Seagull Massacre

It’s early Saturday morning, and as usual I can’t sleep. So I’ve decided to write a blog (in bed, from my phone – ooh, get me…).

I’ve been having sleep issues for a while now – I wake throughout the early hours, and then struggle to fall asleep again. This is largely the fault of seagulls.

Our bedroom can get quite warm in the summer, so it’s nice to open a window at night. However, open a window and from four in the morning one has to listen to screeching seagulls on the roofs of the surrounding houses. To be honest ‘screeching’ is a generous description of the hideous noise they make.

Several times while half asleep I have birdicidal (yes, I made a new word – that’s how language evolves, as Sally would say) dreams of buying an air rifle and ‘silencing’ them once and for all. Only when fully awake to realise that I have a very limited field of fire from our window – plus there are lots of them, and perhaps waging war against the entire local seagull population is a bit beyond my current energy levels.

Having said that, I have had a relatively active week. I’ve had two trips to London for hospital appointments, and on Thursday actually found the energy to do some DIY.

This took the form of screwing two flowerpots to the outside wall, and putting up a bracket for a hanging basket. Ok, so it involved a lot of huffing and puffing, sitting down for a rest at various (actually most) stages, and getting annoyed at badly designed pots that don’t allow enough room to get even the smallest screwdriver in to tighten up the screws. What should have been a simple job, wasn’t – although finding a solution actually just made my amazing feat of DIY even more rewarding (so in the end I was secretly glad that the pots were designed by an absolute moron).

For someone who a few weeks ago could barely shower without fainting from back pain, I was pretty chuffed with my day’s activities – it represents a big improvement (and earns me some guilt free Xbox credits).

So back to the hospital visits then. Wednesday I was in for my pre-chemo clinic appointment (chat with doctor, blood tests to see if blood counts have recovered, etc), and then Friday I received my second infusion of chemo and bisphosphonates. Which all went very well.

I seem to have tolerated this chemo pretty well so far. The doctor told us in clinic that he had given me a very high dose first time round. I think dose is dependent on height and weight, but also kidney function – apparently my kidney test came back with very good results (hoorah, part of me that actually works!), hence the high dose. He did say the pharmacist might tell him to reduce it for the second cycle, but when I overheard the nurses checking the actual bag of chemo yesterday, it was the same high dose.

Which I was glad about – although I don’t really understand the link between dose and response. When he said he might have to cut the dose he said this wouldn’t affect the response. You would assume more equals better, but I guess it’s not that simple. Either way, I personally would like to get as much of the stuff in me as possible, just to be sure.

Especially given the fact I seem to have had no identifiable side effects from the first cycle. That might well change, the effects of chemo tend to be cumulative with subsequent cycles. But so far since starting this treatment I have felt better, as opposed to worse.

It would be wonderful to believe that it’s down to the chemo working, and kicking the crap out of the cancer – but I’ve learnt too many times on this journey not to get my hopes up too much.

There are a number of other factors to consider; the receding side effects of the brain radiotherapy, the beneficial effects of my back and arm radiotherapy, the bisphosphonates, and an improved pain management regime, which could all be contributing to my improvement. But lets hope the chemo is in the mix there as well, doing something positive.

So what else have I been up to? Well, watching the Olympics. I was a big Olympic sceptic beforehand. I still think it’s a massive waste of money at a time when we didn’t need to waste a massive load of money. Having said that, I have got suckered in to watching it.

You might have heard that Boris Johnson has suggested that kids should do two hours of compulsory sport a day in school. At first I thought he had just got carried away with all the ‘Olympic mania’, then I realised he was onto something – only he hadn’t gone far enough. I realised that kids should do ONLY sport in school. I know that sounds silly but bear with me, I have a plan…

That way, all our kids will be REALLY good at sport, and every four years at the Olympics we can win ALL the medals. This will result in a huge surge of national pride and self-congratulation.

A huge surge of national pride and self-congratulation that will hopefully last just long enough to get to the next Olympics, where we will win ALL the medals again. And so on.

What this national pride and self-congratulation will allow is the populace to forget all the other issues in their lives – that the economy is screwed, the government is incompetent and we have Porky Pig as chancellor, innocent people are dying in Syria and around the world, university degrees are now prohibitively expensive and useless, our tabloid press is immoral and corrupt, people are denied life extending cancer drugs because they are too expensive, no one under the age of forty can afford to buy a house anymore, etc, etc.

No one will care about any of that. As long as our nation is the best in the world at making a horse prance round a sandy square in a hoighty-toighty manner to the sound of ‘Live and Let Die’, none of that other crap matters. No one will care because we will have all the gold medals IN THE WORLD, and that makes us the best.

The media have also been lamenting potential cuts to sport funding after the Olympics. As part of my plan I think we should divert more money to sport (if not all of it) to aid in this quest for medals. I mean, take the Cancer Drugs Fund for example – what a waste of money. Lets face it people with cancer are generally crap at sport (I’m not going to be winning any medals any time soon, unless they make crawling up the stairs then nearly fainting an Olympic sport). So for ultimate medal payback, scrap the Cancer Drugs Fund, and lets pour that money into something worthwhile, like horse prancing, or our beach volleyball team. It’s all about priorities, and investing where it counts.

Ermm… ok, might have got a bit carried away there. But then if I can’t use the blog for the odd (semi) tongue-in-cheek rant what’s it for?

Oh yeah, keeping you all updated about cancer… oops.