Poor Brain and other Dilemmas

I was fine at work today but a tiny bit slow first thing after consuming far too much red Wine the night before.

Work was OK and I got on and was happy to get the day out of the way.

I got home to find an email from someone I know and who is also one of our volunteers at the charity. He has been operated on for Bladder Cancer and had a pretty hard time of it. I've offered whatever help I can give to him as I think he could do with a bit of support and seeing a survivor. he knows me although we are good acquaintances not friends. He says he will soon go on Chemo so I'll check that out and see.

On my brain - well it can't have escaped your notice that I'm pretty much unsettled at the moment. I have a potential opportunity coming up that should excite and motivate me but will mean leaving or altering my current job. I'm so under utilised in the job that I am in that it wouldn't be a problem to move on or to perhaps split my time accordingly.

I can't quite get to the bottom of exactly what it is that is troubling me, it is the whole thing not a single area to put your finger on. I'm not depressed and neither do I feel the need for seeing a shrink either as it isn't (or I think it isn't) the sort of thing that warrants that. It is some massive jigsaw puzzle of cause and effect scenarios to work through each action having some other knock on effect on some other part of the problem. The solutions vary from the simple to the hideously complicated, the plans from the weird to the just plain off the wall, the various scenarios for what I could be doing with the "opportunity" I have and the experiences I have been thorough play around in my head all the time.

I really don't know what I want and to rely on serendipity isn't my style it needs to be planned and considered and tested and then executed.

Oh boy - one of those days

That has just ended at 23:25! Oh boy am I ever kanckered but I was very pleased to talk to someone and get some of my troubles off my chest. A good friend tipped up and we ended up drinking a few bottles of red at the local wine bar and finished off with a curry and another bottle of red. I actually believe I drank more as tonight it was my turn to have the magic auto refilling wine glass?

What a difference a day makes

24 little hours - NO - SOMEBODY STOP ME! This isn't Karaoke for goodness sake :-)

You may perceive that I feel 100% better than I was yesterday and almost my old strange peculiar self! Yowsa.

I had a good evening but my friend is looking very old now and perhaps rather than him giving me a lift home I should be giving him a lift there and back! He is 80 after all!

I'm beginning to formulate a plan to take myself forward from here and I reckon the thing that holds me back all the time is I test in my own mind about the impact my actions will have on others around me. Every time I per-mutate the odds and the different ways things could pan out if I made this or that decision. I'm not quite as worried about what people think about me as I used to be but I temper all decisions with that very criteria and acid test.

You see - going through my mind is to take myself off (on my own) for a week or two and "test" myself. Do I really want to walk away from here and go off and do something radical? Do I want to try and reengage with my family and friends. Am I living the life I really want to? Did I choose a life that I now regret and just want to change? And so on and so on go the questions bouncing about in my head. It is a constant assailing of my senses and there are no right or wrong answers nor logic to the way that the questions materialise and affect the way my next pattern of thoughts and plans are formulated.

It seems that I am just open to all ideas and all avenues of thought and action at the moment. I think I need to explore them all the sane and the insane, the logical and illogical, the bright and the dim, the planned and the unplanned serendipitous.

I am toying with the idea of taking myself off for a week or two - I have no idea where - to go and find myself. I'm a "late 50s" child so don't have the "benefit" of any drugs or alcohol background to play on my mind. I do have a brain that is constantly giving me grief about survival, normality and the nagging question of "Just what do you want to do with your life?" thrashing away in my mind many times a day.

Given that so much is going on in my head all the time, I find it very difficult to imagine that any deliberations are going to want me to settle back down to the Status Quo prior to Bladder Cancer.

I always thought I knew the answer and yet I find that it is still too difficult to look at straight in the eyes and to do what is right for everyone. To do what is right for me and me alone seems to be self centred and selfish to say the least and yet, by doing the ting that appears to be the most selfish and hurtful may it in the long run be the right thing to do? the short term hurt can be worked through. To continue the way I am going cannot be good for those around me in general or myself in particular.

