Running for bowel cancer charity

Andy McFarlane is one of my colleagues at IBM who has also fought his way through bowel cancer. He’s about 18 months ahead of me in his treatment, and this year he is running the New York marathon in aid of Lynn’s bowel cancer campaign, a small charity focused on raising awareness and early diagnosis of bowel cancer.

Andy was kind enough to spend time talking to me about his experiences of beating his bowel cancer just after I was initially diagnosed, which helped me to prepare myself for my treatment. If you’d like to support Andy in raising some money for a bowel cancer charity, you can make a donation via the Just Giving website.

Andy’s also reminded me of how enthused I was with the idea of entering the LiveStrong Challenge event in Austin (Texas) when it was suggested to me by Mark Cathcart. My surgeon was less impressed with the idea of me doing it this year, but it will make a great target for me for 2010, while also raising some money for some good causes.

It will force me to get some fitness training done too, which would be no bad thing either!

Full day in the office

Yesterday I was invited to a mini-conference in one of IBM’s London offices. Given my current health situation I’d probably normally have politely declined, but the topics were of interest, and the people who were invited to attend were almost without exception doing the role that I would like to transfer into when I get back to work. I’ve also worked with a lot of them over the years in one form or another, and they’re an interesting group of people who are always good to chat with. So this seemed like an ideal opportunity to catch up with what’s currently important at work, have a good chat with everyone, and find out what kind of opportunities they thought might be available in their area of the business around the turn of the year.

And I must admit, I had a fantastic day. I dropped the kids off at their bus stop, and drove up to London. As usual, it took about 90 minutes, but somehow although the roads were busy, I never seemed to get completely snarled up in the traffic. The journey went smoothly, I got a parking space right next to the office doors, and arrived just in time to grab some breakfast in the canteen.

I then literally spent the rest of the day running into and catching up with people, and having a great time listening to and debating the business, where it’s going and how we’re going to drive it forward. And I was completely amazed at the number of people who wanted to make time to chat to me about how I am, how my treatment is progressing, and when I’m going to be back in work. I felt really valued and missed by my friends and colleagues, which was most humbling. I only wish I could have stayed longer and talked with more people at the end of the day over “drinks and nibbles”, but unfortunately by then my energy reserves had completely run out, and I knew that the drive home would be tiring too.

So thanks to everyone who I saw and talked with yesterday. One of my concerns about being off ill for so long has always been about how difficult it’s going to be to reintegrate myself back into the world of work. My experiences yesterday have left me with no doubts that I’m going to initially find it quite physically demanding when I return to work, but that my friends and colleagues are all going to be there to help and support me.

I’m lucky to be able to work with such people.

The sound of music

My elder daughters both play piano and flute, and have the shared use of a piano and a flute between them. So far that’s worked out really well, but contention for the flute has been getting difficult, and is getting worse now that they are both starting to talk about joining flute ensembles and the (same) school orchestra.

Meanwhile our youngest will start junior school this year, and will also be offered music lessons. Fortunately she wants to play something (anything?!) different to her sisters, but this means finding yet another instrument for her. We’d been starting to think about what we could do about this, when as though by magic, everything came together this weekend. My eldest daughters godmother mentioned that she had a flute that she no longer used, which she was happy to lend to “J” long-term, and a clarinet came up for sale through our local church at a very reasonable price.

So on Saturday I went to visit “J”s godmother to collect her flute. I had a great time too… Kirsty lives just far enough away that it’s difficult to just pop in, so I’d not seen her in several months. We spent a great morning quaffing coffee and chatting about everything and nothing, before going out and grabbing lunch together. It was just like the old times. It’s hard to do things like that now that we’re all so busy with work and families, but this convinced me that I need to make an effort to spend more time with my friends – it’s too easy to let it slide for too long.

Meanwhile my beloved wife had been persuading talking to our youngest about the clarinet, and playing her some clarinet music to see if she liked the sound of the instrument. Fortunately she did, so by the end of the day we became the proud owners of a rather beautiful Yamaha clarinet, for an extremely good price. Her school offers clarinet lessons, so with a little luck we’ll be able to get her enrolled in those when the autumn term commences. We’d like her to learn the piano too, but with three piano players in the house now I’m hoping that we can at least get her started on that with some informal lessons from within the family.

