A Little Disappointing

I put on 2 pounds this week so am 226 Pounds or 16 stone 2 Lbs. Not surprising as I have been out three times this week and I'm sure the Curry on Thursday - as I went for the full mixed grill didn't help. However, I'm not too downhearted about it, I have a birthday barbecue to go to later and after that I hope next week I can get back to some serious training and back to normality with the diet. I've just reminded myself that I was at work in London on Monday as well at which there was a very tasty buffet. So for four days this week I have had bread in some form or other and I very rarely have any at all.

My diet is really just keeping away from bread entirely. I have pasta or potato to input carbs which you must have. I tend to eat a lot of fish - sardine, pilchard, crab sticks (which are fish in reality) and tuna and mackerel. Lots of salad and fruit, nuts, dried fruits, pro-biotic yoghurt and plenty of soups. I eat cottage cheese a lot and I use pickles just to spice up what can be quite bland tasting items. Other than that, I have the occasional dressed crab, piece of ham or corned beef with a salad and I have a roast dinner on Sunday. The other ingredient? Don't snack, if you need to, eat fruit or vegetables. Don't eat past 7 pm. That isn't easy either so again, I'd probably drink tomato juice or have some fruit and break my own rule. It is pretty difficult not to do this but works I think.

I managed to squeeze a 30 minute session out of the exercise regime on Friday but missed yesterday out - I lost all track of time. This week should be good - I think there are few distractions and I hope that I can get back on track with the diet, the exercise and with lowering my weight and blood pressure. Work is really picking up pace and I've also got some work from my consultancy to do as well.

Worked out OK - kind of

I got away to the Jazz and that was nice - I met some people I haven't seen for a while. A friend was serving behind the bar. Mrs. F. Called and came along too (that's highly unusual). There was a terrific band and he Clarinettist was brilliant. Why then, when it was a premium event, do people have to talk through the music and even through the man introducing the songs. It's just bad manners. These weren't my age either, these were my parent's ages. I suppose they just come out for the social with some "background music". Nevertheless - it's another one of those things that never fails to wind me up. At least they weren't singing loud and out of tune like a concert I went to a few years ago. Unfortunately it is also a very strong trait inherent in an INTJ who need the certainty of stable environments and personal space together with courtesy and manners.

However, people were up and dancing and enjoying the show which went on until 11:30. So when we got back to still find 20 or so fancy dressed heroes and villains in the house I expected that I'd be a little bit annoyed but all I did was start tidying up and turning on some lights (that sorts them out). By the time I'd got to cleaning the garden and picking up the plastic cups and discarded tins and bottles!!! Many had gone. So by 1 am I was hitting my bed. It's amazing what kids these days drink at parties. We don't provide any alcohol if they want any they bring their own. Vodka, Scotch, Alco-pops, Some sort of strong cider and wine. We used to have light beers and cider but spirits were almost unheard of - the sheer cost involved were nightmarish.

Anyway - apart from the floors (wooden thank goodness) looking like swimming pools where people came in and out from the garden I suppose it wasn't too bad.

Compromise best of both worlds!

Tents and Gazebos are up and the rooms are cleared - so that means in and out all night. I feel like going up to the Jazz evening at the Sports Club or at least going to the Pub.....

Mrs. F. Suggested we should have gone out for dinner tonight. Nothing stopping that until she realises she will probably want to "police" whatever is going on.

I have to admit to not enjoying such things. Out of my control and I'm a control freak, I can't "manage" the situation or stage it the way I want. Best I disappear off out and a night of Jazz will be OK I reckon. I haven't been on a Friday for years and years. Should be fun and I can get back as they turn out of the house which will also be good for me.

Damn weather

Means that L's birthday party is now to be held inside. Thunder storms on the way and heavy rain and rather than have them traipse in from the garden and make the house sodden they can stay inside and get sodden :-)

I hate these sorts of parties - I'm 6 foot and all the kids are taller than me - I was in Hospital this time last year so it didn't matter but the year before two of her "friends" nearly got the benefit of my wrath. They certainly weren't impressed with the verbal abuse I gave them and that shut everyone else up. I will be issuing a stern warning that if anyone really wants to give me any back chat or be "smart" with me, they will have to deal with the same acid mouthed response I'd give to anyone who was abusing my hospitality.