I fear the collateral damage that bladder Cancer has dealt out so far and will (more so I have no doubt) into the future. It may be an inevitability of how my past was built that will be the undoing of the past but it may lead to a new future. I dread the collateral to other people and not to myself.

Cancer ripped up my rule book and threw away the index. All that I built and saved for was torn apart in short order. Things - material things - aren't so important really, if the house had burnt to the ground but everyone had escaped then that would have been a result. Life - not things - is important. I get that, I want to live a different life (or I dream I do). I don't live a different life because domestics haven't changed as I have changed, they have been constant (and may have needed to be so to continue "normal" house whilst I was ill). Now the house is the same as it was before BC and to me, nothing has changed but I most certainly have.

It is all a big heap of dung at the moment and whilst I'm enjoying life, am back to my old happy go lucky self and all that good stuff, I feel incomplete, a huge piece is missing and the next part of the journey is to discover (or rediscover) what the spark was or is, will be or what I want it to be. The brain nags me that I haven't gotten away with this, that it is going to come back and "get me" and that I had better live this next 10 or 15 years that I may have to the full. Only those that want to come along will come along. I know that many will not want to. That is my dilemma.

Off to my Jazz Night

Mind you it is tipping it down with rain and so for the first time in a very long time, I am getting a lift there - Once before - last month in fact - I got the bus as it was throwing it down then as well.

I hope to get a few beers down my neck and enjoy some trad Jazz prior to returning to the mad house at work tomorrow.

The alarm

Sounded at 5:20 as usual but there was no way I was going to make it and so I went back to sleep until just gone 9 and mercifully awoke to find a big improvement in the state of my cold. I've still got it but it is a lot less heavy than yesterday and all the symptoms are less.

Luckily I can work from home and I have plenty to get on with. My sense of humour might need a day to be repaired though. It does get me quite angry when no one actually makes a decision and sticks to it. Not my style. Sure, find something that doesn't work and change your mind but as usual, we spent hours in pedantic semantics and ended up with exactly the same message but worded in a different way.

It is my Dad's birthday today - I need to give him a call. It is also Jazz night and I'm looking forward to going to that and having a few beers and some good honest entertainment from talented musicians.

Tomorrow, as they say, is another day. All hell breaks loose this next week as we run up to one of our major events of the year that somehow, I have ended up arranging and organising. It isn't my job to do it but somehow I have inherited it. I've been trying to get the guy who owns it to actually own it. He doesn't and I'm worried he will seriously affect his job by not doing it and me doing it for him but I can't get him to see it by being subtle. He has even told me that I'm best suited to the Job (which IS true) but you can delegate the tasks but not the responsibility. Bless the lot of them, there aren't too many "managers" in the place and so maybe they don't know what I'm on about.

Well - I suppose I ought to go and do some work.

The Girls at work

Gave me a right ear 'ole bashing this morning when I appeared at work bunged up with a croaky voice and sneezing and coughing. I managed to get through the meeting but it wasn't a pleasant day as I was sweating and trembling and trying to work my way through it. I left about an hour early and ended up sleeping for three hours or so when I got home. I'm wide awake now of course but still coughing and so I think I will work from home tomorrow.

The train journey was a laugh this morning as all the lights went out and stayed out so we couldn't read our newspapers - a very strange experience.

I've definitely gone over and beyond the call of duty today though and I hope that they appreciate it. Mind you I couldn't believe the committee changing everything with just a week to go. Unfortunately I wasn't at my normal temperate and joyful self on a couple of occasions and told them so. The trouble with a committee of more than one is that they wish to discuss it. The Roman conquest did not have meetings and networking events they killed anyone who disagreed with them. I cannot imagine that being quite that radical will work with my people though!

Working out

What IS important is fun. SO what areas can you look at?

Your faith
Your family
Your lifestyle
Your ambitions
Your friends
Your location
Your social life
Your hobbies and pastimes
Your real needs
Your dreams
Your desires
Your attitude
Your risk profile

Just a few of the things that are churning around in my head. It is interesting to jot these down and think to yourself how important things are to you now and before and how they will be in the future.

