Short notice

At 5.30 last evening my phone rang and a strange number appeared on the display. A doctor spoke.
' we need to take a sample from one of the suspicious shadows from your CT scan'. Can you be in Kirkcaldy for 8.30 tomorrow morning?
There only seemed to be one possible answer, so after a call to Clare's work. And the help they have given us to adjust Clare's diary has been immense, there we were at the entrance to the endoscopy suite bang on 8.30 this morning.
Another calm, confident, competent nurse met us. She was even prepared to smile when I suggested to Clare that she was just dropping me with a beautiful woman to do some drugs. Too much humour I think.
Questionnaire filled in, another cannula painlessly inserted, a little waiting and I was ready to meet my first consultant in this process.
But first the drugs. A good armful of Valium. Then a good deal of explanation about the procedure. Lots of info about anaesthetic gel up a nostril and a variety of tools making their way up that nostril and down into my lung where samples would be taken. A broncoscopy
I can't pretend that it was an enjoyable experience. Not because of any pain or real discomfort but because the medical people and I had clear differences on the acceptable level of coughing and spluttering. I badly didn't want to make their life more difficult but did, or felt I did.
At least steel pipe up my nostril can be crossed from my bucket list.

Home now, around half past four. Valium wearing off. No beer tonight, apparently the mixture with the V would be too much .

So the results of today's test and the scans will be assessed by a group of skilled and clever people early next week. Clare and I will be invited to hear the results of their deliberations possible next Thursday.
Today's doctor thought we would find it was either lung cancer or lymphoma. We are being strict about not being tempted into google research until we have the diagnosis but nearly there now.

Waiting

Another good day yesterday, and today has started not too shabbily either.
I am sitting in my lounge, iPad on my lap, Led Zeppelin playing, appropriately on my Zeppelin dock. Best of all, for the first time on an ordinary working day,  in the 23 years since we moved in to this house a fire is burning in our large rustic grate.
Am I belatedly learning that special things don't have to be kept for special occasion, that they can make the ordinary and the mundane special?
Bloody hell, philosophy on a Thursday morning. Don't worry it won't become a habit. We all know where it can lead: POETRY, and there is very seldom any excuse for maudlin, half prepared poetry from middle aged men with too much time on their hands.
Anyway YESTERDAY.
I suspect yesterday will prove my easiest encounter with the NHS this winter. A CT scan. This asked no more of me than to lie still for a few minutes occasionally holding my breath while a motorised bed passed me through a big ring of , I'm not quite sure what? X-rays I guess.
I am told that pretty, or not so pretty, pictures of 1000 slices of vintage Peddie are now available for radiologists and oncologists to study. A plan will emerge, and I rather hope soon.
I have a confession too.
I am not very good at checking my mail. Business bills and cheques come in but are quite happy to rest on the table till I am ready to deal with them.
I was not yet prepared to deal with regular correspondence connected with an adventure in tumour science. When an appointment came in asking me to be in Dunfermline yesterday I filed it then relaxed. What I hadn't been quite prepared for was the chance that I might get a revised appointment for a day later and 20 miles closer.
When we got to Dunfermline there was a blank look when they searched for my appointment. But you know what they did? They fixed it. Quickly and efficiently. They even managed to do it 15 minutes earlier than my original time.
Black mark to Peddie, gold star to NHS!
And we have another appointment. Ominously entitled 'US guided biopsy neck'. I confess that this gave me a wee shiver of apprehension and a vision from a bunker in Texas as the American military launched a drone strike on my tender neck.
Apparently not. It is an ultrasound guided biopsy of something lurking in my neck. But I guess you wise and well informed people all knew that instantly.
Last night wasn't too shabby either. The Andrew Melville Hall Christmas dinner. With me on the top table (did I mention I married well).
Good food, generous supplies of wine and good company. Above all a lovely atmosphere as a couple of hundred students relaxed and enjoyed themselves for a few hours in that short gap between their course work ending and the exams beginning.
St Andrews University attracts the brightest and the best but even they will find it much harder to chart for themselves a rewarding route through life than those of us who were educated in the 1970s.
Judging by the chat and the buzz last night these kids will do OK.

