on one day - F1 at Silverstone, Men's Wimbledon and it seems a long travel and wait to see a couple of hundred bikes rush past and then spend a few hours getting home again.

So we decided that the best thing to do was to watch all three on TV - that way we all get to see what we want to see.

7th July - and then it occurred to me

That whilst I was having my own battle to go across the threshold of the Doctor's door I hadn't realised that the 7th July was the anniversary of the London tube and bus bombings. I had been there the year before, just after they had gone off.

Until today I hadn't even linked the dates. Why should I - nothing else happened on the 7th July apart from me walking into the doctors and coming home in an absolute daze and then being so upset you cannot believe it.

Then the 21st July is the next date - when I was actually diagnosed. The 21st this year is the date of my birthday party - it is also the date of the second lot of London bombs which failed to go off.

The 25th July would be the next date to commemorate as that is the date of the operation which got rid of the tumour.

The dates are of course coincidental - I was just amazed that until today I hadn't linked the 7th with anything other than me!

A sad week this coming week

There are three funerals next week. Two - those on Wednesday and Friday are people I knew who were diagnosed with cancer (lung and liver) and who didn't last very long at all. I cannot go to either of those. Both were unexpected and quite shocking in their own way. Both were past retirement age (but one only just so) - it doesn't make it right but it may help too position what follows:

On Thursday we will say goodbye to my friend's son who died at birth. His brother survived but is in intensive care - how do you even start to come to terms with that sort of tragedy? We were only speaking last week about the excitement of the birth and all. I spoke briefly to my friend last night about the mixture of sadness and joy it is very difficult to come to terms with two events so closely linked that could possibly leave you with such bitter sweet thoughts. I said that I was finding difficulty in finding something suitable to send as whilst one son had died we also needed to be fighting the other little fella's corner whilst he battles too. Not easy is it?

So we will go and say goodbye on Thursday, it will be absolutely heartbreaking for all of us but my friends what on earth are they going to be going through. My friend (a Cancer survivor) and his wife didn't deserve this after all they have been through themselves in the past 2 years. I have no idea what they will be thinking or how they will be able to go from the funeral straight to the Hospital and see the other son straight afterwards. I remember apologising to him for not understanding what he was going through (or had gone through by then) with his cancer. I don't want to know what it feels like for him now. I'm not sure if I'd be strong enough to cope with it.

And then

When they've made you re-load all your software on again for the second time and you go and activate it - they won't let you - so you have to ring up and then they ask the stupid questions about what "other" PC you were loading it on and I was ever so good - I had to bite my tongue as I gently explained that I had spent 15 hours or so doing this and re-loading the software mainly due to the fact that their software screwed it all up in the first place and that there was every possibility that somewhere on my PC that the software actually was but I couldn't find it.

Anyway, Sharon in Mumbai managed to sort out the codes to reactivate the PC. All I have to do now is see if I can find what the PC did with some of my data files. I have most of them back....

Oh the fun of it all and this is meant to make a user's experience better? Could it get any worse?

Utterly and abjectly p*ssed off

This re-loading has taken me all day and it keeps wanting old disks and new disks to upgrade and re-load and it can't find half the files it messed up the first time so I have had to re-load applications only for them to be over written half an hour later.

I never had this problem with upgrading from XP Home to XP Pro. To have wasted most of my day on this is just ridiculous

Computers and Software

Must be a real pain to anyone who doesn't know what to do with them. I have a new PC but it came with Vista Home and after a few weeks I realised that I was having problems with it because it doesn't have some of the functionality that I need.

So I dutifully upgraded this morning to Vista Business - alright!

No - not alright - so far I have spent all morning and some of the afternoon recovering the basic drivers and making the system work. Additionally I am going to have to completely re-load the office suites, the updated files and then get the network working (well done they disabled that and then asked why I couldn't connect to the Internet!!!!).

Now I, allegedly, know what I am doing with PCs and yet this morning, for a new OS written to be user friendly this was anything but - it never used to happen with XP so why now/ This has cost me a whole day (or it will do) and very probably the next few days too to get any information back to where it should be!