Silly things like I used to like cooking but I barely do that now
I can draw and paint I don't do that now
I can play piano, guitar and trumpet and have those here - I don't play them now
I like music but I on;y have that on in my MP3 Player going to and from work and at the Hospital
I used to like family History and I hardly do any of that now
I read books but nowhere near as prolifically as I used to

It worries me that these are just a few things that I realised that since BC I no longer actually do. My piano, guitar and trumpet all gather dust and I'm just no longer interested in things that used to be my hobbies. Worse than that, it isn't important to me anymore even though I strongly believe I should go back to doing them. My photography is restricted to holidays only now as is my video camera. I no longer enjoy driving although I do have a nice car to drive around in.

This is why I am searching out what has changed and trying to understand why I no longer do these things. Nothing really replaces these but I don't seem to have much time to myself. perhaps a bit of Parkinson's Law creeping in and me filling the available time.

I was considering what I might like for Christmas (Well A has asked me for a list as she needs to save up - she is a planner like me) and I could hardly think of anything I actually want. material things now don't mean that much. It seems strange to me at the moment to go out and see something that I actually want to buy and own.

I used to love cooking and these days I just don't enjoy doing it or just don't do it.

My faith took a severe pounding as I don't get the "Why?" bit at the moment nor do I understand how it can be a test either as some say. Maybe that answer will materialise during my deliberations on what it means to survive. Who knows?

It sounds all doom and gloom but I'm not like that at all. Somewhere there is a nagging in my head that is looking for reasons and for piecing together all that I've learnt this past 3 years. You know that everything has changed but outside of my reality, perhaps it hasn't changed at all? My family hasn't seen any changes or have they had to make too many. No one has said that "you don't cook anymore" or anything like that - I doubt it was really noticed by them.

It is the other dimension to Cancer and the way it messes with your head. You want to go and tell people you are special and share your insight but only a few people are genuinely interested. You want to change the world but you don't know where to start. You'd like to escape and run away but you are frightened that you'll lose your friends and your family and die a lonely man.

I've been trying to figure a lot of this out for a long time and I'm gradually getting to the point where parts of the jigsaw are coming together. All the pieces are sorted out but I don't have the picture on the box to help me put it all together.

I hope that I do work it out soon as the list of tings I used to like doing but do no more is growing and it isn't being replaced by anything.

Fighting a cold

I'm just hanging around waiting to get my last Lemsip of the day to see if I can knock the backside out of this cold overnight. It is really annoying that I've got it right now. The next few weeks are pretty hectic and I also want to try and work out some time to myself as I think I have a few weeks vacation/holiday time available to me to be used before Christmas.

I'm wondering whether I take myself off somewhere for a while and just work on what I want to do and where I go from here. No one seems to have the same time off, A has different term times to L and Mrs. F. which also clash with things I am doing so perhaps I will see if I can go somewhere and chill out for a while.

I need to sort out my diary to do that of course because I have loads of meetings and things already penciled in.

I hope to get back to work tomorrow if I can get rid of this cough and sneezing cold.

Reflecting on being clear again

Each time I get a clear it means that I am:

• Less likely to get a recurrence
• More likely to continue to be clear
• Moving further away from the horrible stuff that happened to me
• Gradually getting my strength back and repairing my body
• Able to plan a bit further in to the future
• Less plagued by dark thoughts and self doubt
• Building some optimism for the future

I'm still getting to grips with:

• Being quite fragile when it comes to emotional stuff on films and TV
• Getting or feeling angry at people who are self centred and selfish
• What on earth I want to do with what bit of my life remains both professionally and personally
• How I feel about myself

It was interesting to see "how I feel about myself" being on the list because I recognise that I don't feel particularly good about myself at the moment - it is one of those things that you deal with a lot with staff and you need to be sure that they feel good about themselves but also that they feel good about their colleagues or you can get problems.

My low self esteem is really about not having worked in a "real" job for the past two and a half years. I've been 18 months in this job and was messing around for about a year with the lame brained one. It just doesn't feel that I have done much whilst I have been ill and not really been anything other than looking after my own sorry arse. The family are provided for which is a blessing, at least I got that right and had insurance in place for a living death.

