Last post for a while

Getting ready to go on holiday. Phew, do I need it. As I finished work yesterday I could feel the reverse thrusters and the brakes come on. Despite saying I have a job without the pressures of a commercial one, I think that you do put in a tremendous amount of effort to establish yourself and to make the right impression.

I was pleased to talk to a few other people down the week in the organization and they were saying what a difference I had made and how the place has a bit of a buzz now. I feel good about the work I've done and I have the guarantee of a job next year after my 1 year contract comes to an end and so I really ought to be more than happy that I have made the right impressions and secured the job.

Rest and relaxation are the next items on the agenda. We fly off this evening and I understand that the Azores are like Madeira but quieter. Well Madeira used to be quiet too - especially if you wandered around the island like we used to by bus and hire car and really get off the beaten track.

It appears that we are way out of the towns but near enough to reach civilisation in about 10 minutes. In one place we are in a house built of Lava rocks! Anyway, we are packed ( a bit of a first is that) and ready to go. We just have to sit around for the rest of the day waiting to go. Also we are trying to eat up all the food in the Fridge. I am quite looking forward to a Ham, Yoghurt, Salad and Fromage Frais sandwich :-)

Anyway, see you all soon, I do hope that I will be more relaxed and laid back on my return and that I can think a little less than I do now about life, the universe and all that!

Dreams and nightmares

I dream in colour and they are very vivid. Last night I had a very frightening dream, so real I could hardly believe it and this morning I was very carefully checking when I went to the toilet.

The dream was that I passed blood again, however that is how real it felt as it actually felt, when I woke up that it had actually happened. I know it can't have and everything is normal. Trapped away in the back of my mind is still the horror of seeing that happen and also, trapped away is the fear of it returning.

Thinking about myself

This holiday will be different from last years. Last year - a celebration that things were going in the right direction - lots of things to do - being organised (if you wanted to be) - excursions etc. This year, quiet, own car, self catering in the middle of nowhere, idyllic scenery and some time to reflect on the past few years, take stock, recharge the batteries, let go of things that need to be lost and grasp new opportunities ahead.

It is time to detox my mind too. So I hope that I'll be able to put much of what has happened behind me and move on after this.

Reflections and almost some tears

I was out with very good friend who had Prostate Cancer a few weeks before I had my diagnosis.

2 years tomorrow since I had the operation and I spent a long time with him reflecting on our journeys.

It is only when we got to the point of agreeing that we spent a lot of time assuring our own families that we were OK that the full impact of our journeys really struck home.

I had a thoughtful and very emotional journey home. I can't really explain what and why that should be. It was a retrospective I guess and a beginning of the realisation that I survived and an acknowledgement of the journey I had taken so far. In a way, I now feel as if I am beginning to fulfil some sort of destiny or get to "peace with myself". I really do have the right job at the right time and many people are now coming over to my way of thinking.

I go on holiday on Saturday - I am really looking forward to that. This time, I will be able to relax a bit more I hope. I need the break more than I probably realise.

How I hate

Commuting and all that goes with it. Really warm day, get to the station to come home - track side fire, signals not working, station heaving and tempers getting frayed.

I did no more than turn on my heels and went and did 2 hours work in the Institute of Directors (yes opposite NZ House) and came home later on an empty train that pulled out on time. They were still running trains all over the show though.

I shudder to think how we expect to be running the Olympic Games in 4 years from now given the state of our transport system. In 1888 it was state of the art and led the world. These day state of the ark may be more appropriate.

Oh and just to make us feel good about using public transport and playing the green ticket, the fares are going to go up double the rate of inflation (AGAIN) this year. Gee thanks. It was also a bit like rubbing salt in the wound that all the top railway men got there 6 figure bonuses yesterday.

You may have noticed that I never really lost this cynical streak..

A Good Day Today

I really motored on with my work today and got a load done. I am of course trying to get everything done before Friday - my last day - and so I have been winding up the workload. I felt a little hot on the train though as the temperatures begin to climb. It should hit 30 on Friday and I intend to be working at home that day.

