That's arranged

Booked hotels etc so I can go visit my dad in a few weeks time. Girls will either get there themselves or come with us. So far so well planned.

Interesting day today as we go and celebrate the first of our friend's children to get married. Wow, I feel old now. It's been around 30 years since all of us got married and here's one of the youngest ones getting married. Amazing.

I'll be chatting to some friends this evening about dad as they now know and we will just see how it goes. I hope it isn't too bad as we should celebrate the wedding not be sad about my dad.

Rude awakening

At the crack of sparrows this morning. Kid brother had been up most of the night as Dad picked up some horrible bug at the Hospital and was in a bad way getting the Doctor out to come and see him. Highly unusual. Dad's hardly ever ill and as mum said - "he's making up for it now!"

My kid brother said "did I wake you up" and I said he did and then he looked at his watch! Doh...

I was pretty tired after being up in London and so wasn't at all with it. Anyway, things have settled down, the person who got the most amount of rest after the Doctor sorted him out was Dad :-)

It's one of those things I suppose, we might have to get used to Dad being ill more often.

Facebook

I see my brother posted to Facebook and it was a heart rending sort of statement. It says "Not once did I ever feel that I don't need you in my life. No words are enough to describe how much you mean to me, Dad. Just want to say, I love you."

Well - yes that's true but at the end of the day I kind of think he knows that. It invokes sentimental messages from people that know us but it doesn't for one minute address the issue and that is - "Dad, what do YOU want to do?"

Only in that conversation - which I intend to have in a few weeks can we hope to sort this out. It isn't my illness or my brothers, my mums or anyone of my realtives - it's his and he must decide.

Slept well enough

Mrs. F. suggested I listen to a Radio 4 broadcast about terminal cancer this morning but, in all honesty, its a special day and I don't want to make my mood any worse than it is because it is the 100th meeting of London Lunchtimers and I'm the Chairman so I need to be on good form.

I'm meeting up with a friend afterwards for a couple of beers and a chat so that will be nice. As long as we aren't too late of course. I could do with a little company and he's a nice guy.

It's a strange day - I'm sort of OK today - I slept quite well - it must have been the couple of rather large scotches and I'm not feeling too tired either - I just hope that I do well at lunchtime and that a few late afternoon beers and a chat will make me feel a bit better.

How things look after a few drinks

Mrs. F. looked at me and knew pretty much what I was thinking and A, my daughter, was pretty upset when Mrs. F told her. Not surprising, he's much as I remember my grandfather was to me, a lovely man. Talking of which I went back to my Grandparent's house in my subconscious/dreams last night. I remembered every bit of the flat, where everything was even the smell of the place and my grandparents speaking to me. Being an awkward teenager and having nothing useful in terms of conversation, taking my girlfriend there for their 50th Wedding Anniversary but I recall, this perpetual calendar my granddad had and as you turned over it's art deco style chrome canister it changed the day (unless you did it too fast). It was the most fascinating thing.

I sit here at way gone 1 in the morning knowing that the booze is probably talking a bit by now feeling a little tearful and yet thankful for having been my parent's child. I can see it no other way, not having been brought up fairer by anyone else (although in my youth I may had happened to mention what my friend's parents let them do!) and in all honesty I just want Dad to have "no regrets" - by that I mean that we always had what we needed and more, we weren't poor but neither were we rich, we got by and I've no axe to grind about it. Whether I'm brave enough to say that I don't know, time will tell on that one and I'm certain that Dad's never wanted for anything else from us. I'm sort of gutted for my mum, my parents are close and have lived as a couple for over 50 years. Modern day marriages (mine especially) aren't like that - I've worked away for a lot of the time and I've worked long hours and sometimes I wonder for what?

Any way - it's getting very late now and I've had my glasses of scotch and reflection. Tomorrow I'm off to London for our 100th Meeting of London Lunchtimers and maybe, just maybe, I'll have a few beers after that. I may need a victim to go drinking with or might just come straight home and have one or two at my local and then wander home.