Saturday evening and much of Sunday the house was filled with the sound of flutes as my two eldest tried to play some pieces together. A job for this week is to find them a book of proper flute duets to play. Meanwhile our youngest has started learning the fingering on “her” clarinet, and can already extract a series of notes from it. It occurs to me that when the kids finally start leaving home, it’s going to be very much quieter around here. I’ll miss it.

Putting the “Va Va Vroom!” back into life

My toy car got a further injection of work this afternoon when an old friend popped by to give me a hand modifying the brackets on the axle to make sure that they could no longer bind on the strut mountings. The end result from the driving perspective will be minimal – perhaps a slightly better ride over particularly poor road surfaces, but given that I tend to avoid those anyway (the suspension is set up for smooth roads and race tracks) I don’t see this mattering much.

It will however, stop the axle eventually damaging the struts, which apart from being a generally good idea at the best of times, also means that the nice man at the MOT station will be a lot happier with the rear suspension, and is therefore much more likely to give me the piece of paper I need to get the car taxed and back on the road again.

There are (as always with kits like this) a lot more things that need doing or checking, but most now need the car back on the road before I can progress them. For example; the speedometer had to be replaced with a new electronic one, and I’ve made up the mountings for the magnetic pick-ups and mounted the magnets on the propshaft. It currently works really well at the up to 5mph I can achieve on the drive, but I’m concerned at how well the magnets will remain attached to the propshaft when it’s operating at higher revs. Time will tell on that one, but if it doesn’t work out then the next attempt will be to introduce a slotted plate between the propshaft and the differential, and use a reluctor pick-up instead. More expense, and potentially another complete strip-down of the interior to get access, which would be annoying to say the least.

However, the next priority job is to get the car onto a rolling road, get the 3D ignition remapped, and re-jet the carburettors. The car is definitely running lean at low revs, and rich at high revs, and the response to a snap opening of the throttles is very “fluffy” which means the accelerator jets are out too. Finding a good rolling road operator who can cope with mapped ignition and carburettors at the same time is getting difficult, but apparently there is a good one over at Thruxton who is worth trying.

But first I need to get it insured, MOT’d and taxed though. That should keep me busy for the rest of the month.

Lo.ts o. hicc.up.s ag.in, las.ing all n.ght l.st n.ght!

Not a good night. Hiccoughs started around midnight, and didn’t really stop until nearly 5am, when I finally got to sleep. Of course, this doesn’t just affect me; if I end up hiccoughing all through the night, that means my wife doesn’t get any sleep either, and she still needs to go to work the next day. So I ended up in the lounge reading, and trying to drift off to sleep on the sofa. Thank goodness for recliners!

Still, it’s no fun spending the night awake, and then eventually falling asleep on the couch because of a 5 hour attack of hiccoughs, so lets hope this isn’t going to be a regular feature of this cycle. Though having said all that, I read nearly the first half of Lance Armstrong’s first autobiography last night, which is quite inspirational. “It’s not about the bike” talks about his early years, and his diagnosis and treatment for testicular cancer. So far, it’s a good inspirational read, by an inspirational character who talks openly about his predicament and how he overcame it. Recommended.

I also talked to a colleague this morning who has been through approximately the same treatment as me, 3 years ago. Harry was very helpful, and shared a lot of information about some of the things that have been starting to worry me about the treatment I still have to do, and in particular the reversal of my ileostomy.

Clearly we’re all individuals, and it’s not possible to say that my treatment will closely mirror his experiences, but understanding the amount of post-operative care that I’m going to need was very helpful; both very positive for the long term, but slightly worrying for the medium term. I had initially assumed the reversal to be a very simple operation – and indeed, it is for the surgeon. For the patient however, it involves a lot more post-operative care, particularly around the dressing of the wound than I had imagined. Unless that’s something that can be managed by my wife and I, then I can see that it’s going to involve more time off work that I’d not been planning for. Which is going to be very frustrating indeed.

The longer term sounds more positive, with bowel function likely to return to near normal in a relatively manageable period (months to a year or so) which sounds like something that I can probably cope with with some careful planning.

So Harry, when you read this, thanks for the call today – I really appreciated talking to you. Coffees are on me when I get back into the office and we can meet up, and I’m sure I’ll be calling you to talk more once the information you’ve given me has finished sinking in!