Health and Service

It is a beautiful day in West Aberdeenshire. I have done a little work, drunk much too much coffee and am sitting with iPad on my lap and my beautiful grand daughter chattering and laughing round about me.All is pretty much right with the world. So why am I so angry.

Not my health. I would much rather not have these problems but nobody's fault. I don't even have an evil and capricious god to blame, shit happens quite easily without the connivance of a higher power.

No it is the ongoing threat to our national health service that is fuelling my inner rage.

Now the NHS is a pretty simple concept. 

It is national so everyone from Shetland to Cornwall can expect the system to try to give them the same opportunity for excellence.

Obviously Health is at its centre. 

But so is Service. The NHS is a huge organisation but nobody works in there to get rich. 1.3 million staff report for work in return for a fair wage and the chance to help their fellow citizens.

Of all the things Britain has achieved nothing should make us more proud than this service which provides us with excellence at some of the lowest costs in the world.

And yet we have a government which has decided to dismantle the system. What is lacking, they have decided, is the ability of large international companies to take 15 or 20 % profit from the budget. Easily paid for by paying people less and by reducing staffing levels so that there are enough people on quiet days but perhaps not for peak days. Never mind there will be a private company to fill the gap. 

Our junior doctors have been driven to strike, not because they want six figure bonuses a la banking industry, but because they can't afford to pay for decent places to live and raise families, and because they see, day by day, the erosion of the ability of the NHS to provide the excellence we have come to expect. 

I am old enough to remember governments all the way back to Harold Wilsons labour government but this present Tory government seems to me unique in its single minded pursuit of their narrow self interest. 

David Cameron is uniquely worthy of contempt. His disabled son had huge help from the NHS but now Cameron is deliberately bringing about a situation where a similar child couldn't expect the same help. 

He shares with Hunt (had ever a talentless functionary such an appropriately rhyming name) the certainty that what he is saying is untrue and that he knows it is untrue.
They cast envious eyes on the American health system.
I am sure this is wonderful if you are wealthy enough to have full health insurance but they don't even try to provide excellence for the whole population. The tories wring their hands about our bloated 1.3 million staff. In the US there are 460000 working in the health insurance industry. Not Doctors, not nurses nor hospital porters. No these people check insurance forms. Perhaps they get a wee bonus if they can find a loophole to save their employers a bit of money.
Now the US health service is none of my business, they are (apparently) a democracy, their health is their business. BUT FOR PITIES SAKE DON'T CAST ENVIOUS EYES IN THAT DIRECTION.
Of course the heads of those insurance companies earn multimillion dollar salaries. Enough I suspect to make perfect sense to a certain type of Tory politician.

Sitting here the day before a major scan which will tell me which multi buy tumour pack I am hosting  makes me very much want for these young women and men to be happy and fulfilled.

So far I have had 2 assessments by junior doctors. The first was in Dundee by a startlingly attractive young woman. (OK, not strictly relevant but I am a middle aged man). She didn't claim to know everything but was happy to keep going back to her superior until they were both happy they had asked and answered the right questions. I found her humility and work ethic hugely comforting.

The second was at a TIA clinic in Kirkcaldy. A busy young man had time to send me round the hospital for tests and scans. Everywhere I went I found people with just enough time to make me feel cared for. When my day came to its end he sat us down and gave us the earth shattering news calmly and accurately.

