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.