Old Faces - Good Pals

It's been a week of reunions.

On Tuesday, I went back to The Vu for lunch - this time with Les.

I haven't seen him for ages so it was good to catch up with all his news about his back to the future life as a student. I hope it goes well for him and Elaine who has had more than her own fair share of troubles recently. All the best to the Fultons.

On Thursday, it was a GRAND reunion of all of the old folk that I used to work with. Fordie organised it and we went to LEERIE's of all places.

What a great night was had by all and it was especially good that Graham Dumble was able to come along for a wee while. I first met Graham in 1978 when I started working and in those early years we went through a few scrapes and japes together. A whole load of water has flowed under a whole load of bridges since those days.

Another huge surprise was in store when Allan Welch turned up! He now lives in Spain and while he didn't exactly fly in just to come to my night out, it was great to see him.

So as we settled in for the night, it was as if we had never been away. Morton was sitting by the window, Graham and Liz (both have hair much shorter now than 30 years ago), Denis and Linda, Soapy, Fordie, John, Smiggy, Clarkie and Liesl - all recycling the same old stories that we've told for years.

Plus ca change . . . . . . nights like this show exactly why it was worth getting better!

Thanks to everybody who managed to come along.

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Fish Suppers, Poems & Philosophy

It's been a quietish weekend by our standards.
As Liesl, Mum N and me all had pretty rubbish birthdays in January and February, Mum C had offered to take us out for a meal to belatedly celebrate them and the good news from earlier this week.
So we took her up on this offer and threw in a run in the car as well.
There was a 'window in the weather' so at about 4pm on Saturday, we set off for Eyemouth. As usual though, we took a fairly tortuous route via Carfraemill, Coldstream, across the border to Etal before heading north to Eyemouth via Chirnside.
Etal was good - Tillside CC were playing cricket and the pitch there has a perfect setting.
And the meal out?
- A sit in fish tea at Giacopazzi's. Easily the best chippy on the south Forth coast.
We more or less came straight home after that with the exception of a slight detour to St. Abbs and then Pease Bay.
Everybody had a great time - another success.

I'm assuming the good news from Tuesday has sunk in by now but strangely there's still no feeling of real elation. Maybe it's for the best.
As Kipling once said:
"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same . . . .
. . . . Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it".

Then he went off to make some exceedingly good cakes.
Talented man, Mr Kipling.

Rain, Rain go to Spain

What bright spark called the Cabbage White Butterfly the Cabbage White Butterfly?
Why didn't they call them the Japanese Knotweed Butterfly?
Or the Jaggy Nettle Butterfly?
Or the Dock Leaf Butterfly?
That way, instead of ravaging my cabbages, they might go and eat some of the weeds in the garden.
Everything else in the garden in rosy though.
Except for the roses. They've been battered by the daily monsoons.
Why isn't Global Warming called Global Soaking?
Next year, I think I'll try growing rice.

Time to book a holiday, I think.

The Day After the Day Before - 2

I'm still numb and I'm still stunned. And I still can't quite believe it.

I feel great though.

Looking back and remembering the cough, the weight loss, the CT scan, the bad news, the blood tests and transfusions, the inhalation treatment, the chemo, the burning face, the canulas, getting home but having to go back in and worst of all - the fear . . . . it all seems so far away.

I also have to remember the good bits - old pals geitting in touch, the support from family and friends, the good people you meet, the good people who treat you, the gifts and cards, the good news and getting to be Jan's 'Website of the Day'!

It's very surreal but it's real.

We did it!

Well done us.

The immediate plan is to go back to clinic in two months - just to see the Doc to let him check me over and get the usual blood tests. Then, in about six months, I'll get another CT scan.

I expect that'll involve more nervous waiting and stuff but for now, let's start living.

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An Amazing Day

The waiting area at WGH is very quiet. It's lunchtime and it seems to be the time between the morning and afternoon clinics - we're early and the girls on reception are still on their lunch. So we wait. We're good at waiting. Well, practice makes perfect.
Eventually, I get weighed - 83.9kg - exactly the same as the last time that I was there. Okay - I know it's too heavy but it's better than the 68.9kg it was a few months ago!
Then it's the obligatory blood sample, then through to the final waiting area. And we wait.
Not for very long though - Dr Davies calls us in even before I'm half way through the crossword.
Will he have a "good news & bad news" technique?
Nope - there's no need.
He calmly says - "There's good news. Your PET scan was clear".

How are you supposed to react to that?
There are probably no rules but for what it's worth, I shook, tried hard and in vain to hold back tears, looked at the Doc in disbelief, looked at Liesl to check that I'd heard right and wondered how this could be?
My PET scan was clear.
Six months to the day after a doctor had stood at the end of my bed and told me that I had cancer, another doctor is sitting across a desk from me and is telling me that I no longer have cancer. Each piece of news is equally hard to believe. Each piece of news is equally frank. Today's piece of news is something else though. It's amazing. It's truly amazing.
It's hard to speak and find the words to say thanks and to ask Dr Davies to pass on my thanks to Dr Farquharson when he sees her.
Dr Farquharson, you're the best.

