Monthly Check Up

“The Jury is Out”

Saturday was a good day. I went up to the club to meet my editor in chief and watch England totally stuff the shackle draggers!! 3-0 down in Aus is one heck of a result.

Marjie Thorne has been good enough to offer to read through the embryonic book, correct by awful grammar and give me pointers as to how it can be improved. I’m incredibly grateful for the help and encouragement she’s given me, even if it did take somewhere around 5 hours to do all the amendments. It will be worth it in the end. I’m currently up to close on 18,000 words (for comparison this blog is just shy of 50,000 words at the moment), and have just finished up until the end of March. My plan is to continue writing until the end of July and then look to publish. There isn’t really an end to the story as such, I could keep going for the next 5 years until I’m let back into the free world. I do suspect that would be an incredibly boring book though. Maybe I can work on a volume two and three. I still haven’t come up with a proper title. I’m calling it #shouldtoshoulder at the moment, but I’m not convinced that will work. Initially I was going to publish it as a free book on Amazon, but I’m now thinking of charging a couple of quid for it and sending all profits to MacMillan Cancer Support. On the basis that I guess the only people who’ll buy it are probably friends, acquaintances or perhaps hanger on’ers J then they won’t object to a small donation.

It’s been a strange week. Back to work with not too much to look forward to, that is until I decided that we need another holiday, so hopefully we’ll be jetting of somewhere hot at the beginning of September. We’re looking at options at the moment, but the Canary Islands are looking favourites at the moment. Any recommendations would be gratefully received. It was pretty tough getting back into work mode, I’m also still very tired each afternoon. I’ve no idea when I’m going to be back to the full time hours I should be working. 

I’m not a massive football fan, but if there’s a big game on I’ll watch it. Good god, what’s happened on Monday evening? A plucky, but isolated North Atlantic minnow got stuffed by the powerhouse of world football, Iceland! On Wednesday I had my first trip up to London since before I was diagnosed. It was time for my half year appraisal, which considering I’ve been off for a large part of that half year was perhaps a waste of time. However boxes needed to be ticked. My boss usually asks me for my highlight of the year to date, I’d planned my reply, “I’m still alive”, but for once he didn’t ask the question.

On Thursday I had my monthly check up with the ENT Clinic. I think Scary has given me up as a lost cause as again I saw a doctor who’s name still escapes me. I bumped into Jo before going in and expressed my concerns that my voice is barely more than a weak whisper at the moment. She did mention that this sort of thing can happen, especially after having RT and chemo, but that the doctor would have a good poke around with his camera. I was a tad annoyed as having a camera stuck up your nose isn’t overly pleasant once in a day, but to have to have it repeated because he forgot to take a photo wasn’t really what I wanted. Eventually he got the shots he required. The results weren’t great. There’s no sign of the tumour returning which of course is wonderful, but he was surprised by the amount of swelling that was still on my vocal chords. This is probably causing the voice problems as well as the discomfort I’ve been feeling of late. The doctor seemed slightly baffled as what to do next, so he disappeared to consult with someone else. Now I really wish they wouldn’t do that. It left Carol and me, and a poor nurse alone in the consulting room trying to make small talk. The long and short is that he’s going to get a P.E.T and C.T Scan to try to ascertain what’s going on. I presume this will happen before my next appointment at the end of July. Depending on the results it may well be that the book needs to be extended into the later part of the year. I hope not.

We left the appointment feeling a little “Flat” for want of a better word. To me it felt like I was being pushed through a sausage machine. In eight months time I’ll come out the other end nicely wrapped up and ready for the next stage of the five year pathway.

The mood was lifted a bit when I got home. Jo called to say she’d be leaving a prescription for steroids with the hospital pharmacy that Carol can pick up tomorrow. They should hopefully help with the swelling. She told me to be patient, recovery isn’t an overnight sensation.

That’s it for now folks. I’ll probably update again once I’ve had my scan.

Thanks for reading.

To be continued……………

#shouldertoshoulder