Family Business

I thought I'd use the book cover this week as the title image, two reasons. Firstly the book has sold 5 copies this week, and secondly the photo shows the three people closest to my heart. 

I’d like to start this brief update with a heartfelt thank you for all the good wishes we’ve received over the past 5 days be it over FB or via private messages. I hated having to post up the blog last week, but I was conscious that Social Media is the best way of informing friends far and wide about matters of importance, births, deaths, marriages and cancer having another go. There were a couple of messages which weren’t quite so supportive, but I can understand the sentiment behind them. Delete and block and move on. The positive messages are the ones we’ve concentrated on. Two specific messages with a connected thread specifically spring to mind. I’d mentioned that it’s unlikely I’ll be able to get to the Fat Boys 7s in the summer. Well, I may not be going, but I’ll be proudly wearing a Camel Jockeys shirt after the event (so long as Errant Son doesn’t pinch it) courtesy of Coco!

 Also, the Abbey Nuns (Abbey RFC Ladies side) have offered to do a bucket collection for Berkshire Cancer Centre over the weekend.

 My treatment was running somewhere around the £15k mark, I suspect that will increase considerably over the next few months. So if you’re at the FB7s and see someone rattling a bucket please put whatever you can in it.

The blog has just under 8,000 hits between Sunday and Tuesday, by far the largest weekly hit so far, I think a fair few have come via the Peter and Jane blog postings, and getting supportive messages from total strangers is truly humbling. (I am a social media tart!) The main point of the blog though is to try and raise awareness to cancers. The message at day one was if you’ve a nagging cough or a body change that goes on for more than a couple of weeks then go and get it looked at by your GP. Cancers that are spotted early can be treated and cured. That message hasn’t changed in the last 18 months.

A number of people have offered to help Carol out when she’s having to drag to and from Oxford for 10 days or so. That has been on my mind a lot, as whilst it’s not that far, it’s still probably a two hour round trip, and Oxford traffic can be a total pain at times. Luckily she’ll be able to buy a long term visitors car parking permit which whilst not giving any priority on parking does at least mean she won’t have to pay the heavy hourly charges.

Waking up on Tuesday morning to the news coming out of Manchester put any problems I may have into perspective. 22 people won’t be going home again. I spend quite a bit of time in Manchester with work when I’m well enough. We have an office on Deansgate, albeit the other end from the MEN Arena. I’ve walked past the venue on numerous occasions, drank in pubs almost next door to the place. Manchester is a great City, the bars around the Law Courts are good, old fashioned “Proper Pubs”, and the people have always been friendly, even to a Southern accented Yorkshire man.

You may remember if you’ve read this blog in the past that I’ve done a couple of bits and pieces with Macmillan since I was diagnosed back in 2015. I was contacted by the person I’ve been speaking to a couple of weeks ago, (Hello Becky, hope Bruges was fun!) to ask if I’d help out with a new campaign they’re running from 30^th May. I can’t tell you the details as it’s under an embargo until then, but even with my current diagnosis I’m more than happy to help them out any way I can, so watch this space. I told Becky my latest news and she kindly pointed me in the right direction on the Macmillan site for the procedures I’m going to go through. I spent a fair amount of time last weekend trawling the site and soaking up as much information as I could. I vividly remember Jo telling me in 2015 that under no circumstances should I Google “Throat Cancer” and instead I should go straight to the Macmillan site, without passing go and without picking up £200. Whilst the descriptions of the procedure leave little to the imagination, they are at least realistic and encouraging for the long term. Updates will appear on my Instagram and Twitter feeds as from Tuesday - Instagram is paulmaxwellclark and Twitter is @Nobby1962

On Thursday Carol and I had our first joint visit to Churchill Hospital in Oxford. My appointment was at 3.40pm, but we’d been advised it can take up to an hour to get parked so we left Reading at 1.50pm, arrived at 2.40pm and were parked after only 10 minutes of queuing, so perhaps the good omens are with us on this one. The Head and Neck Unit in the Churchill is far more modern than the ENT at RBH. There’s also a decent free WiFi signal in the hospital which no doubt I’ll abuse in the weeks to come.