I'm just not terribly satisfied with my current life, my current job and many other aspects of my life. I think that it is all part of a major reevaluation you go through when you have a chronic illness. Some probably come to terms with it really quickly or pragmatically argue that it is just something to deal with, get over it and move on. In my mind it is far from that. What sticks in my mind are the regrets and the decisions I took when I was younger that "may" have contributed to where I am now. Like working quite so hard, smoking all those years ago and that sort of stuff. I used to work really hard and drive myself to do a great job. Did it actually achieve anything? Am I reaping the excesses of my youth?

It is a strange dilemma. Someone hands your life back to you after you had been threatened with the alternatives. You get it back, not in quite the same shape your remember it and suddenly you have to decide whether to keep on with the same old same old which you were leading up until the time of diagnosis or go and do something different.

The older you get the more ties hold you in one place. Friends, clubs and organisations, work children, school, their friends and so on all tie you down. I'd be tempted to move further out into the country or to the coast or abroad but that probably isn't going to happen. There is an underlying need to make the most of this "opportunity" but as already discussed on this blog site, there is the fact that the only person likely to feel that way is me, no one else lived through this and what it did to me. Their experiences are likely to be very different and apart from some changes that they have noticed (I'm much more laid back than I used to be) they probably wont understand the desire to make some sort of change. I just wish I knew quite what that change actually was or is!

Stupid Cold

What a nuisance - I've got a streaming cold, a real classic, nose running, sore throat, headache, watering eyes, sneezes that knock your block off and coughs that rattle your ribs.

Bugger it, I really didn't need this and I'm off work - well no one would thank me for catching this. I am trying to do some work at my desk but with little effect really.

I am drugging myself up as I have a meeting I should be in tomorrow. The trouble is, if I am anything like this I will just have to miss it as I don't want to stick them in a meeting room with me coughing and sneezing all over them.

So it has sort of put the kibosh on doing anything for a day or so as I do feel pretty rough at the moment.

Great a cold

Here it comes sneezing and coughing, sore throat and nose. Bloody ill people why can't they keep their colds to themselves :-)

That's the trouble going into hospital - it's full of sick people. If they put ordinary fit people in there it would be better.

I really could do without this right now though. I've got to make a decision whether I go to work tomorrow if I'm like this as I'll give it to everyone else and wont be popular at all.

Bloody typical, I'm not amused - as you can tell.

A new day has dawned

The early up for the Japanese Grand Prix meant a 5:45 start but it was an interesting race but I have to say I wasn't feeling great and Mrs F. and I both have that stinging at the back of the nose and throat that preempts a cold. We think perhaps sitting around in a Hospital waiting room for close to an hour didn't particularly help. So I'll keep an eye on it as it hasn't gotten any worse this morning so far.

I am still pretty neutral over yesterday's result which surprises me still, I thought maybe I'd lighten up overnight or realise how good it is or something like that but - obviously not :-)

I've all day to get myself excited I suppose! Actually I have a load of things to do like stuffing envelopes and sticking stamps on - whoopee! At least I wont have to do it for too long as good old (some say) Flocky Bicep will be take over from me this time next year and have a go at this - it will be a reward for some of his more risque comments :-)

So back to how do I feel and what do I want to do? I really just don't know - I'm just not reacting to it at all neither positive nor negative and somehow that in itself is OK and yet I am surprised by how calm I am. Oh well, I have all day to think about it.

Officially - I'm a Low Reactor

There was no huge smile, no whooping, no celebrations of any kind today. It may sound strange if you haven't had Cancer to think that you would react in a low key way to what is, after all, pretty good news.

Clear of Cancer. I remember the first time I heard that being very emotional and quite shaky but that was tempered with the need for BCG follow up and maintenance.

In a way if I'd heard the word Remission or something similar then that may have caused a bit more of a celebration. To have to go through an operation once again next year is a bit of a blow but I'd rather do that and be sure than to have the half chance that something worse may have happened.

But don't get me wrong about what a major step this is, it is just that I'm not having a party to celebrate or any such thing. The threat of BC coming back is still very real and so a muted response is called for at the moment.