All in all - it's been one of those days. I have full empathy with my dad as I recollect how wretched I felt when my doctor told me he thought it was a tumour) that's before I even had it checked out. I fell apart completely when I got home and so I can only begin to imagine what it is like at home at the moment. It's a big thing to come to terms with. I remember going for the job at the charity and the President asked me "Did you think you were going to die?" and I said "Yes, I did". You may think it was a cruel question but he knew that the job I was going to do and the work needed as their first PR person needed me to understand what that actually felt like. I felt it once and I never wanted to feel it again and then today happened.

I don't feel drunk or even squify - no idea why not. I just feel distant.

And now I do feel bad

My brother sounded quite shaken on the phone and I can see why. I'm quite shaken up myself - I didn't think I'd be because I'd prepared myself for this. It's a fact that we all have to go but it is also a fact that we would rather go on our own terms.

Pancreatic Cancer - 10 months if he has the operation 6 months if he doesn't. It's slow growing in someone his age but even so, 6 months is no time at all is it? In younger people it is more aggressive as I recollect from some of the people I know who have had it.

I'm shocked and yet I knew this was coming - I suppose hearing it and how upset my brother was didn't really help things that much.

I might be feeling a little uneasy

But I'm sure my parents are going through purgatory and my brother probably is too as they meet the expert team discussing Dad's Pancreatic Cancer. I'm powerless to do anything as are we all of course. I must stop myself living it for him too - it will undoubtedly not be good for me.

I said a long time ago that your disease is yours and although you get support it's really only you who has the mental and physical battles. Anticipating what it will be like, how you'll feel, how others will feel and so on make for an interesting combination.

We all want to go to heaven but nobody wants to die - but we're all going to and that's the thing. Can you do anything about it? Not really, just come to terms with it and understand that is what is going to happen. You just hope it isn't too soon!

Well it wont be long now until I hear what the experts have to say. I suppose it will be all the obvious questions that Dad will have to ask and I do hope they've written them down as I told them to. These are important but they do have a local nurse who is able to answer any questions they've forgotten or that may arise.

I wouldn't want to be sitting in on today's meeting at all. I feel bad just typing this.

Tomorrow's The Day

Dad will get his discussion with the medical team and will find out the situation about his Pancreatic Cancer. It's early stage, that's good, it's Pancreatic which isn't quite so good and he's coming up 81 which makes things a little difficult and therefore subject to the "quality of life" discussions.

I'm trying not to sound blasé about it - it isn't, after all, a subject to be blasé about now really. I'm sort of hopeful that because it is early that they can give him something to slow things down and that he'll have some sort of opportunity to spend some time in doing things whilst he is able. I'm in some doubt about it myself, I know enough about Pancreatic to be dangerous and so decided not to go up and sit in on the meeting tomorrow. What good could I, a survivor, actually do when I can't imagine that there's going to be that opportunity given to him.

No matter what happens tomorrow, it will be a shock and it will be traumatic. I've to wait for the call in the late afternoon (I guess). My brother takes these things badly. I seem to have come over all calm and OK about it but I'm on the edge, I can feel it and I'm not sure how I'll react. I know what's coming and I think I know how I'm going to deal with it and yet, somehow, I'm struggling because of my own experience. I'm bordering on the edge, I can feel that and I think that it may change things. I've never been close to my father and that's because I'm very much like him. I'm sure he too has a similar psychometric profile to me. We don't do relationships very well and we have a number of other traits that may be perceived as being quite cold and almost ruthless but we aren't really.

I see a lot of myself in him except for some areas and I'm wondering if things will change and we will get a little closer, either through shared experience or through talking a little more deeply than we normally do. He is a very private person and I'm probably not quite as bad as that.

Anyway, it will soon be tomorrow and we will find out the prognosis and I guess the amount of time left - there I've said it!! Everyone dies of course and it wouldn't be the best choice of a way to go but it happens to us all. I've been lucky in a way that I've done a bit of path-finding for the family in terms of cancer treatments. I can only imagine what is going through my dad's mind as he lost both his parents to cancer. The trouble is, I can't be there for him or share my experience with him in its entirety and I don't suppose he'd want me to either. He's made one key decision and has to make some more in the next week or two. As I remind my brother and my mum, it is his life and he must decide what he is comfortable with. We have to accept his decision (whatever it may be) and we need to provide whatever support he needs. It will of course be hard on Mum and my brother too as he is quite sensitive to this sort of thing. He made a lot of fuss of me being ill and worrying but not enough to drive the 2 1/2 hours to see me of course :-) Sorry being a little bit wicked with that statement :-)

Let's hope it doesn't pull us apart - I could do without that.