We were called through only 10 minutes late, but left to wait in the Dr’s room for over 40 minutes before she eventually showed up, not an impressive start. However first impressions don’t always count for much. I won’t be seeing Scary, Mr More Scary then Scary or Cool Dude now for quite some time, so I’m going to have to come up with new names for the team looking after me this time, at the moment the jury is out, but rest assured the names will eventually come.

Once the Surgeon arrived she brought with her the Dietician, Speech Therapist and my new CNS Nurse, I’ve got to say that I’m hugely impressed by this team. They asked about my history of cancer, both the initial hit and the recent past, they listened to my croakings and they understood what we’ve been going through. I was hoping not to have another “Up the nose, down the throat” procedure, but I was sadly disappointed. The Surgeon asked if I normally had an anaesthetic and my reply was “Only when Scary does it, opps I meant Dr F, as she admits herself that she’s crap at it”, well that broke the ice to a degree. The head honcho joined us at this point, I swear there were more people in the room than at a Bracknell RFC 1^st XV home match……… I’ve mentioned in the past that this is the one procedure I’ve really struggled to get used to and this one was no different as it went on for around five minutes, and my throat is still raw from the biopsies last week. They had discussed prior to sticking the camera up that there was a possibility of me only needing a partial removal of the voice box, unfortunately the scope confirmed that a full removal will be necessary in my case. Many, many discussions then took place about what they’ll do, how they’ll do it, and what it’ll mean to me as far as recovery goes. I was given the option of meeting someone who’s been through the procedure to talk about their experiences, but I’m afraid things are just too raw to go through that at the moment. At the end of the day, it’s got to be done, so I’ll face the consequences when I wake up. I’m slightly disappointed that I’ll have to wait for between 4 and 6 weeks to have the operation as part of me hoped that it would be scheduled for next week. But at least this means that Max will get this A Levels out of the way before I go under the knife. He had his first exam today, and I know that with the work he’s put in that he’ll smash them.

The speech therapist spent a good half hour with Carol and I after the surgeons had left running through the procedure to get me talking again. She’s one cheerful bunny, and someone I reckon I can work with without any problems at all. Probably just as well as I’ve no real choice in the matter.

After around 90 minutes we were allowed to escape to the rush hour bedlam that is the Oxford ring road. Next up will be pre-op assessments, ECG’s, blood tests, more dietician meetings, etc, etc…… then the knife. My current weight is a cause of concern as I’ve dropped to just over 75kg’s, however I’ve now been prescribed the magic Ensure drinks that worked so well for me last time. Three of those a day, plus my normal diet should at least abate the weight loss and maybe even add a few kg’s to the bones I’m rattling about in at the moment. From what I can gather I’ll probably be in for somewhere over 2 weeks. The internal stitching isn’t checked for around 10 days and until they confirm that I’m water tight I can’t even start to learn to speak or to eat without a tube.

I know the NHS comes in for a real bashing these days, but within 24 hours of my appointment at Oxford I managed to get to see my GP who’s prescribed all I’ll need to get me through until the operation takes place. Ensures, Morphine and laxatives, what more could a man ask for. “Psst….. wanna buy any drugs?”

The delay in the operation means that I may actually get to do a bit more photography than I’d envisaged. I’m starting this weekend by going down to the Bournemouth 7s to shoot the Badgers 7s side as promised a number of months ago.

 The forecast is looking ok and I intend to go out with a bang as far as the photography goes. It should be a cracking weekend.

I’d initially thought that this blog update would be of epic proportions, loads going on, loads to write about. However I’ve really struggled this week to come up with anything to say. Sleep at the moment is a luxury (for both Carol and me), I’m struggling to concentrate on anything as my mind keeps slipping back to what’s ahead of us in the next few months. The writing juices just weren’t flowing. I must be feeling down, I can’t even think of any decent song titles to put in.

The week ended on a bit of a high note as I was messing about with Twitter and found that Katie Hopkins had been sacked from her job on LBC.

As always, thanks for reading.

To be continued…………

#Shoulder2Shoulder