I was interested to hear from my friend last night though that he thought that this year I have started to look well, the strain is off of my face and the colour has returned. Many people have said I looked drawn and some said I look positively ill and grey when I got this and the few months afterwards.

I thought it was a surprising reaction of mine today I was all ready to party and do some deep thinking after this particular result. I think today I am feeling relief and maybe tomorrow I will be feeling a little more upbeat about things.

All Clear

Well it wasn't quite how I dreamt it but it was all clear nonetheless. It was strange because Mrs. F. Wanted to come along for the walk and normally I go on my own. It was suitably blowy and autumnal and there was a 45 minute wait to be seen as my Consultant had been double booked and was apologetic about that.

So all was clear and she remarked that it had been for some time. She wanted a 6 month appointment and toyed with the idea of a 6 month flexi or perhaps even a year but she felt that we should do 6 months, have full biopsies her "Gold Standard" and so a further rigid cystoscopy. They aren't fun but if that is what it has to be, that is what it has to be. Fed up with these? Sure but then it goes with the territory so I have to accept it.

We walked home and I had one beer as Mrs F was with me! I feel tired at the moment, I'm sure I have been in a high state of anxious anticipation and am falling asleep here typing this. I think I will wander downstairs and fall asleep there :-)

Let he who is without cast the first stone etc

It must be me or the new me but why is every one these days straight in with both feet? I just read a post on a web forum (a Masonic one) where an innocuous post about a subject many would find interesting was tirade on by some self styled "politically correct cybersleuth". Frankly the guy should get back to the bathroom and work on his wrist technique!

You can't say anything without some smart arse coming up with some old twaddle about you shouldn't say this or do that. Heaven alone knows what makes these misinformed, misguided half wits mine, or anyone else, judges.

If I learnt just one thing in the recent past it was that life's short enough as it is without all this holier than thou cyber bullying. What I do enjoy is facing these do gooders down face-to-face as they wear a very thin veneer of respectability and are generally extremely sad and worthless people. I suppose somewhere there is a place that they fit into society but I find it extremely difficult to know exactly where that is. Even slime is life.

What brought that about? Just the constant attitude that anything exists to be pulled down and humiliated - it is a pretty sad fact of life that TV promulgates this behaviour and that people who should know better decide to copy it and think it is right.

Well I won the loudest shirt contest

It was Jeans for Genes day today at work, pay a couple of pounds to dress down. It was a bit of a shock to most - I have a hawaiian shirt that can actually melt your eyes so fierce are the bright blues, oranges and yellows. It beggars belief and there were double takes a plenty. I bet with my colleague that I would have the loudest shirt and he turned up in a normal Tee shirt!

Anyway, it was so bad that I daren't take my jacket off on the train in either direction :-)

The fun of it all. Anyway, charity benefited even if my colleagues eyes didn't.

I'm feeling quite good especially as my mate NC is coming over to pick me up and we are going to have a beer and a curry tonight. That's rather unexpected but nonetheless welcome. So I am looking forward to going out in the near future and tomorrow, of course, going to see my specialist to see what the outcome of the last lot of biopsies were. Fingers crossed!

I hope to be imbibing of a few more beers on the way home if the news is good.

Mellow

What a great afternoon and evening I have just had. Lots of people think Freemasons are nasty people and have some sort of weird thing going on. Well tonight I sat next to my host, a few people I have met before and some new people and one of them was a reasonably high up guy in the overall scheme of things but actually I didn't know that straight away at all. The Master was one of my Charity Trustees and he was not only a very nice man but also a very interesting raconteur too.

The common denominator is that we are all similar people - not clones or identical fits - but we all have common moral beliefs and so it is ever so easy even for someone as introverted as I am - to get on and chat to someone as you can talk about anything and nothing and the "rules" and the "borders" of what we can and cannot discuss are part of the understanding we have. That is what is great. Later on I found out that this guy is really high up in the F1 community and he knows a lot of the top people and it was great to ask questions and hear about how F1 started and some of the people this guy knew.