That said I don't have a problem with people enjoying themselves just those who can't hold their drink but more especially can't keep food on their plate. Accidents happen - 90% of people are caused by accidents! However, if you drop food or spill drink then clear it up don't tread it in and then pretend it's funny. You certainly ain't going to like it when I throw a wet tea-towel or cloth at your head and make you do it no matter how bloody big you are. So they will be warned that it is MY house, they are guests in my house and they will treat me with respect of they will be thrown out. These are kids but that's no excuse. A's friends were never like that its just this mindless minority and their selfish behaviour.

Well that's that off my chest. Damn weather - I'd have been able to isolate the little apprentice human beings out there if it wasn't for that!

Flame off. You must think I am some sort of spoil sport but it annoys me that I should clear up after these people and be treated like an alien when asking them to clear up the mess they made.

Bang and the diet's gone!

I was working pretty hard today and time flew by. L arrived late from Scotland so I had to do some driving chores to get her here, changed and back up to London for Billy Elliott. The man who was scheduled to pick up stuff from me didn't appear.

Mrs. F. got in and hadn't eaten anything, I was about to exercise having been delayed for an hour in case matey boy turned up. However - such was Mrs. F's hunger we repaired to our local Curry House and had a very nice meal. I managed to wash mine down with 2 pints of lager.

Hence - diet has broken down a bit today. L's birthday today - blimey 17 years ago - hardly seems possible but there you go, possible it was.

PC has been giving me grief all day hence it is 1 in the morning and I'm still doing stuff to try and get it to work properly. I recollect that Microsoft sent updates along earlier that I put on. Can you guess what has happened to my PC? Bound to be - they always manage to screw up something or other.

More things to concentrate the mind

I've a little bit of a sweet tooth but have been really cutting back these past 2 months but I still use sweeteners in my coffee (not Aspartame - Saccharin based). However, the more I read about this the more uncomfortable I felt about using those too.

Today in Steve K's excellent blog is some more news about Sugars, Nectars, Honey and Fructose that really made me sit up and take notice. It appears that the sort of things that you take for granted when you are healthy really need to be further reviewed when you are under threat. Bladder Cancer just hangs over you like the Sword of Damocles as it can return out of the blue and that of course can pretty well mess up your day I can tell you :-)

So to find that potentially natural sugars will do what I knew some refined sugar does and what allegedly Aspartame does is pretty worrying.

I think I need to consider what to do about this for the future as part of my healthy eating regime. I managed to give up salt in about 6 weeks after the initial shock to my body. I now hardly touch it and can tell if something has been cooked in or seasoned with salt. Now that my Blood Pressure is reasonably under control I'm not so worried about having a little salt but just choose not to. Perhaps I will review what sugars I'm ingesting and see whether I can cut back or remove them. The trouble is so much is in prepared foods etc.

Exercise continues

Another 5kM in 20 minutes - it felt a little easier today - and a little shorter - I hope to gradually get better at the 20 minute and then get back to 30 again which I feel is the optimum.

Had a good day today - business partner around and positive moves forward again which is good. I just need to knuckle down now and get on with the in depth planning work - easier said than done - lots of silly distractions which I hope will go away in the next few days.

Exercise the gradual return

I've got back onto the cross trainer and this time did my three peaks routine but only for 20 minutes not my normal 30. I did well though covering 5 kM in 20 minutes including 3 pretty stiff simulated climbs is fine.

I can feel how weak my middle is now - it never ceases to amaze me quite how they must pull you about in Hospital to leave you feeling like this.

I'm sweating up nicely which means I did actually do some work and I've even given my weights a few minutes too (I know I said I wouldn't but I have gone easy).

It is a shame that Steve K in the US has had to call off our weight loss competition but Steve has stayed about the same whilst I have to admit I'm dropping weight quite readily. I'm guessing that I'm just getting back to the weight I was prior to living it up too much last year on the Cruise and just over eating.

Just on diet - I am still keeping away from bread entirely and have one large meal a week on Sunday - some sort of roast meat and potatoes etc. During the week I eat crisp breads and rice cakes with a variety of fish or curd/cottage cheese a little low fat hard cheese. I have soup quite a bit and salads. I also have the odd jacket potato with Tuna or Baked Beans and tonight I will have some pasta with seafood of some sort in it, probably crayfish tails and squid. I have some dried fruit and nuts every day now, apricots, prunes, figs, Brazil, hazel. almond and walnuts. A daily pro-biotic yoghurt and that's about it really. I'm really good with portions of food too these days and hardly ever over eat.