BA History here I come

I signed off the documents and paid the fee today and so now I am on my way. What a stroke of luck though, one of the first aspects of study is Cezanne and I have the National and the Courtauld Galleries just 5 and 10 minutes away. Hopefully that will get me off to a good start.

I'd been dithering for a few days and wondering whether or not to do it but finally decided that I really need to get some goals lined up to keep me focused and to "do something with my life". Well kind of...

How could I forget?

21st July - the day I was diagnosed 2 years ago. Probably a good thing that I am not remembering anniversary dates! The 25th was the day I had the first operation!

And yet I had a good day

I'm tired - it is the story of my life these days but I enjoyed my day at work and I do work really hard but I love my job - it is so varied and today my double sided 1796 petition was hinged onto the wall and people are really impressed with it.

I managed to build a set of instructions and guidelines - update the web site, change the photographs, get some posters off and a few other things too. I was half asleep on the train on the way home though and I'm off to bed in a minute as I won't last too much longer.

So this feeling? What is it? Well, I am guessing it is just getting ready for the holiday, winding down, working very hard these past three months to "establish" myself at work. Happily, I've done that they have nigh on offered me a permanent role next April. That would be nice.

I hope that this holiday will see me rested and recharged for the next onslaught. Yet, I look back on how I was last holiday and the improvement is massive and so I really shouldn't be quite as critical as I am now.

The thing to bear in mind is that having something seriously wrong with you takes it out of you in more ways than one. When you finish fighting is when you feel fatigued and I don't want to "let my guard down". Things have gone so far in the right direction that I would be pretty upset if there were a set back. But let's face it, I haven't actually "had" cancer since this time last year! Even so, I've been having the treatment and being knocked out in the hospital and all that doesn't help. the treatment bangs you about a bit and as a very good friend tells me your hormone balance is blown all over the place and takes a very long time to settle down.

I'm certain this stuff isn't serious - but your mind likes to tell you that every little thing IS serious :-)

Oh well a good day and I have far more of these than bad ones these days. I just need to ease up, that's all.

Something not quite right

It seems a strange thing to say because, nothing has been quite the same for a couple of years and yet whilst I am complaining that I haven't recovered and that I am not really well, I can definitely say that something isn't right.

I can't tell what it is at the moment. Maybe I really need this holiday and time off? I just don't feel great. I have dragged myself up this morning and I'm just about to go and have a drink and my morning pills prior to going to work.

There is something niggling away that just says - you aren't right. However, blood tests are all OK and in reality I generally feel alright excepting the non stamina bit. I could do with losing a good few pounds which I am tackling now but that isn't it either.

I'll see how I feel once I have been at work today for a while.

Read the Signs

I tend to not be taking notice of what my body tells me. For example on Friday it was the staff summer party. I wasn't particularly thrashing back beers etc which had run out anyway quite soon but we on to a pub and after an hour or so, I managed to fall off my stool. Now luckily it was a small table stool and also that most people could see that I hadn't exactly been drinking but it was a shock that I had lost my balance. In reality, I had been trying to let someone get their bag from under the table and the stool didn't slide but tipped. However, I could do absolutely nothing about it. I decided to go home after that anyway but it struck me that losing my balance like that was how all this began about 2 1/2 years ago now as I fell over in the street. Again, no real boozing involved but just lost my footing. I'm still not reading these obvious signs of tiredness and really need to be taking it far easier. I intend to take things differently on return from holiday.

I was tired when I got home and yesterday. I'm fine today but I do need to be on the watch out for this. I think I am back to normal and actually, I haven't accepted that I am not. In my heart of hearts I know damn well that I am not anywhere near back to normal and yet I outwardly act that way. I tend to throw up a protective barrier around me and act out how I am but in reality it isn't sustainable as I really don't have the energy to pull it off for a week at a time.

Anyway, holiday soon and at least I will get some rest and relaxation. I was speaking to the boss and told him that I thought I had slightly overdone it in the first 3 months of the job. I think perhaps I have.

Fatigue

It appears to be something that I am getting towards the end of the week and it is controllable. I am feeling quite tired now at 10:30 at night and so that will do for today and I will go to bed. I'm not certain about taking some of these co-enzymes and things that have been recommended.

