Working Nine to Five, what a way to make a living…..

I started writing this update on Thursday evening, I’d just eaten a large bowl of chilli and will probably be eating the remainder for the rest of the week as I’d forgotten that Max was off to Paris until Tuesday, but it was a rather good chilli. As am aside, Max travelled all the way down to Exeter to catch the coach to Paris with Laura. I received a text from him at about 11.30 at night to say they’d just pulled into Reading Services on the M4 J  I was knackered, but happy knackered if that makes sense? This week has been the most “Full on” week as far as work goes for probably 12 months, but I’ve survived, ok it was only Thursday, we can call bullshit our way through a Friday at work, I’ve been doing it for years. Neville was sitting on the sofa next to me, every so often looking at the screen to make sure I’d mentioned him in a good light.

As well as checking up on my writing Neville has also decided he want's to critique my glass of wine each night, he's more of a Merlot mutt than a Pinot pouch. 

I’ve decided that instead of writing my day to day activities, which let’s face it, can be quite boring, I’d write about a specific subject and publish when I’m ready. This week’s musings are about work, with a bit of Neville thrown in for light relief.

I’ve written before about what I do for a living. I’ve been in banking in one way, shape or another since I left school. At age 21 I joined an American bank in the Collections Dept. and that’s roughly where I’ve stayed for the last 34 years. When Anna was about 7 or 8 she was asked by a teacher at school what her parents did. “Mums a Nurse and Dad gets people to pay him money” was her answer……. Well I suppose that’s true in the widest sense. The way I look at it is the bank have leant you £1.00, my job is to get you to pay back £1.20.

I’ve been working for my current (& probably final) employer for the past 14 years, since I designed a Collections system for the Dutch bank I worked for which ended up with me being made redundant. I’ve also written about how supportive my employers have been to me whilst I’ve been ill. At no time have I been under pressure to return to work, or to do more than I’m feeling well enough to do. That support continues to this day.

On Monday I went to my first external customer meeting since Lary was cut into my throat. I was nervous, I was scared. The meeting was at a Care Home in Worthing, at 10am. Now Worthing is a pretty shit place to get to at the best of times, but in the rush hour on a Monday, just multiply the shit by a factor of 10. I arrived on time and was greeted by the customer as if nothing was strange about the way I looked or spoke. We were supposed to be meeting a third party who eventually arrived over an hour late, with little explanation, his first comment was “Oh, what’s that?” pointing at my stoma. His delayed arrival meant that I got to have a good look around the home. Prior to Lary I used to use the “Sniff” test when I was at a care home. Does it smell of stale cabbage? Do the carpets smell of wee? Obviously that type of test has had to go out of the window as far as I’m concerned.

I hate people who are late for meetings with no good excuse…….. 

I eventually got home after spending around five hours in the car, I was knackered, I was slightly peeved, but I’d done it. I’d done my job and hadn’t had to clear out my stoma during the meeting. My voice had behaved itself. I’d made the right decisions as far as the customer was concerned. To paraphrase Arnie “I was back”.

The rest of the week was positive, a couple more cases transferred to my portfolio, one looks like it’ll be a real humdinger to challenge my diplomacy. A challenge I’m looking forward to.

Our Head Office is based up in London, not far from Euston Station. My Laptop had been opening with the Blue Screen of Death for the past week, so on Thursday I took the train up to town to see our IT Dept. This was the first time I’d been into HQ for over a year and I wasn’t sure if my staff pass would still work. By the time I arrived my throat was playing up and my voice was rather squeaky. First challenge was overcome when my security pass got me through the barriers. Second challenge was finding the chap in IT who was going to look at my Laptop. Luckily his directions were spot on and after a quick double take when I first spoke (I’m getting used to that) he proved to be really professional and diagnosed a shagged out Laptop, promised a rebuild by Monday and provided me with a loan machine. I was in and out with 40 minutes and on my way home with no mishaps.

