Just another Thursday: An interval. With tumbleweed

Just another Thursday: An interval. With tumbleweed: It is surprisingly easy to forget you are ill. Well at least it is easy if you have as few symptoms as I have. The good news is that for ...

An interval. With tumbleweed

It is surprisingly easy to forget you are ill. Well at least it is easy if you have as few symptoms as I have.

The good news is that for the last couple of weeks my side effects have receded. My visits to the lavvy are much less eventful; in fact I worry as much about visiting too rarely as I worry about earth shittering events. Even the rash is healing under the tender ministrations of Clare and the Diprobase cream she rubs into my spotty bits every evening. The bottles are not an elegant addition to our dressing table, but then again neither is the array of pills which festoon the bookshelves next to my bed. Adapt and survive so they say.

Anyway the pills are balanced by one of my most treasured possessions. Treasured both because of what it contains and for who it came from. 

It is an as yet unopened bottle of Port Ellen malt. There is a bit of controversy in the family whether this sort of whisky should be sipped or kept as an investment. I come down on the sipping side, and I know who I hope to sip it with.

So, I was talking about the progress of my medication. All good, as I said, but there is a vein of pessimism that runs though me, the thought that every silver lining must have a cloud; the light that I see at the end of this dark tunnel I find myself in is probably the 11.15 to Edinburgh Waverley. Thus the thought lurks at the back of my mind that the lack of side effects probably means that dear, dear Afatinib has stopped working altogether.

I hasten to add that nothing but my innate pessimism supports these thoughts. Anyway my latest CT scan is arranged for 29th April and within a couple of weeks of that date I will have another meeting with my Oncologist and a fuller idea of what the next few months have in store for the tumour rich Peddie corpus.

There is of course a party coming up. Obviously the coincidence that Ben would be 21 a couple of weeks after I turned 60 was planned for from the very beginning (NOT). Ben has been thinking about and planning for his party for round about 2 years. We had a shed at Kilduncan chosen and had even started to clear it out for the celebration when THURSDAY happened. 

This is the time for a confession. Ben had planned a slightly larger party but as soon as we heard about my diagnosis he instantly agreed to the joint party, but sacrificed almost half of the friends he had hoped to invite. (perhaps a poor choice of word, clearly the sacrifice didn't include ritual slaughter on a graven altar, merely a reduction of the number of names on a list). If you are one of those friends please accept my gratitude. I will drink to you at the party, quite possibly more than once.

There is another thorny issue concerning the party.

Presents. 

When I think about what I want for my birthday I immediately slip back to early November when my hopes and expectations so suddenly changed. It seemed all too possible that I wouldn't make it to 60. To be able to celebrate in my brothers shed on the farm my father bought and a few yards from the house where my grandparents lived is the greatest gift I have ever had.

And I owe it to all of you. Without the NHS my fears might have been realised and everyone who has ever paid tax in this country or who has ever taken a job where you didn't earn enough to pay tax has contributed to my treatment. The chance to spend a happy evening with my closest friends and to meet Ben's friends is more than enough for me.

Ben's case is slightly different. If you ask him what he wants he may well gibber something about giving money to a cause which I will come up with.  On this occasion (and only this occasion) please ignore him.

He is about to be 21 and one of the pleasures of that milestone is opening the presents that your friends have chosen. Don't deprive him of this. Please give him exactly what you would have done, no more and no less.

(Oh, and if I make it to 70 I will expect handsome gifts.)