Good news from the Doctors is that blood tests are "satisfactory" which sounds to be Doc speak for OK.

An evening spoilt by

An incontinent fox that had crapped in my drive. Great - just what I needed to step in and bring into the house at this late hour - thanks to all you green anti hunt people in your city dwellings we have rats, foxes and a plague of wood pigeons, magpies and other unsavoury pests to live with.

Dog owners have to pick up the waste their dogs leave but after your legislation, you aren't coming around picking up the mess these vermin make nor tidying up the trash and bins they upset overnight nor the rats and other stuff now left loose to wander around our houses. As we aren't allowed a shotgun or anything else to keep the population down, things are just getting worse and the do gooders are happily tucked up safe in their city and town houses.

I think that is enough of a rant for the moment. It just really annoys me that I have a drive full of Fox shit when, frankly, two or more years ago you hardly saw foxes except in the woods! The country is goin to the foxes - or the dogs!

Insomnia - Again

It does annoy me when I feel tired, go to bed and then cannot sleep. I've been to a meeting this evening that was interesting but not anything to make my mind spin. I suppose with all the things that I am working on at work, that could be it but something somewhere is niggling away in the back of my mind and just not letting me sleep.

Perhaps hearing tonight some very bad news about someone I know, hearing that another friend who is also terminal is facing up to things and out and about and making the most of his last summer. Also another friend has had a recurrence of a Cancer that was not meant to come back. In fact he is one of only a handful that has bucked the trend. So that is three not good news bits in one day.

I met with a person who is 7 years into their BC regime and clear. Cystoscopy (poke and peek) in a few weeks time for him and fingers crossed that will be clear for him. He has been on the harder regime of BCG instillations and is nearing the end of that cycle - the one I thought I would have to have.

Anyway, wandered over to the office to have a moan :-) Sorry to burden you with this. At least I didn't wake you up to tell you that I couldn't sleep!!

Better

Again, a lot better today but working from home and no travelling tends to boost things. I suppose that I haven't actually commuted for close to 10 years. It makes a difference when you don't have to add a couple of hours on to your working day, every day.

I am looking after "A" who has had her Wisdom teeth out - she seems a lot better this morning which is good. Poor girl looks like a Hamster though - her face is swollen - which is no surprise.

It was OK today

Thank goodness - up OK, got to work listening to my Portuguese Linguaphone course! Work was good as I manged to drill the stuff I had missed last week and get that done, got home early so that the boss could pick up the pictures I had framed.

A was in Hospital today, bless her, having her Wisdom teeth out - thankfully just 2 not the 4. Poor girl looked whacked when she got home. Lots of sympathy from me, I see they cannula'd her left hand so I KNOW what that is like - not pleasant at all. She is feeling a little sick - not surprising as she has never had a General before. I am on duty tomorrow to make sure she is OK. At least she has had it done and she can enjoy her holiday soon and then off to Uni (we hope).

I feel fine this evening and I hope that this lasts into the week. I do find it particularly disturbing that I wasn't aware that I'd get the fatigue bit kicking in and I find that disruption of my plans is quite annoying. Anyhow, things are getting better - or at least they appear to be.

Give it another go

I will see how I get on this week. I haven't had the fatigue so much - slight insomnia which wasn't great but I hope that I can get up and get myself going and get to work in the morning.

I feel fine now - but I did this time last week too!

Routines or are they Ruts?

I was considering that things are now in a pattern and I've never liked patterns. It is funny that I now catch the same trains, know the best places to sit, know the quickest and most scenic routes to walk to work and tend to do roughly the same things day in day out. I read the paper and finish and fold it just as the train pulls out, I go to the same shop and buy a croissant in the morning etc.

I'm certain that this routine is in fact turning out to be a rut and something I am programing into myself and so, I think I must start to break that somehow by mixing things up a bit and doing things differently. I'm not sure quite what I will do but I need to think about breaking habits and routines and go off and do different things.

Time to get up off my behind and do something....

Defence Mechanisms and Coming to Terms with the Big C

I still firmly believe that once I had got over the first few months of disbelief, horror, terror, revulsion and upset that I went into a very interesting state. That included understanding all I could about my disease, its treatment, its various outcomes and my chances of getting out of it.

