Notes

I am alone in my misty happiness. Everyone has gone to bed and I shall shortly join the comatose. I can barely see the screen. This has been one of those days to look back on. At the end of life one will not be looking back at all, but today is not yet. Today I am still at phase 3 out of 4 and that means I have still time. Each time this happens, I think what shall I do different from the last time? How will I spend my precious time better? Nearer to Thee, will I think of things Celestial? Is God waiting to embrace me while he let me see so much that he could have negated while I lived? Do I stll believe in Him? I think not, but I stll give Him a big 'H' out of respect for the idea of Him. We need something but we should call him Something with a big 'S' that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns etc etc. I have been dying and nearly dying too long and too many times. Now I want to live and do what has to be done. I want to write and paint and draw and be with my children and the children of them, and what comes after is of little concern because it is not of now and is nefarious and I am sorry for the people who believe that there is more, but if there is more and there is a plan then what is the point of now for me, the fortunate, and for others, the desperate. It is all so unfair.I have had many lives and have been blessed while others have had few and have not been so. Am I a good man? No, but I havn´t done anyone harm is the best I can say of myself. Not enough. I must hunger and thirst after righteousness.....Sorry, I have had a lot to drink and am just rambling on. I love my children and all my fantastic family, I love my wife and I am glad that I am still alive,and alive means being without the dark shadow looming over me. I am looking for someone to thank, but iI suppose it will have to be you, my precious ones. God bless you all, whatever He may be, because He must be there in some form to make me feel so as I do. I shall call him Love. That I do believe in.

Be well.

.

By request from untold masses, consisting mainly of Cassie and Big Emma, we continue where we left off.

Looking at the last message, from February of this year, there is a lot of crap about coming battles, humour getting you through and some general sanctimonious wittering about it all not being in ones power to influence etc., whinge, moan, whine and whimper. I did want to continue the blog but when I got over the last bout of cancer (regular readers will know that this was in the limp gland in my groin) and an apparently successful operation, my thoughts ran along the lines of… well I am relatively back to normal and the concern has died down and I am become quite ordinary again and of little interest to the masses. These ghouls want sensation, excitement, and the images of Silent Witness, Crime Scene investigations and all those medical series where the camera zooms through the Lateral Glob Vesicles at an amazing speed scattering glands, sacs, ducts and bladders with the sound of a Ford Mustang...

Just joking. It still serves its original purpose of divulging information without depressing people. And that includes me. This keeps me from getting morbid and helps to sort my head out and keep me away from the what-ifs

I have had so much good since the recovery in March, especially the surprise trip to Rome withy Karolien, Bernadet and Merel. Before I go, I had said, I want to see Rome. I saw it and I didn’t go. Bit sneaky really, almost like false-pretences.

Far too much has happened and I should have recorded it I tried to sort of reserve space for events because everything in blogger is last-in-first-out. Then it all got lost in a crash and I kicked the computer right in the USB port. I have had so much happiness these last years, even with cancer popping in and out. It is disappointing but one can make the most of what one has. I have had much...

It is now the 12^th of December. Tomorrow is the 13^th. An inauspicious day to get the results of all the investigations that have occurred in the last weeks. Therefore I must bring you up to that point because it will be news to me as well as to you. To save time, I insert here two quotes from Facebook, which I had sent to some family members but triggered off lots of ‘you OK?’ comments.

November 12 2012

Referred to my doctor because you can’t go to hospital and waste time. He felt around in my groin and said he could feel something lumpy. I decided to leave because he seemed to have a dreamy look on his face and it was all taking longer than one might have thought it warranted. Memories of a scoutmaster in 1953. I’m a man of the world, but….He did however send me to the MCA for further groping.

November 23 2012

With Bernadet to the MCA and the Dismal Doctor Mole. He was apparently having a poo when charisma was being handed out. He also has a rummage and declared that a ‘puncture’ was needed.

November 27 2012

Not much to report really. I went for a check on Tuesday. I had to lie on my back next to a machine without any trousers on (I mean, I had no trousers on. Machines don’t need them). The doctor said to remove my undies. The nurse was embarrassed and put a little towel over my essentials. The lymph glands are in the groin and quite close to the naughty bits and the doctor swept the little towel away to get at the business in hand. Sharp intake of breath from the nurse who shuddered and went to shuffle some papers. They did an echo thingy and said I would to have some needles, four in fact, for blood and tissue samples. Three of them, I was assured, were really quite thin as needles go, remarkable for what they lacked in terms of diameter. However, number four was something that could be used for icing wedding cakes. Tumour mining. The first two were OK going in, but had to be moved around while looking at the screen looking for targets and all going ”ah-ha, left a bit, down a bit” ignoring my whimpering . Then he said, to my astonishment, “We will now give you an anaesthetic injection because the last needle is this one which we call El Grande”. Why on earth did they not give me this painkilling one first? Anyways, El Grande went in and as I had been warned, there was a sharp click and it bit off bits of stuff for analysis. The nurse, with a hand over her eyes, gave me back my undies and we were done. The short story is that I have two tumours of one and a half centimetres and we are talking chemo here. Not looking forward to that. I am still positive but understandably disappointed that it is all starting again, and where else is it lurking? I don’t know if the chemo will be a few pills every day or a quick transfusion and a skinhead transformation. I will tell when I know more next week. Meanwhile I am looking at Olsen’s Book of Birds. Fulica atra. The Coot.

