A man with a plan

Well, strictly speaking the plan comes from our NHS.

Yesterday Clare and I made another, and entirely trauma free visit to Ninewells. This time we were preparing for a plan which starts next week.

I was first fitted with a warm moulded face mask. It was lime green with perforations. Its function is to keep my head still next week.
Not, you understand, for the whole of next week but for the 10 to 15 minutes each day next week when Ninewells finest radiographers will be using their CT scanning machine to send X-rays into the Peddie brain area.
With a fair wind this will stop or even shrink tumour growth up there.
Final effects are not certain so I won't tempt fate by listing the possibilities.

I will almost certainly lose my hair, and be much more tired than I have been.

But neither hair loss nor tiredness seem like to much of a price to pay.

There is another matter.

One of Elton John's better songs is Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word. Good song, but sadly at present in my situation not quite accurate.  
Turns out goodbye is the hardest word.

Now I have a long and proud history of weeping uncontrollably when saying goodbye.
The first time I remember performing this trick was nearly 50 years ago when dad and I took a 90 year old Ontario retired farmer to Prestwick airport at the end of his stay of two or three weeks.
When it came to saying goodbye I welled up pretty much uncontrollably.

Not just goodbye of course. Although I call Sunshine on Leith my happy place this doesn't mean that I don't regularly watch it with tears running down my face. Also, as I type this, slowly, The West Wing is unfolding in front of me. Odds are I will shed a tear or two before it is finished.

It is niceness and decency that hits me here, I think.

Now in my present situation most people I meet are decent and nice and are keen to say goodbye. I love you all but I warn you tears may result. Preserving the illusion that I will be here for years may be the best way ahead. Hugging is always acceptable.

There is another small issue.
This is shit. I think so. I am pretty sure we pretty much all concur. For simplicity I will end with a facebook message from a surprisingly eloquent butcher.  A friend, a decent man and a pretty damn good butcher.

'Awww egg man. That's just a complete bastard,
The somewhat less than eloquent fat butcher'

More all less says it all. Nuffsaid.