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.

Good Grief

I have a conference call at 2 but have lunch with "her Indoors" set up. What do I do?

Of course - delay the conference call - how often am I 50 years old for goodness sake?

:-)

Also I am frightened that she will beat me up otherwise :-)

No different

I eventually fell asleep about 3 pm. I was listening to some music and felt myself drifting off. Up early and then a lovely call from family in New Zealand - what a lovely surprise.

I'm feeling very good this morning as I made one of my milestones that I set last year which was to see my 50th birthday and be well on the road to recovery. Given the fact that I didn't think I would early on is an even bigger bonus.

Damn it Tuesday Night Again!

Wide awake

I should be sleeping and snoring away with the beers I drank! No - wide awake again

It must be the treatment

So Far So Good

10 minutes until I am 50 officially. I need to check the actual time of my birth! I don't want to be 50 until I really am. Not that there is anything wrong in that you understand.

I had better be up early so that I can open my cards and pressies I suppose. I will set my alarms to make sure I do.

How does it feel being 50? No different from being 49 except I know what is wrong with me and I am under the best medical supervision I could have hoped for. At age 49 I just knew I was very ill.

Lad's Night Out

It is that time of month when my old school chums meet up - there are going to be a few more there tonight so the stories should be flowing along with copious quantities of beer.

Tomorrow I am also going to be out (I know on my birthday) which isn't great planning of course so we will have to do something later.

It is a hectic weekend as the Tour de France is in London and will come through the Kent countryside on Sunday so I fancy seeing that. It is Silverstone and the British GP as well - now I am torn between events. If it stops raining it is Wimbledon finals - oh for hot weather a glass of Pimms and watching the finals and having a barbecue. So as usual this week is a good one for sports but difficult to fit in a family celebration (my close family this is) unless we do something at the weekend as well as doing one of the three above.

Big differences between treatments

I had a look back at my notes for the first lot of treatments and it is interesting that the major differences are actually in what comes out of you?

Bit of a yucky subject - sorry about that.

On the first set of treatments there was a lot of debris, stuff that looked like miniature tripe and what I can only call white ooze. This time, very little white ooze (just treatment 2) and very little debris this time. It is occasional bits yet last time there were many.

I am hoping that this is because the areas to be worked on are very small this time. Last time, you may recollect, there were two areas - one which originally had the tumour there and one area which they scraped but, in addition, there was CIS (carcinoma in situ) which was also in there. There was a lot to tackle that time and this time not so much.

No - a definite cumulative effect

That was interesting.

I was in and out in a few minutes which was good. Major difference was for the first time it did feel uncomfortable as it took a little longer to instill the mixture and there was a slight interruption. So I left with a stinging sensation. The good news was that I got through my turning earlier and so got to eat earlier and take my tablets. After saying I was going to stagger them I realised that I tend to be asleep at the time when I could have taken more so I decided to take all 4 tablets in one hit.

I did indeed sleep for a good 3 hours but some idiot kept ringing and not leaving a message - when I have found out who you are I will explain it to you!!

When I got up to have something to eat - it really kicked in and I ached around my middle and could feel fibrillations going on inside as well. Again these are uncomfortable bordering on painful By this time 4 hours had passed and the easiest thing to do was to take 4 more tablets.

Thankfully they kicked in quickly and I was able to lie down on the bed and the pain went away quickly. I can still feel it now - almost as if there had been some bruising. The usual bits of bladder and blood were there but on the whole much less than I have had. There can't be too much left to do now.

So - I think that this lot of treatments I am feeling a cumulative effect as Nos. 3,4 &5 have each been a little stronger. Nothing as yet has compared to treatment 2 in either sets of treatments - that must just be a huge reaction by your body.

Anyone going through these - stick with it - it isn't pleasant but it is targeted directly where the cancer was or is and acts directly on it. The shocks to your system are manageable, you just mustn't think that you can carry on as normal straight afterwards - the best thing is to lie down and take it easy, drink plenty of liquids and take things steady.

Another tip to stop you flushing the toilet immediately (before you have had chance to bleach for 15 minutes) is to tie a ribbon around the handle! It works for me - it is such a typical and habitual reaction so putting some reminder there is useful.

Here we go 5th treatment

I'm just off to prepare myself for No.5. FIngers crossed that it is better than No.4 or No.2!