Bits and pieces from my “GAMEC-S” world.

Hello again folks.  

Guys I’m so sorry for the delay but one of the side effects of my new GAMEC-S “MEGACORE” chemo regime is the killing off of my entire stomach lining.   Stomach lining, like your hair and cancer is a rapidly growing cell.   People commonly hit you with the fact that your stomach lining replaces itself in the space of 3 days and act all smart arsred about it!   What they probably don’t tell you is that medically speaking your stomach lining starts at your front lips and finishes at your ‘back’ lips!   Oooh, sir! And let me tell you, with the chemo killing off the entire lining my mouth, throat and er… ‘bottom’ they have all been hanging in ribbons for that last 10 days! You get the ‘Ring o fire’ without any of the curry pleasure. And my mouth is full of what feels like battery acid mixed with a constant supply of snot and gob!    Uuuggghh!!!!   Painful?   PAINFUL?!? The pain gauge needle has been running in the red for most of the week this last week!   High on about 70 to 90 ml of morphine a day and not doing much in the motion of eating or drinking I have been, at times, 100% sustained on I V hydration on the machine pump too.

Using the blog to serve my every whim… I’ll put out a jungle call to all who read it… does anyone wanna buy my Alfa 2008 syder!?!?!?!?  I am absolutely gutted!   Because of the tumor that has now spread to the back of my Swede, the doctors said I now have to suspend my license for a whole year after the tumor has been cleared from my head.   So the car’s going…  I’m gutted…  it’s a beautiful car…. Beautiful….   Who’ll give me £20 grand… talk to me… sell me sell me!   I’ll take you out to dinner…   I’ll wine and dine ya!!!!    You’ll love it!   All right then….  £17K and she’s yours!!!   It’s a beautiful car…. BEAUTIFUL!

Jungle call B, is also in connection to loosing my ability to drive.   I am also now in need of a half decent tredder!   So if you know someone or you, yourself is selling a pushbike let me know and I could be very interested.   I don’t want to spend more that about a monkey on it (£500) but for that money I want a decent half road half dirt bike that should last me.

Since I’ve been ill there has been a second diary about my time in the two hospitals written by me own mother! So if you want to receive a clear, concise, regular, no nonsense, well written once a weekish update on little old me, then just send an e mail with "mothers newsflash" in the subject title and your e mail address will be added to the group.   It may not be as funny as mine (it better bloody not be!) but at least you’ll hear about how im getting on more that once a bloody month!   Now it looks like I have competition FROM ME OWN MUVVA!!!   ;-)

The other thing that I was gonna ask to everyone tuned in and locked on was a small request from the support team and myself.   Its mostly people with young families or early to workers. Without being too rude… would it be possible to not text either me or my family before 9 in the morning.    One of my mates texted at 7AM once and someone else has buzzed me at five to 8 in the past.   I am on a shared ward but even the sound of the vibrate can be off putting for people.

And when its early messages to my family, nothing gets them moving out of the bed like a text coming in at daft o’ clock.   So far the Russian has set the standard, receiving a text from a friend at 6:20am!!!!   She thought I was in trouble so please guys.   If you are up to your ears in baby poo or bored on a very early train to work… as much as we love the support and messages of love… can you just delay them by an hour or 2 just so we don’t have the frights of our lives when the phone goes early in the mornings.    Please don’t think we’d ever be ungrateful for peoples thoughts and best wishes but I cant afford to have my phone off in the mornings and neither can my support team.   Sorry if we seem ungrateful but as you can imagine its an edgy time for us all.

Quote Of The Year Award:-

There was a large chap in our room for a couple of nights.   I never caught his name but he snored loudly… so he scored very lowly on the ward scoreboard!   It was a quite early evening and he was talking to his visiting wife.   And she came up with the quote of the year for me....

“Yeah” she said, “I'll be here again, Tomorrow at about 6:30 after I've fed the dog!”

"Yeah the dog comes 1st eh?" he joked...

“Yeah... the poor thing... at home all on her own!!!

I thought to myself, you're joking me!!!   That is priceless!

Killer Mood?

AAAHH!!! NOOOO!!!   One of the health care assistant’s jobs is to go around every bed taking everyone ob’s.   (Observations are people’s blood pressure, oxygen, sat’s and body temperature.    Noted at various points throughout the day).    Normally it would take one of the healthcare assistants about 10 mins to complete the ob’s of our four-man ward.    One of them, on the other hand, likes a chat, (putting it mildly!) and was with rob.   Rob’s one of my mates here, who’s been opposite me most of the time and was by now getting a good lecturing about the high’s and lows of DVD ownership and the superior quality of blu ray discs.   