My work diary is begging to fill up with customer meetings, internal meetings, supplier meetings and even the odd “Corporate Entertainment” meeting, it’s been a while. This means that instead of sitting at my desk and trying to work out how to fill my day I’m now having to work out how I’m going to fit in my daily walk and play with Neville. He’ll always get the attention he needs, be it from Max or I during the day. He’s still teething quite badly and has probably an hour a day when he’s a little shit who just wants to bark, bite and run around manically, but he’s getting much better. A Kong stuffed with cream cheese, a piece of frozen carrot or a lamb bone will usually calm him down. He had his first puppy class last Wednesday. Three other pups were there and it turned out that one of them had an assistant who’s a coach of the U6s at Redingensians, what a small world. Nev was a bit overwhelmed for much of the session and just wanted to play with the other puppies, but he behaved himself and when we got home he was fine with the training drills we’d worked on, he was also totally knackered and didn’t wake up until 7.30am the next morning, bliss…….. I feel like I’m a proper dog owner now as Nev has drawn blood on my hand. It wasn’t really his fault though. We were taking our morning walk to the park when as the entrance we met 6 or 7 other dogs being walked by a couple of people. The other dogs were fine and just wanted to say hello to Nev, but he’s still very timid around other dogs and tends to hide behind my legs. I failed to notice that he’s slipped out of his harness and was no longer on his lead. So when I went to put his lead on his collar he went into a bit of a panic as the other dogs had surrounded him, he barked manically and bit quite hard into my left hand as I went to pick him up. Being still a puppy means his teeth are like little needles. Blood everywhere, very painful hand, but dog calmed down and the walk continued in a happy manner until I realised the bleeding wasn’t going to stop and we returned to home for repairs. 

Tonight will be a quiet one, yeah right! Carol and I are off to the rugby club for a Burns Night Supper, of course I won’t be able to wear my Clark tartan tie this year. I did look at buying a Clark tartan waistcoat but bulked at the £250 price tag! Last year started off as quite a tame affair, but apparently I went from being pretty well sober to totally sparko in the space of about 20 minutes, or put it another way, in the space of about ¼ bottle of decent Malt! This year I’ll behave………

As always, thanks for reading.

To be continued………….

#Shoulder2Shoulder

My Family…… and other animals.

Another week when I hadn’t planned to publish an update, but for happy and proud reasons, I found a good reason to write again this week.

Back in December 2015 when the original diagnosis of Throat Cancer arrived Carol and I were really worried about how we were going to tell the kids, what their reaction would be and how they would cope. At the time Anna was in her second year at Lincoln Uni and Max was starting his A Levels. Having a dad facing treatment for cancer, albeit with a good prognosis, wasn’t the ideal way to be preparing for exams. In their own ways Anna and Max coped, got their heads down and worked hard. Then came May 2016 when I got the news that “It” was back and I’d need surgery. This wonderful news coincided with Anna’s final exams and Max sitting his A level exams, great timing again Mr Cancer, cheers mate.

Anna and Max are very similar in some ways. They’re both kind, courteous, polite and hard working. Anna, like a lot of girls, worked very hard through school, did well in her GCSE’s and A Levels and ended up with a great degree and a job she enjoys up in Leeds.

 

Max had to work much harder. Like a lot of boy’s he found exams a bit of a struggle and had to have two attempts at his A Levels, but got the grades he wanted in the end. Both of the kids have worked at the rugby club at different times, Anna in the kitchens and Max as the cameraman for the 1^st XV for a couple of seasons.  Both have worked at Explore Learning as tutors, in fact Anna is now a Manager of an Explore Centre up in Leeds. But Max has outdone his big sister. She was never named Tutor of the Year, which is an award Max received this week. A decent pay rise and a posh dinner are his rewards, as well as looking pretty damn good on his CV for future job applications.

