thoughts from the frontline - 14

As my op gets closer I seem to be traveling this journey at a quicker and quicker speed. Days are flashing by with a mixture of normality and quite the extraordinary, And my story continues with a very normal Friday. Well normal in a pre cancer way that is... Alarm goes off at 6.15 am and I'm out of bed before my eyes are even open as I need to be in the car and on the road by 6.45 am at the latest. Yep I'm back in a work mode this morning and I'm off to a Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting. It will be good to meet up with a lot of old friends (75 people had booked in for the networking event). Shower, dressed and on the road on time. It actually feels good to be "back to normal". How can getting up so early be good? Well, since finding the big C I've only been working part time and then almost exclusively in the afternoons after my walk or swimming expeditions so an early work start felt like "normal" and that felt good. There's a lot to be said for normality, it's something I should think most cancer sufferers crave for. But anyway, back to my day. I arrived at the hotel at the planned time to meet up with the early arrivals. Hi, how are you? Hi, how are you? I was asked this many times as you are at social type events and my answers were now carefully chosen. It hadn't occurred to me that this was going to be my big first event since the diagnosis and certainly one where 99% didn't know. Should I tell them? I decided not to. And the event was great. A few people there knew as I had told them before but the majority were people I knew just as work aquatancies rather than friends so it wasn't important to me that they knew. That was it!! That was the decider. I would tell people who I wanted to tell. There were no rules about who you should tell. I'd told some work colleagues over the past week and a half. I've even told just about every client I had spoken too. But if I didn't want to tell someone because I didn't feel the need or desire to then that was Ok. The right way! Two and a half hours later I left the hotel that had hosted the event and drove off to my office. Another milestone as I had not been back since the day before the original hospital appointment that found the cancer and started this whole thing off. Now my office is a small one with just my secretary/PA/marketing assistant working there with me. We have a bigger office in Bristol where they do the hard work (Thank you Simon!). So I parked the car outside and walked into the office to the surprise of Dominika. "Oh Andrew, it's so good to see you. I have been so worried about you and afraid to call too much as I know you have to get well for the operation." I sat at my desk and we talked. We chatted. She cried a bit as I explained some of the detail. I showed her where to find this blog.[ Hi Dominika! Now get back to work!!! ;-) ]. We chatted some more and then I started on the task I had driven to the office to complete. Yep important stuff. Finding all my receipts so that I could put in my expenses! Money needed so task required. I also took the opportunity to collect a few other things to keep me going on the work front and placed them all into my big pilot's flight bag. And I then went home. I was still being good, I was driving home and it was only still late morning. But I felt good. I felt positive about it all. The actual act of getting up for work had put a spring in my step that morning! Home and blog writing then a bit of shopping (for a kitchen worktop!) before T gets home. And a target of being out of the house again by just after 5.30 pm as we were going out as a group to see my mate Ben play at the Farnham Maltings. Another pre op treat!! Now being a Friday I'd planned on plenty of time to do the 60 mile journey to Farnham and I was glad I did as we sat in traffic queues on the M25. Now I was driving and I had 4 girls in the car with me. Now 4 girls together is dangerous for the male species. I was ok but not the drivers of all the other cars, lorries and vans we slowly passed or were passed by. The game was simple. Take the three letters of their number plate and make up a name/description of the driver! Most were rude. Some very rude. Almost all insulting. The drivers I felt most for were the good looking men. They had no chance as the girls shouted out of the windows. I hid behind the steering wheel. Anyway, instead of getting there nice and early so we could eat we arrived with just 20 minutes to spare and a quick visit to the fish and chip shop was squeezed in before we found our way into the venue. (Admission time here - I had popped in the venue before walking to find the fish and chip shop and placed a reserved sign on one of the front tables. Not really allowed but I thought "why not". So I did.) Drinks bought we settled down for a great evening and it was. Ben was great and the band were great and the guest singers were great. We had a fab time. Everyone enjoyed the evening even though 3 out of the 5 of us had never seen Ben before. If interested click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5P0HxGJc-g to hear Ben in a practice session before a gig. Saturday was a late start after the night before! Busy doing nothing sort of day then off to future mother in laws house (not the same one as the other day - I will have two when T and I get married - every man's dream!!). We were there to help build some Ikea storage units and a chair bed thing. All brilliantly made and simple to put together. All hail Ikea! And a great tea provided mid session with a glass of wine. And it was Sunday already and a day of photography was planned. A day of wedding photography. All pretend weddings. Why pretend weddings you may ask? Well, my future, post op, will contain a lot more photography as we both love it so we have decide to practice wedding photography so that we can include it in our range of services we can offer. Have fun and make money with your hobby on a Saturday sounds good to me! So Sunday morning was Laura and James in their old wedding gear pretending it was for the first time. We were even using the same church! Although their son William wasn't there the first time! A great shoot and we rushed off home to make and eat our Sunday roast before the afternoon session. Back at the church with Kim, T's cousin dressed in T's wedding dresses. Yep two of them! She can explain that story on here if she wants to! One set of photos as the pretty bride. One set much more Goth and dark. Kim is a bit like that but we still love her! ;-) And the day was over. The weekend was over. And I'd had a brilliant time. Including Friday, it had been three days off the large gap between diagnosis and operation. Three days of normality - well normal for me! I now can't wait for the operation. I want it done. Over. Behind me. In the past. So now it is Monday morning. A week of waiting. A bit of work. Some walking and swimming. Drinking these really really awful protein drinks that the surgeon ordered. Yuck! Next weekend, my final pre op weekend was going to be busy but we still had to get there. Fingers crossed I don't catch swine flu. If you have it or even a little sniffle keep away from me! That is a gun in my pocket and I might use it!!!! Sorry it's been a long blog but life is like that. Sometimes busy, sometimes not. Andrew xxx