“Infact its for those main reasons that I thought I’d better get on and invent this new high def video format!”  

He almost seemed to be saying.

I was listening to their conversation; probably more than rob who was by now just throwing up the odd courteous

“Yeah?.... really…. Oh right…”

and I was getting more peeved cos I was next on the machine and I’d just bosched a sleeping pills and was waiting to get off to bub-byes… 

So finally, I think he’d noticed that rob had passed out so he ambled his way across the room and I could see that one side of my magnolia curtain (not blue like at guys) had darkened with his ample shadow…  

“knock knock, chris!”  

In he fumbles, all waistline and stumpy arms… 

“Hello Chris how’s the mouth?   Cant talk..?    Well try to keep eating if you can, to keep your strength up.”  

I stupidly grunted a response…

“Uuugh…   not easy given the low fi quality of the food in this joint”

I hashed at him.   

“Aww you’ve got it easy mate, compared to me…   I still live at home with me mum in Essex and I’m forced to eat a roast dinner every Sunday…” STUNNED SILENCE… he continued…

“In fact, tomorrow’s Sunday, innit?   I’ll have to put up with one of her full roast dinner’s tomorrow afternoon………………………………………”  

I could’ve killed him, there and then…   with what ever was in my hands at the time…   a lip balm….   There you go… I would’ve killed a man with my bare hands, assisted only by my own lip balm.   I didn’t kill him…   but I did say, I know how bad it must be, sometimes for him… and how sometimes in life you just have to take it one week at a time.   Don’t rush things mate; you’ll be all right.     Y’ KNOB!

Four about the last 5 days there was a guy in our little ward called Paul.   Nice chap keeps himself to himself and is partially sighted.    He’s a great room mate, no trouble what so ever and most importantly of all… doesn’t snore!   The highest of all qualifications on a shared ward CV.   He doesn’t give a toss either… I don’t think it had anything to do with being partially sighted but one day im sat there with me dad when pauls jumped out of bed and spun away from us, grabbed the pee jug and just started slashing away… swinging his moons at me and the old man…  fair play… when you’ve got to go you’ve got to go!

Paul also has a text machine that can speak out the letters and words that he writes and also reads him incoming texts that he receives.   He clearly has a lot of friends because a part from listening to a bit of music from time to time he never did much else.    But he was forever playing on his text machine.   He’d have it stuffed into his face, about 5 centimeters away from his right eye, furiously crunching away on the keypad.   It would never be up loud enough to annoy but when he first showed up I couldn’t work out what it was he was doing.   But then one quite night I was lying there trying to drift off and I could make out some of the Steven hawking voice words buzzing out of the machine and phrases he was writing.   So all in that robot hawkings voice it went along the lines of  “kiss… kiss… see you tomorrow… Gaylord… kiss… kiss… end of message!”   I admit it… I laughed out loud at that… I’m sorry Paul!

ON Monday the 23^rd I broke another duck in my year of first’s… surgery.   Never experienced it before.   Weird day that was.   I was prepped and taken down to theatre by 9am and met the anesthetist.   Classic surgery type… “ya ya… ive got a helicopter and gimbal video system in the Cotswold’s and we’ve got the contract for shooting all the external hele stuff for 2012… ya, amazing… making a packet too, old boy ffnar ffnar!” this was the conversation I was having with him when he asked what I do for a living.   Im sure it was part of his spiel that he gives to all his ‘victims’ as he’s in the process of knocking them out!   The tosser!

The next thing I know im walking up high in the roof of a massive new shopping centre that has been built under Peckham Rye Park… and get this… I’m looking for my tent!    In the steel roof beams of a shopping centre that doesn’t exist built under my local park… and then… I fall off! And im falling and falling and falling toward all the shoppers below and I look down to assess my fate then I look back up to where I was and I see my dad… eating a packet of crisps… and he said to me… “Afternoon… are you thirsty?   I was after my leg op!”

“Uuugh?... am I what?... oh… oh im back in good old bed 17”.   Phew… mad dream, maaan!  Thirsty?… yes… yes I suppose I am a bit parched.    So I lean over to my trolley table to pick up the little plastic blue beaker that has my water in it and BANG!!!!   Someone shoots me in my left shoulder… medic! Man down, medic!