Great news!

Nick, the chap in the bed next to me at the NHS hospital who I struck up a friendship with has just sent me a text message to tell me that completely out of the blue he is to be released home tomorrow. Which is really good news indeed, as like me, he was going slightly stir-crazy.

We’ve arranged that I’ll give him a call early next week with a view to me popping around to see him for a coffee and a chat. He’s promised me a run in his Ford Mustang when he’s well enough to drive again, but I suspect for now we’re going to have to settle for more mundane pastimes. If nothing else it will be nice just to see him back in his own home rather than in hospital.

Monday revisited

As predicted, Monday was a busy day and I managed to tick off some achievements, which felt really good. However, I seem to have been so busy (it’s all relative remember!) that I’ve not managed to post anything here for the last couple of days, so I thought I’d recap on what’s been going on.

I managed to successfully walk my youngest daughter to school on Monday morning; according to Google maps, it’s 0.9miles following the route I took, and to be brutally honest, that was pretty near to my limit for an uninterrupted walk. For once I was absolutely delighted every time my daughter stopped to look at an interesting leaf, pretty flower, unusual bird, etc, as each diversion gave me a few seconds to catch my breath! And then having got to school not only was was it great to catch up with some of the other parents in the playground, but that also gave me a good 10 minutes rest before I started walking back home. Interestingly, the journey home was much easier than the journey to the school, perhaps because I was setting a slower pace than my daughter, and perhaps because the outward walk had already loosened up my muscles and joints a little. However, by the time I’d got home I was completely exhausted, and ended up going back to sleep. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose …

The stoma-care nurse called in to see me later in the afternoon, and we went through the whole check-up game, making sure that I was managing OK. She was also very helpful in setting up what amounts to a “standing-order” prescription for all the supplies that I need (custom-fitted ileostomy bags, adhesives, adhesive removers, skin-protector wipes etc) that will then be automatically delivered by courier over the next few months until I can get the ileostomy reversed.

And finally I drove down to Portsmouth and went back into hospital to visit one of the other patients who is still recovering from his treatments, who I’ve struck up a good friendship with. I took some beers in (to my surprise, the hospital don’t ban alcohol), and we ordered takeaway pizza from the local Dominos, which turned up at the front entrance in only about 10 minutes. Which made for a much more palatable evening meal than what would have been provided by the hospital!

It was very noticeable that having not seen him for some 10 days or so, he was looking much better. He’d put on some weight and built up some muscle tone, had much better colour, and generally looked much more healthy. He was also much more mobile and able to move more freely without assistance, which shows that he too is making good progress towards the day when the consultants will be able to send him home.

Sadly however, another patient that I recognised from my time in hospital had been readmitted yet again. He seems to be really struggling to get out and stay out of hospital. His first return was brought on by dehydration, but this time it transpires that he’s got a series of blood clots which have migrated to his lungs, so he’s now on a series of blood-thinning medication and close observation to ensure that the clots dissipate. Fingers crossed that the hospital can get him stable and back home again soon, and that (selfishly) I don’t run into such a series of problems.

Party, party, party …

Last night was the (combined) 40th birthday party for a couple of really good friends. They’d arranged to take over the local sailing club, and laid on food and a disco. Everyone got dressed up in their glad-rags, and we had a great time, with the usual surfeit of food, drink and dancing that these events involve. I’d been aware that I might have been in hospital by now, and Richard had even threatened that to ensure my attendance he would steal me from the ward, and park me in my bed in the corner of the bar! But as luck has had it, the timing was just right. It was a real reminder of what life is all about. So Richard & Ros, thanks for a great evening, and here’s looking forward to many more!

We Scare Because We Care!

The other thing waiting for me when I got home this evening was an absolutely enormous box, that had been couriered to the house. And it weighed as close to nothing as it’s possible to imagine. So I took it into the lounge and opened it up, only for this huge helium-filled balloon to burst out, bumping past me on its way to the ceiling. Nestling at the bottom of the box was an emergency supply of chocolate (thank goodness I didn’t give that up for Lent!), and a really nice card. So thanks Kirsty and Toni … you made my day

And the title of the post? The balloon was in the shape of none other than Scully, from “Monsters Inc”.