Hopes and expectation

The perfect week to talk about hopes and expectation.
We are just over a week from the start of the  Rugby 6 Nations Championship. For Scottish fans, at least this century, this has been the best of the tournament. We can look at players on form, developing coaching teams and opposition not quite as good as they used to be and we can really see our way to being really competitive in the tournament. Sadly since 1999 this success has proved elusive, one tournament collapsed as early as 20 minutes into the first match, against Wales as I recall.
This year of course will be different. Although Eddie Jones worries me. Failing to select several of his best players, even trying to instal Scotland as favourites in our match. I hope Scottish coaching staff are thumbing their way through Machiavelli and trying to figure out how to combat these unsporting tactics.

This of course is not the only area of my life where my mind is being exercised by hopes and expectations.

The NHS system, at least as far as I have experienced it is aimed to limit expectation while leaving room for hope.
They stress that even the wonderful Afatinib doesn't work on everybody and that even where it is effective the effect sometimes diminishes after a few months. Almost as an afterthought they mention that some patients are still alive after 3 years.
Tomorrow marks 5 weeks on the drug. As yet we have no way to gauge how well things are going so my hopes and fears are based on how I am feeling. How easily can I breathe? How big is the numb area on my bottom lip.
This is not really an effective system mostly because these looked for signs are very minimal and the variations I am looking for are so tiny as to be hardly detectable.

A large dose of reality will be thrust into this system over the next couple of weeks. 3rd February takes me back to Ninewells for a CT scan then a little under a week later we are back up in Dundee for the results show.
That is going to be a hard week with waves of hope and fear blowing over me like Atlantic weather systems.
A resounding Scottish victory at Murrayfield would really help to get me through that week, particularly as Ben is taking Clare and I to watch the game in person. (And if you are the person who made the tickets available to Ben, thank you very much)

All this hoping and expecting doesn't really take up much of my time (although the rugby is seldom out of my mind). Practical arrangements are much more time consuming.

After 42 years of leaping into cars or vans and going where I like I have been guided into the world of non-drivers, apparently even as few as 2 tumours in a brain makes the DVLA a bit apprehensive about how fit I am to drive (sneaky wee pun there).
My travel is now largely in the hands of Stagecoach buses. The 30 minute walk to and from the bus stop is a bit of a hurdle, although not as big a hurdle as the rain which regularly pisses down ( in fact I am looking nervously out the window to find that not only has this mornings rain stopped but the sun appears to have shown itself (12.43 on Wednesday 27th January 2016).
For the record today's outing will see my defunct laptop delivered for repair in Anstruther. The trip home will include a stop in Crail to buy ingredients for our tea.
There may be time for coffee or even a sneaky half pint while I wait for the next bus.

Weekends are pretty busy here but mid week things are pretty quiet. If you have been thinking of a visit you will be very welcome. Text or call first just in case I am out investigating the 95 bus.

On drugs and tripping

What to write?

I still have little idea what this blog is about. My life? My history? My disease? My politics?

Probably a bit of all of the above.

My problem is that as far as my disease goes not much is happening. Actually that is untrue. I fervently hope that a lot is happening. Each morning at 6.30 I take a single tablet of Afatinib. I take it with a full glass of water on an empty stomach and I don't eat or drink anything else for an hour afterwards. My fervent hope rests on the ability of this drug to stop my fine collection of tumours from growing and with any luck to start to shrink them.

In Mid February I will be reintroduced to the scanning department at Ninewells. Pictures will be taken. Clever people will examine these pictures. And my future will become clearer

As well as the Main Ingredient I take a variety of other pills, mostly to combat the limited side effects of Afatinib. I had prepared a wee riff on my side effects. Even coined the term 'fart roulette' to describe my relationship with the intermittent diahorrhea that is my main preoccupation at present.

I won't do this. Boasting about my low level of side effects seems disrespectful to the thousands of other people also fighting this crap group of diseases but who are being subjected to much more toxic treatments and who are fighting much harder than I to keep their lives on an even keel in the face of both disease and treatment.

Life is good. Most people who read this will come through my Facebook profile and will have heard plenty about our latest trip. Clare and I have just had a lovely weekend in Paris. A first for us both. We ate and drank well. We sight saw (past tense of sightsee? Perhaps not). We walked miles, or more accurately kilometres, laughed a lot and hugged as much. A holiday as much from  non-small cell lung carcinoma as from anything else. Certainly a weekend to treasure.

On a day when junior doctors are striking in England, I can't really avoid some political comment. As one whose entire future is dependent on the NHS, I really fear for the future of our health service. I will try to avoid my all-too-common tumour tourettes ( although is is worth noting that the health secretary in Westminster is formed entirely from rhyming slang).

Better women and men than I, with similar diseases, raise large sums of money for cancer treatment or for research. I don't think I can do that. But if I could persuade 10 people who voted for the present government not to do so again.

I have no way of knowing whether Hunt and Cameron are deliberately damaging the NHS to make it easier to bring in private companies and thus send out millions of pounds in profits to those companies, or if they are simply too stupid to see the inevitable downward trajectory of what they do. 

But please, help to stop them, for me, for you or for anyone who might need top quality health care and can't afford to pay full market value for that care.

Inevitably on the day after his death I am listening to David Bowie. I've never been a big fan but Blackstar must always have been a moving listen, but on the day after his death it is almost unbearably so.

And at last I have something in common with Bowie, although I suspect lung cancer is not a connection that either of us would have sought.