Thoughts from home

It would be wrong to think that the house is a continuous festival of laughter with me performing funny walks in my ever so elegant pants. This is scary, perhaps unreal would be a better word. Next Wednesday's scan is what we are all looking forward to.  We, or at least I, are trying to balance hope and realism.
There are some strange reversals.
My weight peaked at just over 14 stone a couple of years ago. I went back to van driving and started to limit my chocolate intake and it gradually came down to 13 stone. Reducing beer intake was obviously an option but not one I have ever found it necessary to think seriously about.
This summer Clare started running and I went with her (did I mention what an extraordinary woman is Clare?) I found I really enjoyed the experience and my weight was edging to a reasonable target of 12 and a half stone by the beginning of August when my Achilles made the unilateral decision to lodge a protest and to insist that I took an extra 40 minutes in bed on running days.
This week my weight went down to 12 stone 4. The unwelcome little bastard passengers are clearly hungry sods. The house has never been so full of food. We have cheese from Mellis in St Andrews, biscuits from M and S. I can buy chocolate at will. And obviously beer restriction has seldom been further from the agenda.
There have been few days in the last 40 odd years when I haven't driven. Sadly it is the unanimous wish of the NHS, police Scotland and the Peddie family that I cease and desist from my piloting duties. There is a huge irony that, even with my precarious health status I am in less danger than I was every time I got behind the wheel of a car on a Friday or Saturday night in the second half of the 1970s.
What has been really nice over the last couple of weeks is talking to so many old and not so old friends. Once the bad news is out of the way there has been ample opportunity to chat and to remind ourselves of why we are friends.

Feeling fine. I tire quite quickly but am still working and finding a lot of fun in my daily grind.

Pants

Good word, I'm sure you all agree.
Certainly a rational response to my predicament. Also relevant to the underwear shot of yours truly which I hope to attach to this posting. Come on, this is going on the Internet, porn had to raise its ugly head (well maybe I haven't gone quite that far)
My attitude to underwear has been historically careless. Buy cheap and wear to destruction. My diagnosis however comes at a high point of my underwear ownership.
ODDBALLS. Comfortable, secure and above all decent. Ideal for visits to medical facilities where clever women and men may want to check for whatever rubbish we find on Wednesday's investigations.
They also send 10% of their purchase price to fight testicular cancer. Follow them on Twitter to find countless pictures of fit young men and women (the ladies items are cut differently, I can't vouch for comfort but they do look attractive).
They also have a Movember pair. Please give generously to this movement. Thousands of men are suffering the embarrassment of dodgy moustaches during November. If we pay generously they will at least shave them before Christmas. The money they are raising is generally for Men's health and more specifically to research Prostate cancer. This took of my father, his best friend and his younger brother. Who knows it may be the wee shite at the base of my problem.
An international Men's day is clearly daft, but a bit of funding and publicity to encourage us to look after our health is really important.

Quiet few days on the medical front. A new anti eleptic drug started this morning. Time will tell how this reacts with my steroids and my antacids, both on reducing doses, and with the beer. I am still self medicating with carefully judged doses of Britains finest IPAs. You know it makes sense although when I mentioned it to my GP yesterday I am pretty sure a vision of me passing out nightly with a couple of gallons inside we flickered across here minds eye. No such luck.

I am going to spend more time than any of us would like in the company of junior doctors over the next month or 2. They badly need our support in their negotiations with the government. The Tory campaign against the NHS is founded on lies and greed and thickly layered with incompetence and dishonesty. Let's give the doctors all our support. Above all DON'T VOTE TORY.
Did I mention my new dentist?
A young woman in St Andrews. She fitted 3 x-Ray's, 2 fillings and a good clean into a half hour appointment on Tuesday. She didn't even seem shaken when I asked her advice on combining dental treatment with tumour ownership.
I've never had a lady dentist before but she seems great and if you have to have someone leaning over you closely soft skin and fair hair are much more pleasant than stubble