What a damn nuisance and another waste of time all down to someone not working out that you would upgrade from one to the other. Nightmare.

Life, The Universe and Everything

Well it is Friday morning and although it isn't the 7th July yet, I remember this day as the one I went down to the Doctors. I have a early to mid morning appointment, it was a pleasant enough day so I walked. Little did I know then that I must have done that walk and back more in a year than I have for all the rest of the time I have lived here put together.

I got there really early I had over estimated how long it took to get down there and so I had a long time to kill. I was also very worried. Silly mistake next, I went and bought a pack of cigars and had a few before I went in to the Doctors.

I saw the other Doc, not the nice one I have now. The procedure I had to go through was explained although not the bit about being awake for it!

It was after I got home that it fully dawned on me what I probably had. Once you know better, you realise that it was pretty fortunate to get bladder cancer as they can do something about it if it caught early enough. I had no idea that it was that, some sort of Kidney failure problems or what. To say the next two weeks were the worst of my life is very possibly an understatement. An over active mind, a less than full appreciation of the medical condition, prognosis and treatment also doesn't help the brain to work out what is wrong, what to do, what to expect or to work out your chances.

I was certain that it was pretty much curtains. Lucky for me - I'm not a Doctor :-) A year on I'm still here and I'm OK.

Some people should

stick their brain into gear before opening their mouths or committing anything to print. Some dipstick wrote me a response to one of my forum messages and obviously hadn't read the thing first or understood what I was writing about.

I'm afraid I have just had to shoot the idiot down in flames. Nicely of course, he will probably think that I really was interested in his asinine response :-) I hope the remainder of the community will read into it, the utter contempt that it deserves.

I think I got away with that

Yes - no headache! I obviously wasn't trying hard enough. This morning is dragging though and I have a meeting to go to later today which will be good - I will enjoy that. After yesterday's excitement, today is a bit of an anti climax.

It was

Today a year ago I phoned my wife and said "make an appointment for me with the Doctor".

i walked across the bridge at Wetherby, went to a pub and then a shop and bought some cigars. I walked back, got changed and went to a restaurant, I drank water all night. Italy ( I think) were playing football. I was completely distracted and had to keep going to the loo and passing blood all the time.

About now I started to realise that things wouldn't be normal again and I started to believe this was serious. Just how serious I wouldn't know until late July.

An Evening to Treasure

I cannot even begin to tell you how wonderful an evening I have just had. It is my 50th Birthday and I spoke to my wife and I chose to go to my Lodge meeting rather than go out. We have a series of our own celebrations lined up, I had my parents over last weekend and we have a big holiday planned and I really wanted to be with people that mean a lot to me.

So not mentioning names but the Almoner's of my Lodges were there - these are guys who look after people when they are sick or just need a pick me up. Let me tell you that these guys have been real rocks and have been quietly working away in the background to ensure that I have always had support. If things had gone "Pear Shaped" then they would have looked after my family.

So - tonight it wasn't only about ME. A number of the members made "welcome returns" to the Lodge after serious illness. We had a great evening - I was looked after like a lord - I had a fantastic time and I am so pleased that I decided to celebrate my birthday at the Lodge meeting as these people mean more to me than I think I could explain easily to you in this blog.

I was made to feel SO special tonight. I really didn't think I'd make this birthday and so the whole thing has been a celebration of survival, a festival of hope and a real feeling that I didn't go through this alone. everyone took a little chunk of my pain and made it theirs.

I may pretend to be shy about being the centre of attention - and normally I would move away from it, but tonight I really felt that I was special and that means more than you could ever believe. It also fires me up for the next part of the journey as well.

So a tribute to my Almoners and also to those who prayed for me - I find that very difficult to come to terms with but believe me - I will take any help from whatever angle it arrives from.

You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone.

Out there are a special breed - they are called Almoners - Thanks guys - NO Really.