Bladder Cancer Podcast

This may be interesting - it is almost 14 minutes long and it explains Bladder Cancer, Symptoms, Treatment etc.

Dilemma in the making

My folks live a long way away from me. Sure I could drive there and back in a day but the journey isn't particularly nice. It takes you around the largest car park in the world (or part of the 125 miles that is known as the M25). Then the M11 which isn't too bad a road if it is quiet. It doesn't need much for it not to be. Then at the end of the M11 there is still as much time to drive although nowhere near the distance to get to them. So it could easily be 2 1/2 hours and often 3. That would mean me driving for 6 hours roughly as I'd be held up somewhere or other. of course L is going to Cambridge so I can perhaps fit some sort of double visit in but then you need to add a hotel stop on to that.

I'm not saying I don't want to but it obliterates a day entirely or two to make it a reasonable length of visit. We will go up in a couple of weeks time to see them as we are already heading up north beyond them. It means coughing for hotels rooms but I'm not really worried about that. I'm just sort of stuck about how often I can visit my dad. I think they used to go and see my granddad a lot in Hospital but I think that was once a week. I used to go when I was nearby up in London but got banned after granddad got to a point where he didn't want us to remember him how he ended up. I can understand that too.

It's at times like this I question why the moved away from here. Here where I could have seen them even in the evening and just driven down for an hour or two. But they moved away as did my brother and it kind of leaves me in a position where I feel a little bit bad about not being there to help out or visit. It sure is a quandary - what to do for the best.

As I said in the blog sometime ago I was a little bit annoyed when I finally calculated that my parents hadn't been down to see me whilst I was ill. Having said that, I've a feeling they must have come down for a day for some reason as they've sat in my comfortable chair that I bought just after I was ill. I wonder if they came down for a day with my brother. I think they probably did and dashed back home because of my brother's dogs. Mind you I might be imagining that as it certainly feels like a long time ago they were here. So, with the proviso that they might have made a visit in the past 5 years it still makes me wonder what I'm expected to do now that Dad's ill?

The thing is that I have to wake up to the fact that this will very probably be the cause of his death at some time in the future and maybe we will find out some more detail on Wednesday. It isn't going to be good news and I suppose they'll give him a series of options and we will just have to live with that. I'm sure he will set some rules and put them in place and things will be what they will be. I'm certain that it will just even out and I'll just have to make the adjustments I need to make and do what I need to do at the time. Now I feel helpless and have no idea what to say about it. Not sure what to say when we meet in a few weeks but that will just be another awkward moment that cancer brings about all too regularly.

All quiet - thank goodness

Spoke to mum and things are settled at home - dad's feeling well enough to drive again so they will give that a try later in the week and drive into town. It's a strange thing but he feels well and now they've put the stent in and things are operating as normally as they can, he's getting around without his stick and he's got energy and appetite back. It sort of explains why he wasn't at all with it when I went to see him some time back. I'm hoping to get up there in September and see him. Once the specialists have told him what's going to happen - I'll need to work out what I'm going to do in terms of going to see him when I can.

The trouble is of course that I've got my own commitments too and so I need to work out that side of the equation as well.

Hurrah

The laptop has taken all of its updates without a problem and I've cleaned out all those annoying bars that now come with software these days. What a damn nuisance - I can spot them when installing but also noticed that the virus and malware checkers also spot them so I can kill them off when needs be.

I really do hope we can get out backing as we can do away with all this utter nonsense you have to go through. I guess it has taken me the best part of 8 hours to sort this new laptop out. I've probably done more than the average user - like backed it all up, got recovery disks and recovery driver disks, password recovery (from last time) and I've upgraded everything from the BIOS to the office productivity software with their latest patches and upgrades. How a mere mortal is meant to know they are supposed to do this is beyond me. Mrs. F. has just been upgrading Firefox and its asked her questions about add-ins, compatibility and all sorts which she has no idea what it means.

