Hello everyone… hello hello hello! I know I know. I know what you’s lot are gonna say and I know what I said! “I’ll do me blog I’ll do me blog” I says… “when when when?” you says… “its coming soon” I would says….. AND HERE IT IS!!!
…. and with reference to my last passage (barring the temp one last week!) NO THE FRY UP DIDN’T KILL ME! Smart arses! But it did change my life, albeit for a short time. It was that good that I’m still banging on about it now!
So…. I want to talk firstly about the most current of current affairs and let you guys know exactly how I am right now. This very moment im the best ive been since friends saw me in Madrid at the end of last weekend. (9th) but since then I have been on one of THE biggest roller coaster high/lows I never want to re-encounter.
In essence I had a lovely Monday afternoon, with a couple of chums sitting outside a nice bar in Madrid with a highly desired pint and a good lunch. Travelled back in the evening feeling right as rain. Got home, kissed the Russian and settled in. Tuesday morning I was at the hospital to give bloods for a Wednesday afternoon results discussion with my consultant, Simon C. If I was totally 100% honest with myself and with the benefit of hindsight I knew things probably weren’t tip top inside. But with not wanting to worry my family (1%), not really wanting to think about it myself (4%) and keeping my thinking on a positive vibe and trying not to be paranoid (95%) I sort of had a lack of confidence feeling deep in the back of my brain. As did my mum who came up to guys to meet us about an hour after I was due for the meeting. Completely un-expectantly!
But all mums worry un-necessarily right?
So. As we were waiting to see the doc my fears were confirmed when my phone rang in the waiting room and it was a receptionist telling me that my consultant had changed and I was due at st Bartholomews for and another afternoon meeting the very next day. Oh dear.
My consultant, Simon had previously told me that since my original chemo had finished on the 4th of april the drugs would still be affecting my body for a long period of time after and that the idea is that my body will be able to finish off the devil inside of its own accord.
Not to be.
Simon, my Doctor, is a funny man, can nearly always be suckered into a conversation about cricket, has a very quick, dry sense of humour and loves to tell me which major summer sporting events he still has not got tickets for! He is also a DEADLY serious person and our hands had barely parted from the shake and he was looking worried, forlorn and already telling me my cancer blood markers were shooting up. The cancer is growing and re spreading. We are to part company and you and things are not good! Bang bang bang! Your counts are up. You’re on another course of Chemotherapy! You will start very, very soon. Meeting Ajourned!
The next day I was with another doctor. Dr Shamash. He was now telling the 4 of us pretty much the same thing. Again. Amazing speed. We had made our way to st barts with an overnight bag pre packed and by 7pm I was in my current bed, (17 for the train spotters.)
MY HEAD WAS GONE! I’d lost it! Big time! With all that had gone on in the last 24 hours I had lost my hope… and let me tell you now that HOPE IS EVERYTHING! I hadn’t realised it at the time but I was in pieces! And then… and only could something like cancer have such great disastrous timing… they hit me, for the next 4 days of THE most mighty, mega, destructive, chemically created force man can ever conjure! (I’m sure there are more violent weapons of war in reality but this, my friends, was unbelievable!)
“Its official… My regime now is no longer hard core… its MEGA CORE!” These drugs are baaaaaaaaaaaad!!!! I am not joking when I say this but compared, ALREADY, with what I had for 12 weeks on my last drugs course before and just what we’ve ALL been through in this week… THIS IS…. MEGA CORE! All this weekend just passed the Russian has been telling me so many things that I’ve said and done that I can’t believe. Simply because I have ABSOULUTELY NO RECOLLECTION OF SAID EVENTS…. WHATSOEVER!!!
No matter where I’ve been, what ive done who im with, in the past I have never completely forgotten whole days… or events! One such example was when I was in bed, ramped up on drugs lost all hope and being given IV steroids…. (oh yeah! They’re back too!) I turned to my mother and ive said something in passing… I can’t remember and then I look at her again and she’s crying! Just from what I said or how ive said it. I have no idea what was going on. Chuck some fresh stonewall boredom into the room and you’ve got a GREAT party to get to!!!! I’m telling you!!!