Max has had the nickname Muppet Max for a number of years, and I’m sorry to say it was probably me who first started using the name some years ago. He was known for doing pretty daft things, usually on the rugby pitch, much to the dismay of his team mates and coaches. When he first started playing, aged 5, he very rarely made the 1^st team, by the time he was in the Colts he was normally in the starting XV. Rugby, like life, is a slow burner as Graeme Cook would say.

The vast majority of the really promising players at Under 10 or Under 11 are no longer playing, but Max has shown what hard work and not giving up can do for you, in rugby and in life.

This week has, by and large, been pretty positive. My voice has been quite strong most of the time, work has been going ok and Neville has by and large been behaving himself when you consider he’s still very much a puppy. That's if we discount Wednesday night when he became petrified by the heavy wind rattling the cat flap in my office. Carol took one for the team and slept on the sofa with him from about 3am. So Thursday morning was quite a subdued affair in Clark Acres, the dog was still slightly spooked, Carol was limping (having fallen down the stairs last night) and I was pretty knackered too having slept quite badly once Carol wasn’t in bed for me to warm my feet on.  Things took a bit of an upturn around 11am when Max, who’d been up since 8.30am (????) got a text message from Portsmouth University, he’s been accepted onto his course for later this year! This is brilliant news as he’s worked so hard in the last couple of years to achieve this goal under such trying circumstances. He can fly off to Paris next weekend with Laura and enjoy himself without having to worry. Max, if you’re reading this, it’s not compulsory to propose at the top of the Eiffel Tower, as much as we love Laura………….  J It also transpires that Explore are opening a centre in Pompy later this year, so his student debt can be subsidised.

Carol and I have already discussed putting the house on the market, selling up and disappearing to the sun with Neville come September, we may even leave a forwarding address for the kids, if they’re lucky. It does feel like a case of “Job Done” and we’re both so incredibly proud of what our children have achieved to date. Somewhere along the line we must have done something right or we were lucky. I’m pretty crap at saying things out loud, but I’m not too bad at the written word. Just before I went into hospital in June it was Fathers Day, Max made me cry when he proved he’d followed in my tradition of being pretty damn good with the written word.

Finally, for this brief update I thought I’d point you in the direction of someone well worth following on Twitter if you use it. Lobke Marsden @lobke_marsden  works in Leeds on the children’s cancer ward as a Radiotherapy Play Specialist, she makes it fun for kids to be zapped. When I’d finished my RT and was given my mask I decided to decorate it in Rams colours,

 

Lobke goes way beyond that and makes the kids RT masks into works of art RT is a pretty shitty thing to go through as an adult, as a kid it must be even more awful, but, and it’s a very small but, to do it in a Batman / Superman / Spiderman mask must make you feel invincible. Wish I’d had one when I went through it. …….. #NHSCrisis?

As always, thanks for reading.

To be continued………………

#Shoulder2Shoulder. 

#NHSCrisis

Two years ago this coming week I started my first course of Chemo and RT, the above photo was when I was still innocent about all that was ahead. 

I wasn’t originally going to post an update this week, but the events on the news channels and my experiences of the brilliant service I received from the NHS changed my mind. I will warn you though, these views are my own, and will probably not meet with the approval of everyone, they’re just based on my dealings over my life to date with the NHS.

Let’s go back a few years, actually quite a few years, ok 44 years. I fell down the stairs at school, I’m still convinced that Nigel Nelmes pushed me but I can’t prove it. My ankle hurt like buggery and swelled up to about three times its normal size. When I’d eventually cycled home my dad took me to see out local GP. I can’t recall his name, but I think he was relative of Genghis Khan and had roughly the same bedside manner. I was told in no uncertain terms that it was just a sprain and to stop moaning about it. Two days later I eventually went to the A&E Dept. at Royal Berkshire Hospital for an X-Ray which showed I had broken my ankle in three places and was in plaster for the next six weeks. This was my first real interaction with the NHS, a crap bit and a good bit. The following 40 years or so were fairly quiet, I’d go to the Dr’s with the odd complaint (& I am quite odd), I’d get a prescription for drugs, I’d ignore the instructions on the prescription and life would continue in it merry little way. My main interactions with the NHS were via the dentist. I’ve chronicled before my abject fear of the dentist since reading The Marathon Man, aged about 19, so I won’t go into that again, suffice it to say, I’m still petrified of that reclining chair.

