I did make it to the club again and had a few pints of the foaming ale against my better judgement. The club is packed – the tribes are out to watch the football and cheer loudly every time Eng-er-land miss or score (which was twice) I am not tribal – I support Scotland, Aberdeen and Brighton so I don’t really do football but I do like a challenge. Joan comes storming up and asks me if I am still anything to do with the club. I tell her “No” and she storms off to find a committee man. (Note not woman) Anyway it appears that there has been a bingo controversy – not much change there then because someone has shouted after the next number has been called. Oh dear!
I’ve got four more doses of chemo and then two weeks off. My first chemo was two weeks followed by a week off, the second was three weeks followed by a week off and the third has been two weeks and then two weeks off. It all seems a bit hit and miss but I suppose they know what they are doing. I have got CT and MRI scans during my two weeks off and I suppose they will have a better picture (!) of what is happening then.
Old Bill wants us to crew a narrowboat again – he is in his eighties and nearly blind and we took him last year on the Charlotte two which is a narrowboat ran by the Bruce Wake trust. http://www.brucewaketrust.co.uk/
I have mentioned the trust before and although their boats are adapted for disabled I am sure that our inmates would be most welcome. Anyway the crew we put together for Old Grumpy Bill – who is not grumpy incidentally – was me (pre-diagnosed cancer but glass back; my brother Alex – self appointed captain; Tim, the youngest and fittest of the crew who got burned to a crisp only four hours into the trip, Tony who has got mesothelioma and Bill who has also got lung cancer and is partially sighted.
I don’t know if I can manage it this year – it depends on my health and what they are doing to me but it is a great holiday. You can do the “ring” – the Avon ring that is – not my favourite sort of “ring” but it is hard graft in a week and you need a strong crew or you can just pootle about. Gloucester is fascinating with it’s massive harbour where the sailing ships used to come in from all over the Empire. The last time we were there a tall ship was moored which made our sixty nine feet narrowboat look very small.
Irene says she isn’t going with a load of grumpy old men. Bloody cheek. She is older than me – I’m just a toy boy.
Well we didn’t make it to the market because Irene had to go to the breast screening mammogram machine in the doctor’s car park which she does find worrying. My trumpet calls have abated – just typical after I was up and about.
“What’s for tea?” I ask “Oh no mushy peas!” Has this family got a death wish I ask myself.
I have got to print some more of my blog for the lads in the club who also seem to like it and now I have ran out of ink.
East Midlands Today had an item on about bowel cancer saying that in 1997 there were 60 cases in Nottingham in the under thirties but there is now 137 in 2007. They are blaming diet. A professor at Leicester Royal is starting a clinical trial using tumeric which has an ingredient that has been shown to prevent cancer in rats.
I notice that there has been some concern regarding radiotherapy and if I may I want to issue a word of warning about my own experiences. I went through four weeks that is 20 shots with no apparent problems. Being a roughy toughy ex-coal miner I didn’t use any of the “soothing” cream that they supplied even though I was asked regularly if I was. One of the reasons I didn’t use it was I didn’t want to have to drop my britches with stained underclarts but now I know different. The final week of radio and my derriere erupted into a nuclear pile. No excuse for the pun. Bowel motions were so painful that I nearly passed out several times. So next time I am going to shovel “soothing cream” everywhere – I don’t care what they think of my underwear. I also found some other radiation burns in the folds of my skin a couple of weeks afterwards – I didn’t even know they were there until they were healing and started itching. Please, please heed my warning. I really don’t want anyone to have to go through what I went through.
