Monday, December 12th, 2022
I’ve decided to start a blog. I’ve been meaning to / wanted to for many years, but have been too chicken. A road I couldn’t cross. Maybe this is partly about why the chicken didn’t cross the road. I first came across the term, an abbreviation for Web-Log, not road-crossing chickens, when I worked in IT for the spanking gleaming then-cutting edge internet bank, Egg. As a writer as well as an ITer, I was intrigued. But I’ve always been shy. You know, that disguised shy you learn to grow up with using a mask that people don’t pick up on? Unless they know. What, you too? Who knew? Having fought long and hard, sixty years, to overcome it, I mostly have, but the odd dragon still lurks deep in the bowles of my being, at the edge of the map of the known universe. It still raises its head every now and then to spit flame, mainly when it comes to posting stuff online. I remember plucking up the courage (overcoming shyness) to post a queston on a programming forum in the late nineties. The first response was, ‘What the fuck are you on about???’ Because I fear so badly being misunderstood, I over-explain. You know, use too many words, often with turns, in too many sub-clauses so that people … that’s not clever and not funny.
I unjoined the forum.
Now, it’s been confirmed, I’ve got cancer.
The big ‘C’.
Not like last time, this is the real thing, proper cancer; the real deal.
Nobody might read my blog, but if they do it’s unlikely anyone will post ‘What the fuck are you on about???’ Not when you play the cancer card. Top Trumps in you now have to do politically-correctness towards me. Unless that line is seen as a challenge. Or the reader served with me in the Army.
I’d become aware of a significant change in my nightly wee-ing patterns. Multiple Sclerosis leaves one more tuned to wee-ing patterns than the average bear, (the word ‘wee-ing’ might come up often in these pages, disclosure, so I’ll probably drop the ‘-‘), add in getting older, Boom! I had a specific blood test, I’ve had many many blood tests, but this was a new one, on December 1st. I reckoned I knew what the return would be, but, and at this point folk usually say ‘to be honest’, but to me that always implies there’s an alternative. I’m always honest. To be honest, I had expected the return but I hadn’t expected the severity. The enormity. The high-ness of the numbers.
Prostate Cancer releases a protein into the blood-stream, the quantity per unit of blood can be measured. A ‘normal’ reading for men my age, what am I saying? women don’t have a prostate, it has to be men, is 4.5. The killing number for the England rugby player Andy Ripley was 133. Between 2009 and 2019 the killing number (the mean ‘score’ for the cohort of men who died of the disease) was 165.
And the scores are in …
Mine is 196.
Oh!
Now, at this point, I could start a blog and feeling sorry for myself go on about how this and that or whatever, life is. But I won’t. Because I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’m 61 years of age (two weeks and a bit off 61 on results day) as I write. Many people haven’t got to 61. I was in the Army. I suspect the number of former military personnel who didn’t get to 61 tilts the numbers. I know some. I have seven Facebook friends who still have an account but the only posting they can do is via Oouija boards.
And, what the heck, it’s a challenge, right?
No, the point of starting a blog is to expose my thoughts — usually a scary thing — because if in some small way, however small those numbers, if I help only one person in their thinking on how to face the disease, decrease fear, my work here is done. And in fact, it’s wider than that. MS has taught me that however tough it is to face a chronic condition, it is often tougher for friends, relations or loved-ones because they are powerless. Without agency. Made worse by the fact that many people with the disease clam up, or refuse well-intentioned help. Many people without it looking in haven’t got a clue what to say or do. Sometimes embarrassment rules, or awkwardness. Or no skills. It’s not something taught at school.
In the middle of it, it is, he says with an inward chuckle, for me at least, it is do or die. So you might as well read about it and hopefully gain an insight you might not otherwise have had.
Let’s hope it’s not the latter, hey?
🙂