Spoke to the parents this morning - all seems calm and so I'm pleased about that. Big day on Wednesday when they find out more.

One Leaves the Other Appears

My daughters that is L is in Tenerife, A has just arrived back from Edinburgh and I am sitting at my PC with the new laptop going through the usual setup routines and booting and rebooting, uploading, downloading and generally doing much what I did a week ago. It's Deja Vu all over again....

I'm greeted with a label urging me to back up the system - I don't need a prod I understand this but I just love that the reasons I should do this are:

Causes of Data Loss:

56% Hardware & System problems

30 % Human error and computer viruses

9% Software corruption or program problems.

So what are the other reasons - that isn't 100% :-)

This is like saying that the new car you bought only has a 5% of working properly! It's amazing that we have to put up with this.

Damn PC

So it went back to the shop today to get the money back and interestingly they tried it out and verified my diagnosis... It's taken the best part of 24 hours of my life that damn machine. Setting it up, backing it up, setting all the scanners and stuff up, then downloading all the updates (hundreds of them) to repair the flaky software and then it blue screened then the password trouble (now known to be the shift key issue) and then resetting it all back to factory default all to find it was a fault with the machine. How any ordinary Joe would manage to do this is beyond me. I supposedly know what I am doing and I have to say the last two weeks of broken PCs has convinced me that there just has to be another way.

We've got our money back and now invested in another make of PC altogether - I've already got one by them and hopefully it will be the answer and provide L with a laptop that will last through her University education. Incidentally she is just about to fly off to Tenerife in a few hours with her friend - her first holiday on her own. I hope she has a good time and enjoys herself.

My business partner is on his way over and we are going to catch up on where we are and plan the remainder of our work. It's been the hardest work and yet somehow enjoyable to see it all coming together.

How can this be?

L's new PC doesn't work properly - it appears that the problem may be an intermittent fault with the keyboard. All that time I've spent on it was down to the fact that the Shift keys are buggered. Add in all the hours of backing the sodding thing up to start with, making recovery disks, uploading all the latest software and hundreds of updates and the damn thing has just bombed out on me. So what I now have to do is take it all the way back to its original configuration and start again. This is why we set up Doddle in the first place so no one would ever have this nightmare.

Talking of which we enter the hardest part of all - we are so close we can taste it but cannot quite fix the final words, diagrams and figures into the final document. We've all the right words but not necessarily in the right order.

I am beginning to feel a lot fitter now and my back pain is all but gone. I will slowly get back to exercise over the weekend - it's a real nuisance being injured as you just daren't go and injure yourself further.

Bank holiday weekend coming up and so a curry and beer might be in order tomorrow :-)

Mmm - facing up to the inevitable

It isn't easy is it? Dad's got Pancreatic Cancer. It's early stage and it hasn't spread. The operation is an ordeal that, frankly, a younger person would struggle with and so that's been discounted. My brother needs to get his head around this. I think I understand the thinking behind it myself and I can see that the decision will inevitably lead to a different course that now needs to be run.

It isn't an easy decision and yet it is in so many ways. I'm not sure if I'm being strong and helpful or bloody minded and hard but I'm doing the "voice of reason and logic" at this end. I've not suggested anything nor have I advised or pushed for anything. That isn't my job at the moment, I've got to be supportive and a good sounding board because whilst it's all personal and emotional, the decisions made need to be based on firm understanding and knowledge of what they mean.

I think it is not going to be an easy few weeks until we hear what the specialists say and then that sinks in. It's not an easy cancer to deal with and the outlook isn't great.

I'll no doubt talk to them about diet and things once they've had the discussions themselves. At the moment, eating and everything else is just fine in fact he's probably felt better now than he has for well over a year.

I feel a bit bad now that it was illness that made my last visit to see him such a misery for me. Now I understand that, I kind of feel a bit bad for being upset by it.