The way it works out

Finally no children around until Thursday late afternoon and where is Mrs. F?? Working - she signed up for that a month or so ago (normally she has summer off as a nursery school teacher) and so I'm Macaulay Culkin, Home Alone.

Not that I mind that but it would have been nice to have spent some time sans kids. They look to be enjoying themselves at Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

At least I can get on with work I suppose and can listen to whatever music I like - hey - it isn't so bad after all :-)

No Kids

hardly kids. L has arrived in Edinburgh and her sister has sent photos of them feeding her in case we were worried!

I'm getting ready to blitz my work for the next 4 days now today is out of the way. I might try and get back to exercise tomorrow if I can but maybe take it even easier than the last time. I'll give my weights a miss for sure.

After Work Drinks?

Nope - got jilted. No one remembered to let me know that they couldn't make it. At least I left work early and got home in reasonable time too so nothing too bad came of it.

Next trip up there is next Month but picked up a fair bit of work to do in the meantime which will help fund what I am doing on my own stuff.

It was strange going back up to London and seeing the same old faces on the train and on the walk to the station.

Troubled Night's Sleep

Not sure why that was - I was awake every 30 minutes or so, strange half dreams, bizarre things going on in my head. I'm at the office now - got the early train and needed to run off some documents so thought "why not?"

I'll test the lie of the land for slowly exiting from here too as it appears my replacement has picked up the gauntlet and run with it and the boss appears impressed too which is great. It is always nice to have chosen the right replacement, one who should be better and can build on my early work.

I said 2 and a bit years ago that I really wanted to make a difference. I think I can say that I did. I can see the work I am doing now fading down as the guy who owns it wants to be in the limelight and he can't do that if my finger prints are all over it can he? :-)

I am hopeful that I may get some sort of Trustee arrangement with the Charity in future years as I'd be able to deliver something extra that way.

It will be a long day today - pouring over a major framework document that I initially spent a long time editing only for the owner to destroy and chop into bits. Once he and his team have finished today, no doubt, I will be asked to stitch it back together, put back all the indexing and all the cross referencing, colour code and interlink the headers and put back all the fancy stuff they originally wanted and wondered why it had disappeared when he chopped the document to pieces! It's a funny old world sometimes.

My body appears to be functioning normally this morning - thank goodness. I still take a bit of a deep breath and hold it when I go to the toilet just in case though :-) Nothing quite like bits dropping out of your body to keep your attention.

Free sandwiches at lunchtime and drinks with my work mates tonight. Let's hope the meeting isn't boring.

Rather unfortunately it appears

That I've still a little more debris to remove from my system some 3 weeks and 2 days after my operation! I could hardly believe it as two smallish clots made their way out. Luckily it was just before I was about to do some exercise so I killed that idea off for the present. I think I will miss out tomorrow - I'm pretty much enforced to anyway as I have to go into London. I will start again on Tuesday and monitor the situation.

It is a fine balance but I want to get back to some regular exercise to complement all the other stuff I am doing.

I'm in the office tomorrow - must be the first time for a month I guess which will be nice. They are providing the food so that will be good too. I'm off in the evening for a few after work drinks with my colleagues which again I look forward to.

Weight - How do I call it this time?

I shall have to say no loss but the little red needle is below the 16 stone mark but not down by a whole pound. So I think that I should call it that it stays the same....

224 Pounds.

Getting back to exercise will I hope start to improve things a little. Not sure the celebration poached eggs, mushrooms and bacon will have improved things this morning but I'm allowed a little off piste eating every now and then, I'm not a Hermit after all!

Exercise

Well that went a little better than expected.

I dialled in level 3 (the starting level for many of the exercise routines) but didn't choose a programme to run. I then put in 5 km (about 3 miles) and 30 minutes. I can normally do between 6 and 7.4 km in 30 minutes. I was surprised to finish 5 km in 20 minutes considering I haven't been on the machine in 3 weeks!

My blood pressure reading is a tiny but higher than I was expecting but give the exercise a few more days and I'm sure it will dip down once again.

I feel reasonable after this so that's OK. I'll slowly lift the bar over the next few days to get back to my 30 minutes and three peaks exercise.