Frankly, my chances were pretty good once I had spent time understanding where it was all going and even if things had gotten worse, there was still a way forward that would have given me 5 or many more years.

The defense mechanism is to be brutally honest about what I had, tell anyone if they asked, tell people how I felt (even if I felt s**t) and to be confident, have a sense of humour about it and to approach it in that way. I've never looked at this seriously until now, afterwards as I have been taking it as it comes knowing I was on the roller coaster and that it would stop when it wanted to rather than when I wanted it to.

The end is in sight, the roller coaster is slowing down. Whether I am dizzy from the ride or from the expectation that it will soon be over I haven't thought yet but it just seems to me now, after having gone through most of the treatments and operations and tests that now I am slowly coming to terms with just how ill I was and just how much this has taken out of me. Clearly I am a lot better than I was a year ago and certainly 2 years ago. In fact I am probably healthier than I have been in 5 years in reality.

However, I look at myself now and I realise how much it has taken out of me these past few years. Putting up a fight and battling mentally and physically I think have really taken it out of me. As you can probably guess, the battle is constant, you don't get a weekend off and you keep your guard up and you work at many levels. Certainly one of the most peculiar things you have to do is to keep the spirits of your own family up and reassure friends and family that you are OK and that you are doing well and that you will improve and so on.

Once you get past all that life changes yet again and this weariness takes over. No doubt, it will pass, as all of these trials and tribulations have done these past few years. If anything, putting up a fight, putting up a defence mechanism are all parts of the beating of this disease. Coming to terms with it - well that is a different thing.

These days, you are more likely to survive Cancer. The advances are phenomenal and these are noticeable even in the past two years with bladder cancer and treatment regimes and also some of the cytology testing. It is becoming more like a serious disease that you can live with. Sure, it "ain't for sissies" thanks to an American cousin for that one :-) but it is treatable, you can continue to work (although I was lucky not to have to do too much travel etc). I actually think that had I been working full time, I may have been able to work my way through this a little better in a way as I would have had a different routine but - that wasn't my choice. I think what I am trying to get at is that is can be lived with these days and is just as treatable as some other serious diseases (heart attacks, liver or kidney problems etc).

So finally, coming to terms with the Big C. I haven't come to terms with it at all yet. It still hasn't really sunk in. Recent events tell me that I know I have had something seriously wrong with me and I know "what" it is. It just hasn't hit me in any strong way what that actually means or quite how I should react to it. I had all the emotional responses right at the beginning - I know that I am completely changed as a person now but the defence mechanism is still working and protecting me from the possibility that I may not have got the favourable diagnosis, operation results, effective treatment and recovery. Maybe because I did get everything favourable - I don't need to look at something that didn't or hasn't happened?

Back to the insomnia

So awake am I at almost 1 in the morning I thought I'd come into the office (at home) and type it up in the blog. This LINK is pretty good at summing up the fatigue problems. Now, I have the insomnia back. I'm now running through my head that I should have gone to work and done certain bits of work last week. I'm on some guilt trip about being ill again.

I'm not too serious about that last statement. I just mean that I am the sort of person who is concerned that I shouldn't be having days off and I don't normally - whatever "normal" may be these days. I remember writing a heart felt apology letter to the company I was working with when I was diagnosed as I hadn't long started with them and didn't want them to think that I joined knowing I had something like this. I'm like that - a strange sense of honour/duty I suppose.

Anyway, the holiday cannot come too soon I think. I need a break and to just give myself a couple of weeks without anything to worry or hinder me. This year, I won't have the same pressures as the past two years. Well in year one I was recovering from the operation and we had no holiday at all. Last year we were on the Cruise but I wasn't anywhere near as well as I am now and I was also under some pressure about reaching my targets. Not that, on reflection, it did any good reaching them anyway :-)

I really don't need this swinging between tiredness and wide wake. I really could do with getting back to normal again. I probably, more likely, need to perhaps now reflect on just how seriously ill I have been and realise that after fighting this for two years, I am bound to be tired or insomniatic sometimes :-)