As for me, I'm beginning to take it in a bit now. I had some terrible nights early on when I knew he was ill mainly because of his hatred of Hospitals etc and I knew it would freak him - well luckily he's done OK there and so that's good. He knows he has to go in and have the stent removed and a new stainless steel one inserted. That will keep him as well as he can be in one area. I'm hopeful that whatever route he chooses it will be right for him. I'm not looking forward to the next months and year(s) at all but everyone dies eventually. Mum's pretty cut up about it of course as is my brother and we will just have to work it out as we go I suppose.

Dad seemed to be accepting what was going on and needing to know more about it which I hope next week's meeting will resolve.

That was an awkward moment

Spoke to my Dad. Danced around and sort of half laughed at the seriousness of his situation. I think he wanted "my blessing" that he wasn't going to go through the major operation that would be needed to potentially sort things out. I think my brother thought it wasn't the right thing to do but I guess I'm a bit more pragmatic about it than that. The operation for Pancreatic Cancer is a pretty heavy one even for a young man. Steve Jobs had it done and you can see that whilst it can be effective in an 80 going on 81 year old man what exactly would it do?

It's a Quality of Life thing if you ask me. But it took me back a bit as I wasn't expecting to talk to Dad at all for a few weeks but he appears to have bounced up and is putting a little weight back on and isn't stumbling over any more and his mind is back - he was very worried about losing that. In fact we noticed that to start with.

So it's put me in the tiniest little tail spin.

On the big upside - a good friend got his results today and they are all OK so that's good. Very pleased for him too. It's all the hanging about and worry that you could do without...

As a final whinge today, the brand new PC we have just decided not to take the password we set for it and I've had to go in and do a registry hack to change it. It's cost me another 3 hours that I didn't want to lose! Crazy - it did this after it updated itself. Crazy.....

Ramping up

Even more now as we get right into the guts of the business plan and the ideas come together and the plan begins to fill up with content. It takes some time to do small parts of the document, like the area I've just done showing share ownership and the changes in that over a period of time. Somehow you need to illustrate this n a useful and meaningful way - not easy as some of this stuff is pretty dry in terms of what you can say about it and we don't want to be stating the obvious.

On top of that it's been a pretty disruptive day all around and I've just been tide to my desk. The TV man came and replaced the set top box which is great because it has an optical output which is now plugged into my surround sound system :-) So Grand Prix racing is going to sound great on it as do films - I've tried it out a little but it is late and so don't want to wind the sound up too much. The sub-woofer makes a pretty good rumble though and so I'm looking forward to trying that out in anger later on.

Back to business and my head hurts

I was working with an old friend this morning who wants me to get involved in a deal with him that would be a pretty useful little sideline to what I'm doing now. Crazy isn't it, nothing comes along for ages and then, just when your doing well in your own thing, along comes another that I really ought to get involved in mainly because it would help out my friend and who knows, there may be something interesting at the end of it too.

Then I started working on the valuation of our business and the share distributions, dilution and so on. I've been building a series of models that allow us to model potential scenarios in that area.

Then my head decided it was about to explode so I stopped :-) Thank goodness for that!

Then the TV Set Top Box decided to die so that needs to be fixed in the morning. It looks like we are going to get a good old summer storm tonight with 50mm of rain (2") predicted it should be a hairy old night!

That's reassuring then

Spoke to mum this morning and I could hear dad in the background being, dad! Mucking about, firing off one line jokes and all that. So that's good. A couple of days and they're over the shock part and I guess realising that they not going to know until 31st August what it all means and what to do about it so no need to worry on that front.

Dad appears to have got his balance back (or mostly) and his mind back which he was worried about. This really does interest me because I was pretty put out that he sort of ignored me last time we went to see him - he wasn't his normal self and he appeared to be more interested in the TV than me. Well it looks as if that was also part of this too. I remember being pretty put out at the time but in hindsight I can see that's wrong on my part.

Nobody else saw it because it was gradual. Me - well I saw it because I hadn't seen them in perhaps 6 months.

Anyway - it appears that things are settled a bit for the moment. The 31st will be a stressful time I'm sure. I'll be seeing if I can get up there sometime in September to see them.