I feel really charged and revitalised now because my friend invited me and because we had such a gas. It was a little cramped at the festive Board (banquet) but there were good reasons (post strike) and so everyone mucked in and got on with it. In fact it just made the evening go with a real swing.

People can be real arses sometimes

It is difficult to know where to begin sometimes but some people are really stupid and lack common sense or indeed any logic or balance to their arguments. I read with some incredulity today a complaint made against our charity ranting on at us about not providing support when it was blatantly obvious that they had cheated the system and we had found out.

It is more unfortunate that I am not allowed to bring my baseball bat out of retirement and do my Charles Bronson bit in explaining to these people not only the error of their ways but the utter waste of time they cause us and the diversion of our good services into some amoeba brained, sub educated, mindless, self centred moron. Believe me, my list of adjectives and scorn have yet to be let loose like the torrent from a broken dam. What an arsehole. Mind you, we do get them and disturbingly regularly. If we could just round all these oxygen wasters up and throw them in the sea we could build a new continent and perhaps save the planet through them being stifled and not allowed to spout hot air. These people should get the hell out of our way and let us actually concentrate on those who need our assistance.

So - you can probably tell I was in a pretty foul mood today as my colleagues are all dedicated professionals for whom this is all in a days work. To me it is an utter afront and an attack on those who are there to help people in the darkest hours.

I was so tired today though and even though I had a long sleep I still awoke tired and had a sleep on the train in and out of work. I hope for a reasonable night's sleep tonight. Tomorrow I will be off to the Guildhall in the afternoon and I am looking forward to a really interesting meeting and to a nice meal and the odd glass of Champagne and Wine followed by a nice Port and some splendid cheese.

A got her Uni timetable today and was up for Fresher's week activities. It looks to be a different time and day each week and so will be challenging for her time management but I really hope she will enjoy the whole experience.

L is happy at 6th form and knows what she wants to do and knows what she has to achieve to get to the Universities of her choice. She wants to teach - an interesting profession, one that I would have enjoyed I think but after 10 or 15 years in industry. Good for her and there is a marked difference in her since she returned from Argentina. It wasn't a huge difference people told me there would be at the time because she is pretty bubbly and the funniest bundle of laughs. No, she has matured that little bit more and under all the usual is a determined and well thought through plan to get where she wants to go. She has got her job (well both have got jobs now) and she is doing well in that and the transition to 6th form discipline, no school uniform and subjects she actually wants to be doing has seen a big change in her in the past month.

Saturday is the BIG day and I am hopeful of a further clear outcome and for some good news on a change in the way things will go from here on in.

Couple of days to go

To find out what my future holds. It is kind of obvious but then again, I didn't get the right answer last time and so I suppose I ought to be prepared for not getting the right answer this time :-)

I'm still tired but I think I broke the back of the work that I was doing today and may well have done enough to ensure that I don't need to be "full on" for the next couple of days.

A hard day again

I suppose that as I am effectively still doing two people's work that it would be hard. I was furiously whacking out stuff today but at least my Welsh and English document was signed off and ready to go to print today.

We now have this big do on the 15th October that I am preparing for and getting scripts and facts ready for all the participants. The weekend really did me some good though and I felt up for the challenge. Tonight we started our Monday night learning session - LOI or Lodge of Instruction starts now and goes to the 2nd Monday in May so I am pretty much booked out every Monday until then.

This Thursday I have again been invited to a rather splendid Lodge meeting in the Crypt of the Guildhall in the City of London. Last year it was a fantastic evening. I particularly like the champagne being poured as you come out of the Lodge and the wonderful feast of a meal we have there in the Crypt. One of my friends from the weekend away will be there for his first visit and I can only begin to imagine how much he will enjoy it. The Master happens to be one of the members of the Charity's Council so at least I will have something to say to him.

I'm feeling OK but I am not sure if I can keep this level of effort up for the next two or three weeks. It is going to be full on.

Saturday's appointment is looming and I am hopeful of a positive outcome. I have announced that I will be carrying some cash with me so that I can visit the pub(s) on the way home. Here's hoping that I DO spend some money then.