Telling and hearing

Not the worst weekend of my life. Laughed a lot, cried a little, there may have been a little alcohol.
I also spoke to most of my favourite people, this could never be an unpleasant way to spend a few hours, even if the news I had to pass on was not good.
I haven't has much practice either at the passing on of bad news or of receiving it. I know a little more now. I know mostly that the closer people are in your life the closer you should have to have them when you pass on the news. Poor James was on the Seychelles, getting to know his dream job. Our phone call had us both in tears. Not that I am against tears, but they do bugger up the conversation if everyone is at it.
Highlight of the weekend would be lunch for 7 at Craig Millar @ 16 West End. Clare and I, Ben, Nikki and Elt. Prosecco, lots of laughs and truly delicious food. I highly recommend it for any celebration or displacement activity. Craig is a lovely man and a brilliant chef and his staff are as relaxed yet efficient as he is.
Slap up meals in the face of adversity are a bit of a Peddie family tradition. Almost exactly 30 years ago after a disastrous harvest when Peddie Inc lost over £150k Dad took us all to the Cellar for our tea. It was my first visit. I hadn't heard of Peter Jukes or Vivian or Alan Lunn. Or of the front of house person who would introduce all of them to me over the next 18 months. Clare was her name.
But back to the passing on of the news.
I very quickly learned that this sort of news is at least as hard to hear as it is to tell. I find it easier to chat in a pretty lighthearted way, dredge up old stories and giggle a bit. People being nice to me are a bit harder to take.
I spent quite a long conversation talking about Shiela.
Shiela Pollock was my cousin, a year older than me. Clever, beautiful and with a gift for making people happy. On Boxing Day 1986 she stole me away from a rather dull family party at Coal Farm with the suggestion that we have a drink or two at the 19th Hole in Elie.
She didn't mention that she had arranged to meet Clare (yes, still working at the Cellar) there. There is still some doubt as to whether she was setting us up for romance or whether she had agreed to bring a man with a van who would undoubtedly help to move house.
30 years later we are still happy, and I helped her flit at least twice that year.

This has been a difficult few days. We still have very little information. We have an appointment for a full body CT scan next Wednesday (25th) in Dunfermline. This should tell us exactly what we are up against and how we are going to combat it.
Meantime I am a bit under the weather, although whether it is the tumours, the steroids I am taking to reduce their swelling, the antacid I am taking to reduce gut rot or the carefully balanced intake of craft ale and red wine I am taking to induce a feeling of gentle euphoria which are causing this isn't exactly clear.
While I wish I hadn't had this happen it is a huge relief to know that I have exactly the right people around me family and friends have been equally generous in offers of help and beer. Good people.

Neil was as positive as he could be during our afternoon together.
Neil is the doctor who I met at a TIA clinic on Thursday.
"I am certain it wasn't a stroke" sounded positive although I was hoping to hear what it was rather than what it wasn't.
Things were still going well when he came to "I think we have an explanation of your crash". Well if not well then neutral.
My day went rapidly downhill when his next words were "there are 2 tumours in your brain. The swelling around them causes electrical activity which in turn causes a seizure". The actual wording of the last sentence may not be accurate. Somehow the word tumour comes with a very powerful force field which makes it difficult to hear the words around it. Brain seemed to force its way through. Perhaps not the best word to put there, but is there a good word?
Small may have been in there but perhaps that is just my natural shiny optimism glowing through.

Short entry today. I have realised that this can't be about me alone. There is family. And such a family. I am a lucky sod, although thirst may have reduced my jam quotient just a bit.
I had 2 loving parents who worked their guts out to pass on a farming business to their 4 sons. 3 of those sons are my younger brothers. Not best friends but we talk and will help where they can.
There is a wife, who I met on Boxing Day 1986 and we have been together ever since. I have spent too little time trying to make her happy.
She came with 2 small children; a girl and a boy. They taught me to be a parent, I wasn't much of a stepfather but fortunately the bar is set pretty low. Think of Cinderella or Snow White. I was better than them.
Then there is our son. A wonderful young man. I won't say more about them yet. This will be their story too so they need to agree to be in it.
If these people were your family you would share my love and pride. This is a party I really don't want to leave.