Faaaaackin’ hell!!!   What was that?   Holy moley!   Is there a javelin sticking out of my shoulder blade that I haven’t noticed, or something!!?!  This new pain was incredible.   Every slight, little move in my upper body would promote an eruption of agony in my left shoulder.   Goodness me… what did they do to my body?   Was that chinless wonder swinging his helicopter ham fists about inside me all morning or had they not taken their knives down to the gippo site to get sharpened this morning?

I dare myself to look down at my chest… not even phased by the bright snow white nylon surgery stockings ive got pulled halfway up my thighs… I can see half the bloody new east London line extension progamme hanging out of me chest!  Nah… It was a HIC line and it came with 3 days of murderous pain and post op problems.   The first night it took me a full 10 whole minutes to sit up in bed to swing my legs out and go for a pee.   Then as the days and pain passed there were more comical moments where I was filling a empty jug with icy water and I couldn’t work out where all this extra pain was coming from as the jug was getting filling up and getting heavier!   The good news is that ora-Morph tastes like red bull and Jager bombs! Mmmh!  Sweet and nice and mash you up, innit?

Finally the other day I can call myself a true Millwall fan.   Because I got blood on my Millwall polo shirt today from an injection seepage... (Yeah a MILLWALL POLO shirt! Classy eh?)   So I now look undoubtedly hard, yeah? But sadly the blood was spilt it in front of me mum who has now got finger of hand soap with some kitchen paper and is furiously working away at it just to break it up for now!   How hard am I?   Yeah?   Want some? I’ll fight yer… hang on… (Out the way mum and wipe that soap off, im about to have a tear up here!!!!!    Miiiillllllllwall!!!!

And now a massive list of thank you’s…

Massive thanks, to my cousin Paul for the old family cine DVD he sent us. It’s amazing and really funny! Really funny! The thing starts at my auntie and uncle’s wedding in 1966 and goes right through the years to when my sister was a tiny baby on one of the many family holidays on the Isle of Wight in 1979.    Theres a great shot of my old granddad P sat on the beach fully suited and booted with a pint of milk in his pocket!?! That’s a family thing!   Yup, even I remember the milk!   And my dad digging really deep holes for the kids to hide in... Whilst wearing brown nylon trousers and looking like Mickey dolenz from the monkees! Stylish man!   The best one id my dad in a suit, looking like a 2 pin plug on a kids tricycle in he late 1960’s riding towards the camera with a royals fag hanging out the side of his gob!

The F1 boys have just started a "mil vember" for me this month!   £5 in all money goes to cancer research uk  (my chosen charity!)   for those that don’t know… ‘Movember’ is a thing for charity where blokes across the nation grow beards and moustaches for their chosen charity.   Moustache and November, hence the word movember.    But the guys have adapted it for me and I get to go up and see them in Silverstone to judge the best efforts and pick a winner on the Thursday before the race.   So if you see any mustachioed weirdo’s at the next couple of races that’ll be the reason why!   They are also holding an f1 memorabilia night that night too auctioning off all sorts of f1 gear (I Guess) to raise even more money!   Im really looking forward to going guys…   thanks so much!

I just wanted to thank pronto for all his support and kind words through the football season, especially with all what he’s going through himself.    Hope all’s well with you pront’s .   He’s been phoning to see how ive been and passing the day here and there to keep me going which is really kind of him.

To my Bessie mate Steve, up there in the pool!   He ran the London marathon for me back in April.   And amazing effort and raised £3,000 or more for charity too.   He said he ran it with me in mind all the way round the grulleling 27 mile course, getting sun burned and mashed up plates of meat in the process.   Thanks Steve, love ya bud.

Finally a massive thank you to my mate Graeme and his amazing T shirt pics on Facebook!   There is a group, should you not have already discovered it called Think strong.   My mate Graeme has been talking to me about printing T’s since I met him back in 1993.   He thought that there might be something in it for him with all his idea’s.   Well look how popular it’s been already, mate.   Its great.   And again the best ideas are the most simple… a bit like my friend greyham!!!!

If you do go on face book and check it out please bear in mind that the celebs have donned the T shirts in good faith so no nasty comments towards them, pls!

Righto…  that’s it for another month or so…   my megacore 4 day dose will begin again on Sunday.   Two Sundays ago my last one stared at 11:30am Sunday and was finished at 5:00pm Wednesday afternoon, a 77 hours of solid drug and flush intake.   And my body’s still feeling the effects of it now with my broken mouth!

Until the next time my friends and family… take care of yourselves…

M   x