Because of the temporary hope loss… (turns out I’d put it in me wash bag before a shower!) my mind was freewheeling. The mental battle has been incredible. I have been fighting off anxiety and panic attacks on an almost daily basis. Including at home. Yes I was lucky to get 3 nights stay at home but return everyday. But when you’re having a panic attack in your own living room and the Russian is knocking up a bit of dinner just 10 feet away in the next room… things can get very surreal! Keep your breathing deep and steady, Eddie! Don’t think about anything other than your next breath! That’s all you need.
Ive said to some people before being on chemo is like the very plateau of your very worst hangover. Fuzzy head. No enery. Absolutely no thought patterns or brain stamina whatsoever. But now… the regime has just got worse! And im at the end of a two week regime 1 of 3. This chemo is called “GAMEC –S” Mega core to me and you! Last time out on the “BEP” regime I was always thinking day at a time… now one can get down so bad that one can only just focus on the next hour!!!! That’s all!!!
I’m not going to leave this passage there on that note…. I’m just going to quickly say…. Big up all the French open Tennis massive. I was supposed to travel there this week. Got a few calls and texts from Paris. Especially at 16:10 last Friday, when my train was due to take me there. Was there an empty seat in the group on the train? Ha. I’d planned that journey in my mind! And selected the donkey I was going to ride triumphantly into town on…. Fanfare blazing and palms for the road! (You’d most probably have to be religious to get that one!)
Scotty called me at exactly 16:10 (probably to complain to me his seat was facing in the wrong direction or that the table was slightly chipped! ;-) he gets a winkey wankey smiley face, purely because he was probably missing me and wondering why I was so late for my train…. A whole year late it looks like bud!
my other special shout goes to matty H and “Chavvey bollocks/muggy bonehead!!!”. Im no expert in making tv but I did wonder if ‘stitch up rig week’ springs to mind. They both went out instead of me to do the set up. Im sorry I did not get a chance to pass on the previous years rig notes/tips and tricks that I have, that I promised you. (I seriously HATE job preservists!) but as anyone who has worked for Americans… (and I have to be careful here cos I know many of my North American friends/collegues/cousins…. Come to think of it… my actual real North American cousins too…((HI There!)) are reading this right now!) it can get very… er… “fiddley” to quote my great camera supervisor “the Doddfather!” when such a big job for 3 massive clients is to be undertaken…. Especially with charter’s “so they don’t wander off “ company policy of chaining their bloody camera barrows to something thick, stationary and dull for 18 hours a day!….. you can most probably tell what’s coming next….. a brief pause so that all French open crew can please now feel free to fill in your favoured crew member name below… sigh!
“a bit like the camera barrows being chained to
….………………………………………………… from cameras/audio/vision/lighting/rigging/roy/sam’s office” (delete as you wish!)
That’s one of your more common ‘page 1’ warehouse gags!
Yeah but seriously so sorry to those 2 guys because im sure it was hard and I didn’t get to share some info that might have made it easier. But when you are SO out of it on drugs that not even remembering that you’ve been arguing with the Russian as to whether or not this is the second time you’ve made a little choc cake “delivery” in my green NHS jammy bottoms today or not is THE most concrete excuse for forgetting to do some thing I have used in my life…. Or even in the whole world of excuses EVER!
Matty, by the way is another amazing person running a marathon for me! Bloody hell I should be a lot kinder to him from now on! Chavvy bollocks/muggy bonehead (Mark, to his social worker!) on the other hand is by now, no doubt up to his own body weight in cheap French plonk but hey…. If it were up to me I’d be there doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time, am I right, Markoni? ‘DAS RIGHT, YOU MUGGEY BONEHEAD!!! OHI OHI… CHAVVY BOLLOCKS…. GET ‘ER WHAT SHE WANTS… ANYFING…GET ‘ER A STEAK MEAL!!! OHI OHI!’
Ahhhh…. Paris….. So romantic in the spring!
See you lot soon…. X