So we leave - thinking about clicking our heels but realising we're too tired and drained for that.
There's a call to make before we leave the hospital though. To Shelagh. She was first to be called with the bad news in January so it's only right that she's first to be called with the good news today. And she's as pleased as we are - it's great to see her running along the corridor from her office and that's when I realise what it's going to mean to everybody. It's amazing. Have I said that?

Most, or probably all, families get hit with cancer at sometime or another but I think ours has been hit harder than most over the years. When it's an older person then I suppose you've got to take it on the chin but we've lost too many that were around the same age as me or even much younger. So for Chrissie, Pauline, Nan, Charlie, Nessie, Moira and many others who were all part of Team Craig, I hope, for the moment at least, that I've got one back.

The calls and messages go out. To Mum Naismyth, Shona, Eleanor & Andrew, Moira & Jack, Greg, Karlynn & Iain - and the reactions are just the same. It's brilliant news.
No call or message to Mum though - we'll go in to tell her.
And she's overwhelmed when we get there. It's been a crap week for her so far but this has lifted the gloom just a bit. It's amazing.

Tonight, we went to the Golf Inn for a celebratory meal - Liesl had liver. How ironic is that?
I have to admit that I feel a bit flat. I don't know why because I know that I should be looping the loop and I'm sure I will tomorrow. Today's been a day to remember. In fact, it's been six months to remember.
The jokes will return tomorrow but for now my PET scan was clear.
The non-hodgkin's lymphoma has gone.

And it's amazing.

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It's in the Post

If truth be told, I was hoping that Dr Davies would have called me with the scan result sometime on Friday but realistically I thought it would have been today. However, it's a well known fact that like watched kettles that never boil, watched mobile phones never ring.
So I admit that I was more than a bit surprised when there was a letter waiting for me when I got home tonight (been at a rugby committee meeting) asking me to come to a clinic at 13:30 tomorrow. This would normally be ok news but there's no doubt that I feared the worst. My thinking was that as he had said he would phone me, I was guessing that's what he would have done if he had good news for me. As he wanted to see me face to face, well . . . . . .
Maybe I'm thinking too much. Maybe my glass is half empty!

One more night of waiting but I don't feel like going to work tomorrow - maybe I'll work from home for two hours.

Breaker Breaker One Nine - Do You Copy?

Here we go then. I’m petless as I pitch up for the PET scan, so it’ll have to be me. As suspected, it’s a mobile scanner housed in the back of a lorry parked in one of the back car parks at WGH. The reception area (in the building) is not exactly salubrious either and I have to interrupt the guy as he eats into his micro-waved curry. Maybe he passes it through the scanner to heat it up? If I were him, I’d be making sure that I had a good look at the pictures to see what was in it. It looked to me as if it had more than lymphoma!
After the customary questions, it was into the truck. The two men in control were more technicians than nurses. In fact, one of them was more like a trucker than a technician.
It’s a strange place. A wee area at the front where the computer screens are, two beds up the left hand side (a sort of ‘drawer’ pulls out from the side of the lorry to give the extra room) and the scanning loops are down the middle.
As Trucker 1 (Rubber Duck) showed me in, he suddenly realised that Trucker 2 (Pig Pen) was depositing a spent nuclear fuel rod into a lead lined bucket and I had to hurry past to the safety of the I.T. section. Once the Geiger count had subsided I went back to get a needle in my arm before being shown to the bedrooms. Rubber Duck explained that when he came back he would work very fast to minimise his exposure to the ‘stuff’, and sure enough, he soon returned with a wee metal box from which he took an impressive looking steel syringe and scooted the sugary, syrupy isotope into my arm.
It was all very James Bondesque:
“Do you expect me to talk, Rubber Duck?”
“No, Mr Craig, I expect you to glow in the dark – hee hee hee!”
Then he was off – I’ve to lie down for an hour. No eating, chewing or talking on the phone. Just as well because I’ve no food or gum and my phone’s in the car.
10-4 good buddy!
True to his word, he was back in an hour. Time to go through the hoop(s).
It’s just like the CT scanner except that there’s two loops and this time my arms were held in place by my side so that I couldn’t move. You don’t have to hold your breath – that would be a bit impractical because it’s going to take half an hour. And off I go, back and forth a couple of times at first like a mechanic on one of those bogey things they use to get under cars. I expect this was just to get the aim and focus right and then it came to a standstill for four or five minutes before moving me up another two inches or so. This stop start pattern continued for the full half hour and all you have to do is keep concentrating to make sure you don’t move.
It was Pig Pen who came in to apologise for the fact that it was such a long scan (?) and that was it. I was shown out of the back door, tripped on the stairs and became something that fell off the back of a lorry.
I head for the interstate A1 towards Shaky Town – keeping an eye out for Fuzzboxes, knowing that another long, nervous wait over the weekend lies in store.

Stay tuned good Buddies. I’ll keep you posted.
Ten-Four and Out.