When I was in my late 40’s I was viciously attacked whilst coaching U13s rugby by a fellow coach! Giles Perry decided that whilst we were demonstrating a specific drill to the kids that he’d break a few bones in my hand, always thought he was a bully. The club physio’s thought it was nothing more than a strain, the Dr I saw at the hospital the next day confirmed it was a break of two bones in the hand and six weeks encasement in plaster of Paris was in order. The Dr. said, and I quote “Mr Clark, at your age bones take longer to heal!”

So, for the first 40+ years of my life the NHS, once you got past cocking GP’s, had treated me really well, albeit for minor bumps and bruises.

Then came the Christmas of 2014. I’d been suffering from an abyss on my groin for a few days in the run up to Christmas, but had stoically continued with the celebrations by drinking my own body weight in booze etc……. come Christmas Day I was in agony, but somehow managed to get through the opening of presents, lunch and Dr. Who before conceding defeat and asking Carol to drive me to the hospital at around 10pm. Now bear in mind, this was Christmas night, the place was heaving and I wasn’t ill as such, just in quite a bit of pain. I lay on a gurney in the A&E Dept for probably six hours before I was treated, but in that time I was seen by a member of staff once every 30 minutes or so to make sure I was ok, I was given pain killers, I was treated with respect. In the waiting area there were people of varying degrees of illness. There was one guy though who was a total and utter pain in the backside, he complained about having to wait at the top of his voice at every opportunity. He was extremely abusive to the staff, who lets not forget were working on Christmas night, he was a complete cockwomble! I was eventually moved to a ward in the very wee small hours of Boxing Day and operated on that morning. Again, the treatment, and dignity I received from all the staff I met in my 48 hours stay was exemplary.

Fast forward 12 months to December 2015, within two weeks of seeing my GP I’d been told I’d got cancer and would be joining the conveyor belt that meant the treatment I’d get would be second to none in the world and it would cost me not one iota. Again, I’m not going to go over the last 24 months, there’s been a couple of dodgy points in treatment, but 99% of it has been brilliant. Take this week as an example.  needed to make an appointment with my NHS Dentist for a check up, and bear in mind my fear of the drill wielding maniacs! Rather than phoning as my voice was pretty shagged I drove up to my local practise, and made an appointment for the next day at 8.15am, how’s that for service? ......... #NHSCrisis? 

When I showed up my dentist was her usual self, very quiet, but very concerned. I’d last seen her the week before surgery when she wished me the best for what I was about to undergo. This time it was a case of a quick scrape round, an X-Ray and a bit of cleaning. See you in six months for more of the same.

My current voice valve had been in for just under three weeks and was now leaking quite badly. I’d first noticed it leaking last week at my father’s funeral in deepest, darkest Wales. We were supposed to be having the wake in a local Tea Room in Lampeter (my sister is doing Dry January, guess that’s why we were booked into a Tea Room rather than a pub), luckily we were early so 8 of us made an excuse and nipped into the nearest pub for a quick snifter. It was whilst drinking a glass of the finest Pinot on offer in Lampeter that I started to choke as it leaked straight down into my lungs. Over the next few days the leak continued and hit a real peak on Wednesday when I was taking a glug of water which avoided my throat, went straight past “Go” didn’t collect £200 and made a bee line for my lungs again. This was probably the worst incidence of leaking I’ve had and prompted me to get hold of Carol at work and ask her to come home as I was feeling so ill. That night Penny decided she’d play some games with Neville……