A clearing out of my clutter

I had no idea that I had accumulated so much clutter. We have a thing called Freecycle (it runs locally on Yahoo Groups) and it allows you to dispose (free of charge) of stuff you no longer want but that may be useful to other people. So I have hundreds of CDs and DVDs of software that I no longer need or want and the associated magazine that can go to a new home. Also some records that were lying around and some other bits of software that I've no more use for.

My shelves in my office look pretty bare now but that's OK - all it was doing was gathering dust.

Interestingly A got an old Kitchen Chair from Freecycle that she is painting up as a summer project. She is still up in Edinburgh at the moment attending the Fringe and L is going up at her sister's expense on Monday and returning Thursday as part of her birthday present. She is 17 on Friday!!! Unbelievable - she will start driving lessons soon and I'm just amazed how quick time has gone by.

I'm still feeling great - really upbeat - really happy - really light and bouncy. I know that I probably haven't beaten Bladder Cancer yet but what I do know is that I'm making every effort to stay clear. I feel the need to get back on to my exercise regime this afternoon as I haven't had any bits drop out of my body since Wednesday so I should be all right to get slowly back - not go mad at it just slowly return to peak.

Losing a stone has made a big difference and I intend to keep on losing weight until it gets back to normal levels and my blood pressure and everything else settles to where it should be.

Early morning or late evening

for me - I've just got back from our Curry night - 17 of us out for a few beers and then at a Curry house for a really good evening meal.

Camaraderie is probably a good view of what it was all about and one guy is staying locally in a hotel having travelled about 80 miles to be with us. We are are ranged in age from 30 to 85 and so a good mix and not a bunch of trouble makers - so Flocky Bicep (who is often seen contributing to this blog or being the recipient of my scorn) was the guy that organised it and it is just a great fun evening. We had a good laugh in the pub, great food and fun at the restaurant and we left feeling we had a good evening and both the pub and restaurant profited too :-)

At the moment life is good, my life is in "re-build" mode and perhaps I can re-build my life with my family and with my friends because now - I am normal again. I'm no longer someone different with cancer, being treated, suffering from and different to them. I'm back where I was 4 years ago and I'm socially acceptable again. It sounds harsh but it is reality and I don't bear any malice in that statement - it is the way it is - I'm sure it would be if it was someone else. My friend KL was saying that his wife is now 10 years clear of Breast Cancer and ready to be signed off. In my world she was clear 12 months after we knew she had it following her treatment. I have altered my view since then but if I wasn't a (I wanted to use victim which is the wrong word) co-sufferer I would have a totally different view.

BCAN Awareness Day

Big shame there is nothing like this in the UK yet. However, kudos to these guys in the US raising awareness etc. I support them with the Orange Wristbands - I must get some more soon I'm running out after distributing them amongst friends.

Bob Schieffer on Bladder Cancer

This is perhaps one for the US audience who will know this gentleman. The graphics are excellent.

Bang and my brain explodes

What a good week it has been. Not only has Tuesday and the good news lifted a weight of my back (whether I knew it was there or not), it has also been a good week for releasing creativity especially after yesterday's meeting when suddenly it all started to fall into place about how we could run this business successfully - then the scary bit kicks in about how many £Ms of finance we need to see this through.

Suddenly it isn't just about the doing and the technology and the business setting up. It is also about raising the capital and making sure that it is available and drawn down at the right times and used properly. Suddenly all of that clicked into place too. It's stuff you know about deep down inside but you need the reality of a serious business conversation to flip the adrenaline switch....

Exciting times as suddenly the most difficult part of the business starts to come together. For 3 years we have struggled to express what we are doing in a simple and straightforward manner. The reasons are that we are solving not one but several issues all at once and describing that in simple language is too difficult. If we reflect what it may look like we start to draw comparisions which is unhelpful.

So after many hard weeks and many iterations we are boiling things down to a point where we can actually call it something other than its working title. I'm firing away on corporate planning, financial forecasts and all that good stuff. I just need to get into it and cut loose. There are too many distractions at the moment. The incentive is that this is our own money we are burning and we wont have customers for quite a long time so the longer we spend on it the more it costs us. Also part of the rush is the reality that we have no income to speak of and need the investment to come in in around 6 months.

How on earth I get all this stuff out of my head and onto paper I don't know - I just cannot type fast enough....

It is fab to get my life back again and have something really exciting, complex and challenging to do.