Sorry, another day another blog. The last 24 hours have however been so emotional for me that I felt I had to get the events down or I would soon forget the rawness of them and the feelings they generated inside. As I mentioned yesterday, we have really not been accepting visitors to the house other than family. Last night David and Mark visited around 5 and stayed for a couple of hours. I'd been speaking on and off with David and we were on the same page but I'd really not had any interaction with Mark to this point and I knew it would be a tough couple of hours. Mark and I go back to high school, we had a love of computer games at one point and then this morphed into bowling and eventually to a love of alcohol, talking bollocks and general misbehaviour. We had a strange final few years at school, being a couple of rebellious types though both tipped for greater success, we both studied Latin and Classics under a charming old lady called Mrs Wilson which was at the time a very small class and a strange form of education for a pair of bangers like us. You can think of Mark and I as Yin and Yang, sometimes he would do something crazy which would bring me out in a cold sweat while other times he probably looked to me to inject a bit of calmness and structure into his everyday life. We don't tend to see each other often but when we do I really enjoy his company and get a buzz from his stories and conversation. So it was a night of tears and hugs as usual but was good to speak to the guys and for a couple of hours we lost ourselves in enjoying the companionship, it was good, so good, to see them, things started to feel a little more normal. David came equipped with a book of DVDs which were a catalogue of train journeys, flights over countries and other meaningless documentaries which he said helped him sleep. I seem to remember thinking at the time if Davie had a catalogue of DVDs of anything it would be of Las Vegas night clubs, the Brat Pack, Crazy Shoes and Willie Wood's top ten strikes, not a freekin catalogue of a trains slipping quietly across North America - there are literally 100s of hours of this stuff. You think you know some people. After they left, Carol and I watched a Flight over New England and am not sure if it was the DVD or the Paracetamol, Morphine, and sleeping tablet combination but I was sleeping for 9:30 and managed to get right through until 8am the next day - I really needed that.
As I have mentioned a few times, my appetite seems to be missing over the last few weeks and where I once weighed 83kg, I am now hovering around the 77kg point. I used to have a stupid diet. I could eat one meal a day but 5 packets of crisps and be hungry constantly. I know, I brought this stuff on myself and could have avoided it but the reality was that before it didn't really matter how many calories I consumed, I would always be hungry. What is happening now is that I struggle to get 1800 calories a day and am never really hungry. I think there is something here about the types of foods consumed that causes you to crave more refined stuff or sugars. If you start to eat healthy, it seems like this is just a natural affect that stops the continual hunger symptoms. It's taking me 46 years to work that out even though 1. It's obvious and 2. Everyone has been telling me this for years. Moral of the story is eat healthy and don't leave digestive problems too late in the day - see a Dr. I have started to take a weight gain supplement in the morning with milk and berries. It can give me a head start of about 700 calories before the day really starts. From there on in we try and get as much in me as possible to keep the weight up but on occasion I have felt food sticking in my oesophagus and has started to freak me out a little I know it's not as bad as a lot of people but the eventual thought of struggling to eat is seriously playing on my nerves and is probably the cause of the anxiety and loss of appetite in the first place.
Today got off to a better start since we had managed to get some sleep last night. We are visiting my sister Dawn in Edinburgh tomorrow and it was suggested that Cameron and Andrew (nephews) would enjoy the VR thing so I spent some of the morning downloading and trying out some stuff. I found this thing called Perfect which was really just about sitting on a dock on a lake surrounded by mountains in nature with butterflies and fish around. It was amazing and let me drift into a world that wasn't here. I sat there for ages just looking around at the mountains, watching the fish in total peace. I've been a keen advocate of VR for years but lose faith when the games start down the 'Death and Horror' routes as this will have the power to destroy people through psychotic episodes. But stuff like this, just sitting on top a mountain, surveying the land has amazing therapeutic powers. Things seemed not too bad after that although I did venture into some world of mechanoid combat which after 5 minutes had me rattling and nauseous.
During the morning Vince dropped me a text in the form of 'when can I see you'. 'Now' I replied and he was here a few minutes later. Vince and I go back to 1997 or so when the Electricity and Gas companies were going through privatisation and deregulation. We have been close friends ever since and worked together on and off for over 20 years. I have a number of groups of friends and Vince falls into that group of sensible conversation, Guinness frenzy and reminiscing about the good old days. Vince has really been my mentor over the years and I really respect and look up to him a lot although he probably hasn't realised it until now, a delight of a man. He stayed for an hour or so and he listened intensely to my rantings. It was a different conversation from the one the previous night as Vince never interjected with his own thoughts about how to fight this thing, he was more concerned with how my mental state of approach was allowing me to be at peace and that helped to both calm me as well as reaffirm the recent research of philosophies of mind control which seem more important than the physical realms at this point. Vince left the same way as others, cuddles, tears and snotters and Carol and I had had a few moments of respite before Carol's sister Ann came to visit. Again I've known Ann for over 20 years and we are very close, cuddles and tears and some reflection over tea followed and again the departure followed the usual routine, cuddles, tears, snotters etc etc.
Soon after the phone started going again with well wishers and I broke down when chatting with Ramesh. As with Vince, I've known Ramesh since 1997 when he came to Scotland from Bangalore and decided that he wasn't going back. We got friendly and started drinking all sorts real ales in the Clockwork bar across from the ScottishPower offices in Spean Street. Ramesh is now more Scottish than he is Indian and is an absolute Gem of a guy. Very intelligent, thoughtful and sometimes incredibly hopeless due to his miss understanding of West of Scotland culture (he doesn't do football), his colour blindness and his stubbornness. Like me he is always right so always leads to interesting conversations and compromise. After a few simple text messages, I was in floods of tears again. I can't describe why, it seems that there is an overwhelming outpouring when I think of the good intent emanating from the people who want to help, coupled with an explosion of self pity and the obvious thoughts that I'm going to miss these people when I go. We agreed that we would catch up on Monday, that will be yet another long day, I'll have the Kleenex at the ready.
The rest of the day has been spent with grabbing calories and researching LDN (Low Dose Naltrexone). For those who have lost hope and treatment isn't working, this seems to be something to cling onto. In situations like mine where it seems there is absolutely no hope, simple stories like this actually give you some energy to stand up and think about a future situation where things may not be as bad as you think. The cancer communities really need this stuff to keep the fight going. Without stories of success there is no hope, just endless cases of horrible morbidity statistics and crushing stories of demise.
So the last 24 hours have been fairly raw to say the least. The outpouring of emotion is premature I know, I'm still here and we have a fight on our hands but there is nothing I can do about the reality of the situation and the fact that it causes me to react in this way. At this moment, we are going with the flow and the flow is pretty strong with this one.