……… each night we put Neville into his crate for the night and lock the door. His crate is in my office at the back of the house, it’s also got the door to the garden which has the cat flap in it. At about 4.45am on Thursday Penny decided she’d go outside for a while, I think as she was walking past Neville’s cage she probably ran her paw along the bars just to wind him up, it worked, all hell broke loose with barking and howling, leaving me with little option but to get up. A quick run around the garden for a pee and a poo (Neville, not me) seemed to settle him down and by 6am he was sitting by my feet fast asleep and snoring. Meanwhile the cat had come back in and was also having a nap on our bed, joining a fast asleep Snory McSnore Face, AKA Carol. As I’d been feeling pretty rough when I went to bed on Wednesday night I didn’t bother putting a base plate and filter on my stoma, instead I just used a medical flap to keep mice and other such nasties out of the hole. It was whilst trying to have my first coffee of the morning that I noticed my chest as damp. The coffee, instead of making its way into my stomach was leaking straight out of the stoma hole and down my chest! I may just as well have poured it straight down the toilet and cut out the middle man. So at 7am on a cold, damp and dark Thursday I emailed the Speech and Language Team, wishing them a Happy New Year and asking for yet another valve change. I’d resigned myself to a weekend of managing carefully what I drank and probably trying to manage a nasty chest infection too. Oh well, time to start the working day. At 8am my phone went “Ping” and there was an email from Caroline my Speech and Language Therapist, an appointment for 3pm the same day was made and suddenly my mood lifted. I even gave Neville a quick stroke! ……………… #NHSCrisis?

Turning up at the ENT Dept. at the hospital on Thursday afternoon was like going back in time. More Scary than Scary said hello. I bumped into a chap I’ve been chatting to online for a while as he was leaving his appointment, good to put a face to a name. I also had a brief chat with the original Scary who was interested in how I was getting on. I got to see Caroline and Susan for the valve replacement, they are a great double act, a sort of younger and slimmer version of French and Saunders. They have a great ability of putting me at my ease whilst they’re poking around my stoma with a pair of pliers trying to pull the old valve out. This time we’ve gone for a dual valve system (no idea what it is) which will hopefully last longer than three weeks. I always feel comfortable talking to Caroline and Susan so I explained that the constant leaking was making me feel quite depressed and was having an adverse effect on life in general. I’m reluctant to make plans from around 18 days into the new valve as I feel it’ll start to leak, I’ve even cancelled or rearranged both work and social commitment as I’m not confident of being watertight that day. They understood perfectly my concerns and came up with a plan of action. I’ll be getting an X-Ray done of my swallow, similar to when I was in Churchill, this will show how my throat reacts to the swallow and how it handles food and liquid. It will give the consultants a much better insight into how the valve is fitting and any underlying problems that may be causing them to fail so quickly. Susan apologised that I’d have to probably wait two weeks for the X-Ray to take place…………… #NHSCrisis?

As an extra cherry on the cake Susan also told me she’d be referring me to the team who deal with scar tissue to show me the best way to manage it and to try and get feeling back into the right side of my neck……….. #NHSCrisis?

These have been my dealings with the NHS, with an odd couple of exceptions I’ve been treated with care, dignity and speed. Over the past two years I’ve got to speak to a number of people around the world who have also been going through various different treatments for cancer, almost to a person they’ve been envious of the treatment I’ve received, especially when they realise it is free at the point of care. It was pointed out to me last night that if I was in the USA with no insurance then it’s likely I would lose my house and be made bankrupt to pay for far inferior treatment. I of course know of some cancer patients in the UK who’ve had different experiences to mine, they have felt let down, alone and worried, but I can only pass on my own thoughts.

Now the other side of the coin that I see on a day to day basis. I see Carol leaving home at 7.15am to be in work by 8am. She’s very rarely home before 7pm, usually staying on to complete (unpaid) work or to look after patients who are still waiting for transport home…………….. #NHSCrisis!

If I’m ill (not cancer related) and need to make an appointment with my GP it’s almost impossible to get past the Receptionist, “Is it urgent?”, “Are you dying?” “Can it wait?” – Yes, No and No are my usual answers, before I’m offered an appointment in 3 weeks time, on a Sunday, at 6.30am……….. #NHSCrisis!