December 5 2012

Results of the puncture, quite deflating

Not much news I’m afraid. Went with Bernadet to see Doctor of all things Dismal. A man so lacking in personality that it is hard to see him at all against the colourless background of his office. You may recall that in last week’s episode your humble scribe was lanced and needled until he felt like the martyred St. Sebastian. I recall that in Hamlet Polonius was stabbed in the Arras. I know how he felt. At that time, the man on the echo machine said that I had two tumours in my groin area, that it was cancer, and gave the diameter, volume, specific gravity and other statistics of the tumours. A week later, Doctor Dismal opens a file and says exactly the same thing, only now he has pictures from the echo machine. More than a week has gone by, and he says I should have a scan, quite soon in fact. This from the man who three months ago at my check-up said that a scan was not necessary if I felt OK and one should not go looking for trouble at my age, because one would always find it. Perhaps it would have made no difference, except that I would have lost three happy months. Anyway, a scan will be completed on Monday afternoon, hopefully not the one where they tie your arms over your head and drag you through the claustrophobia-inducing pipe for 40 minutes. Which will be nice. Then I will also get to hear when I can talk to the oncologist. I hope that after Monday another week will not go by only to be told that I have had a scan. One absolutely brilliant episode that made a trip to the MCA worthwhile. I went to the toilet for a pee. A large gentleman came in behind me and proceeded to remove his expensive looking overcoat. Perhaps afraid that he might dribble on it, or lose control of his willy and have it thrash about like a garden hosepipe out of control. Anyway, we are standing there humming and minding our own business and finding interesting things to see on the blank wall in front of us, accompanied by the sound of running water. Quite usual in public bogs, where the urinals are flushed now and again by unseen magic. But suddenly we could hear water splashing onto the polished granite floor. We both turned round to see the basin in which the large gentleman had placed his expensive overcoat was now full and overflowing. With the equivalent of “Bollocks@#%*’ the overcoat was snatched from the bowl but too late, it was a sodden mess. Those automatic taps do not know the difference between a warm overcoat and a warm hand. I would have pissed myself laughing if I had had any left. See you after Monday.

December 10 2012

The scan. There are certain aspects of hospital visits that suck you back into the world of the hospital and the acceptance of yourself as a patient. The smell and the big red panic buttons in the bogs. And above all the hideous yellow and grey bedspreads. I had been working in the morning at the Depot and was very tired. Either it is the worrying, the getting up at 5.30 am for work or the cancer that causes me to feel so tired that I fall asleep at every opportunity. Shuffled into the hospital and was directed to The Bunker. This is underground because the people who work down here glow in the dark. Told to sit in the waiting room and fell asleep. Awakened by a large woman in a white coat and the pale, leprous look of something that lives underground and too close to machines that glow and hum. I was led into a little room and told to lie down for about half an hour. I fell asleep I was then ordered to remove all metal from my person. A questionnaire because of the nature of the scan. Did I have any kidney problems? Yes, I have only one. You people took the other one last year. She muttered ‘just the one, then’ and was I pregnant? I thought it unlikely. More impertinent questions and would I now please put the nappy on. The nappy? Yes sir, in case you pee. And if you pee on our lovely scanning machine, you will cause a great deal of damage. How come? Because we are going to give you a transfusion of radioactive gunge and if it gets on our machine it will also be radioactive and will not scan properly, Very hard to remove and it will be have to be cleaned and we don’t want to get anywhere near this stuff, it’s radioactive for God’s sake! I saw the movie ‘The Day After’. Everyone’s teeth fell out and they went bald. If this stuff is so corrosive that it will ruin a massive block of metal, what on earth will it do to my urino-genital system? Another nurse came in and fixed me up with a plastic thingy for the nuclear gunge, which was brought in in a heavy metal tube. It was promptly injected and everyone backed off as if I had the plague. A woman in the next set of thin curtains was screaming that she was neither a baby nor a geriatric and was not going to wear a nappy. No nappy, no scan said the nurse. By then I was stood up and I shuffled along the green line with my arms full of clothes. In my nappy. The last scan I had was dreadful. Your arms are tied behind your head with Velcro and you are slowly pushed through the pipe on the massive metal table that must not be radioactively peed on. This time I just fell asleep. I never did find out if the woman did put the nappy on. Drove home, trying not to fall asleep. I get really dizzy and disorientated lately and sometimes wonder where I am. Saw a house that I vaguely remembered and went in. The people were very kind. They made me feel quite at home. I fell asleep

Not sure if I will sleep tonight. There is a lot riding on the outcome of this scan. Even as Sara says, with humour to help you through.

Doctor to patient – wait till you hear this one. It will kill you.

Fast Show - Cancer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SyM3uTzZgY

The dream.

Skyped with Emma tonight. And she told me her dream. She said she dreamt that I, who (in her dream) had always protected her and Merel, was myself in great danger from a monstrous snake. The two of them fought the snake. Just as it was about to bite me, Emma killed it with a bow and arrow which she just happened to have about her person. She says the dream child is Cupid, the Snake is Cancer, and it is killed by Love. I do admit that there was a hint of a tear in the old eye and a lump in the throat (...er, perhaps another metaphor, please...!). My heart is overflowing. Reminds me of a song.

Emma is great with words. I am moved by words. I told Emma the words of a song about going back into the past, about lost childhood.

My Blue Pony will take me for a ride, back to where we used to go.

I’ll see your face and touch your hand, and my heart will overflow.

Musing about words, I just love the words of Mike ‘Passenger’ Rozenberg’.

Well if you can't get what you love,

You learn to love the things you've got,

If you can't be what you want,

You learn to be the things you're not,

If you can't get what you need, learn to need the things that stop you dreaming.

And my favourite:-

God knows I failed. But he knows that I tried

Got tickets for Passenger. 150 pounds paid and it turns out that it is sold out and the site is dodgy and probably won't get my money back. Bollocks.