I watch the news and see stories of people waiting in an ambulance for hours before a bed becomes available………. #NHSCrisis!

I read stories of appointments that have been planned for weeks or even months getting cancelled at the last minute due to staff shortages……………….. #NHSCrisis!

I know of at least one Dr. who’s already planning of emigrating to the far side of the world as he’s sick of working in the NHS ………….. #NHSCrisis!

Maybe, just maybe, the way to get first class treatment is to be really ill?  #DoingitforDani and I agreed last night that we’d rather get really crap service and not be ill, rather than the brillant treatment we’ve both received because of what’s wrong with us.

Finally for this week, and to inject a degree of levity, here’s an update on Neville. He’s getting on really well, now walks off the lead in the park or the woods, usually pee’s and poo’s outside, and has become much more of a character. The lady who's been coming round for his 1 - 2 - 1 training sessions is really impressed at how quickly he's learning. Now if he’d only stay in bed asleep beyond 5am!

As always, thanks for reading.

To be continued……..

#Shoulder2Shoulder

Reading Feeds The Mind

I’m a huge reader of books. I’ve probably spent more on Amazon downloading reading material in the last few years than I’d like to admit to my Financial Advisor (aka #Stalker). It was my parents who originally encouraged me to read “Proper” books, back when I was eleven my father bought me a copy of Neville Shute’s “Stephen Morris” book for Christmas. I’ve still got the book, the pages may be falling out and going yellow, but every couple of years or so I’ll dig the book out and re-read it, even though I probably know it word for word.

 Our house has about 5 book shelves of differing sizes, all packed with hardbacks, paperbacks and anything in between.

It was probably about 7 or 8 years ago that I first bought a Kindle, much against what my heart was telling me to do as I’m a lover of a proper book. However I found myself travelling a lot on trains for work and it made sense to carry a small and thin tablet rather than a massive 400 page book, especially when rammed on the tube. I started searching out the free to download books, specifically those related to travel stories. That was when I first came across the books by Tony Slater, George Mahood and Joe Cawley, to name but three. Since that time I guess I’ve downloaded over 200 books, some great (The Bear that Ate My Pants), some mediocre (Three Men in a Van) and some total awful (The Alex Stewart biography – unreadable!).

Books really came into their own when I had my first brush with cancer. Chemo sessions lasted all day from 7.30am though until about 5pm when you threw in a quick Radiotherapy session for good measure. I went through book after book after book during those weeks of treatment. Sleep was often difficult to come across so I’d sneak downstairs and read a few chapters of whatever my latest book was.

Following the initial treatment I kept up with the ritual of sticking Radio 4 Extra on the wireless and reading a few pages before trying to drop off to sleep, not always an easy task when my mind was going twenty to the dozen. I think I often dropped off with the radio playing in the background and my Kindle on my chest, much to the delight of Carol, only to wake again around 1am to find sleep had deserted me and to start reading again.

After writing and publishing #ShoulderToShoulder

I read a couple of books about other people’s fight against cancer, but I struggled somewhat as it was still too close to my own experiences. Part of the problem was that it can be quite difficult to relate to someone you don’t actually know, especially when the story is so personal. The first really good cancer book I read was The Owl at the Window by Carl Gorham which told the story of his wife’s battle with breast cancer, which I’m afraid won the battle eventually.

Just before I went into the Churchill in June I downloaded a dozen books to keep me entertained. Included in that download was “Dear Cancer, love Victoria”

by Victoria Derbyshire, the ex 5Live presented who now has her own show on BBC2 each morning. I’ve followed Victoria on twitter for a number of years, @Vicderbyshire, and knew she’d been ill. Try as I might I just couldn’t bring myself to actually read the book, I knew that whilst I was lying in hospital recovering from the surgeon’s knife that a book chronicling a similar fight would just be too much. I tweeted to Victoria that I’d bought the book but couldn’t open it, and got a lovely reply back saying that there was no need to read it until I was ready, and wishing me luck with my recovery. I entertained myself during my stay with various travel books, biographies and some Cold War thrillers, anything but someone’s battle with cancer.

I eventually grew balls big enough to read Victoria’s book in November, I’m so glad I did. She wrote in such a frank and open manner about her concerns and her fears for both herself and her family. The book had a happy ending, at the time of writing Victoria is clear of cancer. Her battle was different to mine, but there were so many similarities in our RT treatment and the side effects of that treatment. I’ll happily admit to having tears rolling down my cheeks when I was reading certain passages from the book.

After finishing “Dear Cancer……” I made a decision to give cancer books a miss for a while and to go for some light entertainment. So, Danny Bakers “Going on the turn”

and Bruce Dickinson’s “What does this button do?”

were both stuck on the Kindle to give me a good giggle instead of starting the waterworks.

I’ve been a massive fan of Danny Baker for years and years, his Saturday morning show on 5 Live is a must listen to program in our house, I’ve even been a contestant on the Sausage Sandwich Game when Tami Grey-Thompson was the guest, I won by going for Brown sauce J He has the ability to just tell a story which will grab your interest and keep you involved. He’s also got a loyal bunch of listeners who are guaranteed to come up with some cracking yarns. I’ve read his previous books about his early life growing up in the East End and his early years on NME, TGI Friday and the like, I knew the new book brought matters vaguely up to date with his life. I also knew he’d had a bit of a battle with cancer, but I wasn’t aware of the exact details. As usual with Danny, the book weaved its way through various amusing stories of his life until the final few chapters when he discussed his battle with throat cancer. Oh bollox I thought, this is going to be fun. Whilst his cancer was in a different place to mine, his treatment mirrored mine down to the n’th degree, including the horrible side effects of RT and Chemo and the long, and sometimes lonely, journey to eventual recovery. Again, the tears flowed as he recalled the dreadful pain and agony he went through.

That’s it I thought, no more books about cancer for a while, I can’t take it. Give me Heavy Metal, Fencing and learning to fly, give me Bruce Dickinson and “What does this button do?” This was a spur of the moment purchase when I was flicking through Amazon, I’m not a massive Iron Maiden fan, but Dickinson is an interesting character. Public school educated, albeit expelled, an international fencer, lead singer of one of the biggest rock bands in the world, successful solo career, qualified commercial airline pilot. I saw Iron Maiden back in the dim and distant past at the old Hammy Odeon, it was ok, until one of our party was kicked out by the bouncers for some reason that even now I can’t fathom, so we left about half way through the gig. ………………………… oh, and guess what? He’s had head and neck cancer!

I honestly had no idea before I reached the final chapters of the book that Bruce had a similar cancer to me. Very much like Danny’s book, the symptoms Bruce went through on his treatment pretty much mirrored mine, albeit both Danny and Bruce were far more eloquent in the way they described the treatment and side effects. Like Danny and Victoria, Bruce is now cancer free.

The three books are quite different in the way they’re set out and delivered. Danny Baker, even when he’s going through his cancer treatment, manages to find degrees of levity. Bruce Dickinson describes his treatment in quite an analytical way, which I guess it what you’d expect from a pilot. Then there’s Victoria Derbyshire, she’s so open, informative and descriptive in her writing, you almost feel like you’re sitting in the same room as she is whilst she has her chemo treatment. One of the interesting things about all three books though, is that once the original diagnoses is given the word “Death” is hardly mentioned by the three writers. They’ve received treatment that has saved their lives. They are, all three of them, survivors. There are thousands of other survivors too, they just haven’t written a book. Read the books, learn about cancer treatment, support those who are fighting the fight. 4^th February 2018 is World Cancer Day. Perhaps buy a band to show your support.

As always, thanks for reading.

To be continued…….

#Shoulder2Shoulder