Journal for Monday 29th November
Comically bad start to the week. It was time for my CT Scan this morning. For the first time since the diagnosis I had to drink the contrast fluid before the scan which is done over an hour between arrival and scanning, but I was promptly and very violently sick about three-quarters of the way through bucket of fluid presented to me. I told the staff, who just went ahead and did the scan immediately. Bearing in mind they can see on monitor screens whether or not there is sufficient contrast it makes you wonder if the fluid (or that much fluid) really is necessary or not. I see the consultant on December 7th.
Tuesday 30th November
Brrr. It's very cold outside.
I spent a good part of the day "virtually" attending the Social Recruiting Conference. A conference that actually eats it's own dog food in the sense that being all about social media it makes effective use of social media tools to reach out beyond the audience of people able to attend the conference in person. A really well organised event from what I could see on the streaming video, kudos to Social Recruiter of Crexia and to Alan Whitford of RCEuro. The main takeaways from the presentations I saw was "finally" some case studies about the ROI of using social media in recruitment....
(1) 65% of EA Games hires globally come through Social Media
(2) SAB MIller has saved between £1.2-£1.8m through direct sourcing with social media
(3) At Deloitte NL, 3 people hired directly via Twitter in one year and 18 via Linkedin. Aim to be first organisation in Netherlands to kill use of job boards.
I originally missed the following point but picked it up from Doug Shaw's blog feedback...
(4) Cummins has been using social recruiting, they have reduced cost per hire from £6k to £1.5k and reduced the time to fill a vacancy from 14 weeks to 7.
I didn't make it all the way through till the end of the day; so I am sad that I didn't get to see Bill Boorman on the closing panel but I understand there is a boxset of CD's being made available for purchase sometime soon. I'm pretty sure details will be available at the RCEuro website (www.rceuro.com). I'm looking forward to reading some of the blog output from today too.
Am taking a fair amount of "extra" morphine to control aches and pains and to enable a restful nights sleep. Am sure that it's probably contributing to stomach problems but it's difficult to find an acceptable balance... very difficult.
Wednesday 1st December
Feels like I am on the countdown to Christmas already. I guess the good news is that without chemotherapy I would not have lived to see Christmas this year. I now fully intend to see Christmas next year too.
We put our Christmas tree up today. The house looks great and ready for Christmas... I even like what my girlfriend calls the Christmas "tat". I suspect the house is more ready for Christmas than we are.
Thursday 2nd December
It's five weeks since my last chemotherapy. Mentally I am turning the corner, at least I'm fairly sure that this is the case. Physically I'm nowhere. My taste buds are not back but I can sense that they are still coming back, almost day by day. The vomiting has eased off but not gone. Unfortunately it's making me gun shy with food a little in the sense that I worry about what my stomach can and can't handle much more than normal. The fatigue is definitely the worst of my issues. I had a full on proper nap yesterday and also had my usual nodding off in the chair routine going the rest of the day. I was shattered when I went to bed just before 9pm. All I seem to do is sleep. That's really putting a dampener on what I am able to do. By now I was hoping to have had a day trip out to pop into work or something like that but there's no way right now I'm ready for that. By the time the journey there is done I will be wanting to sleep. At home I can do things in bursts, resting in between.
I have moved my journal from an app called Simplenote to Google Docs. In theory Google Docs has a bucketload of functionality compared to Simplenote, but the main reason is that in moving my journal from Simplenote to email I keep losing formatting and theoretically that won't happen going from one google product (docs) to another (gmail). I have the same access capability as Simplenote in that I can get synchronous access from all my web enabled devices i.e. iPad, iPhone and laptops.
We watched the Sorceror's Apprentice tonight. Cast led by Nicholas Cage, who can, in the right vehicle, be awesome, but in this he was just okay. This is a superb Disney story who do these family type films with great panash.
I have had the most awful late afternoon and evening with aches and pain. I have loaded up with Morpine and headed for bed.
Friday 2nd December
An exceptionally bad night marked by being woken up with aches several times. I spent an hour or so downstairs at one stage because I could not get comfortable in bed. Took yet more morphine to get the pain under control. Managed to use a bit of the time productively by beginning to put together a Christmas card list. I guess that is one thing there is kind of no reason not to be on top of this year, other than general procrastination, which has kicked in a bit I guess. The simple reason being that I am beginning to resent the dates that mark the passage of time for the obvious reason that each marker brings "that date" closer, or at least the thoughts of "that date". I know that if I read back in my journal I went through post chemo pain before I bounced back and that is what I am experiencing now but it's slightly worse this time than last time and lasting longer. It has been mentioned that perhaps I should prepare my mind ready for feedback from my consultant, post CT scan, that my tumours have grown. As my girlfriend has said, that's not really the issue. The issue is how long a pain free period will I get and what is the quality of life I will have during that time.
Finally cleared level 1-12 of Angry Birds after weeks of failure. Finally gave in and looked up the solution on YouTube. There is a video that shows you exactly how to beat the level and get a high score. What did we used to do before we had the Internet as a resource for problem solving? Mind you, there would not have been Angry Birds either, so that's alright then, isn't it.
Saturday 3rd December
After a couple of rubbish days I seem to have found a bit of energy today. It has been a couple of dreadful days and I can admit now that I was having some dark thoughts about what has been going on. It's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking any pain is the beginning of the end. That said, the pain has been hard to take, not especially in terms of depth of pain but the sheer persistence of it. It’s like a nagging toothache in the sense that it’s just there all of the time and it’s all that you can think of and there is no respite from it and you’d give anything for it to just stop and why is this happening to me. An incredibly difficult internal circular argument.
The X Factor very hard to call tonight because performances are being affected by illness. I guess I haven’t changed my opinions about the top of the table and that really unfolds next week at the final. The issue is who is going home. My call would be Mary and Cher to be bottom two with Mary going home. I’d prefer Cher to go home but if the judges vote then they will keep Cher as the more likely to sell a few records to the record buying public.
Sunday 4th December
Started the morning off quite well, having slept well on the back of the extra morphine I took last night. Felt like I have some energy so pottered in the kitchen a bit. Had some cheese on toast as a late breakfast / early lunch and lo and behold was promptly and very violently very sick. Oh joy.
I refuse to let that stop me today. I must get out, get some fresh air and enjoy a bit of time away from the house. If willpower will make me feel better then I will feel better this coming week.
Just back from a good trip into Northampton. I feel better prepared for Christmas than I have in years in terms of things like Christmas Cards (all purchased and a list made, aim to write them this week) and Christmas presents (a few to get but almost done). I have never left it to the stage where I'm running round like an idiot on Christmas Eve (since making that mistake once in my 20's) but I'm way ahead of my usual performance. The Christmas Market, which is what had drawn us into town, was frankly awful but the High Street wasn't too busy so we managed a good stroll around and even a Costa Coffee stop. I used up the balance on my W H Smith gift card that the gang at work bought me on a couple of magazines, one on iPads and one on websites. I'm going to build a website again, something I haven't done since my first days on the net and I'd like to try again. I noted on the iPad mag was a pointer to the fact that iPad 2 was likely to be released in January. Given the way Apple works that won't be gospel and the specification of the new device won't be confirmed until Steve Jobs actually stands up and confirms when he performs the launch.
I've been Scobleized on twitter. In other words Robert is following me. Robert is my favourite technical guru / journalist and I've read his blog since his early days as an evangelist with Microsoft back in 2005. In those days I used the phrase "being Scobleized" to refer to the fact that Robert linked to your website or blog, as it brought a tidal wave of traffic from the other people following him. It was known to crash servers. Semi-scobleization was a mention on his link blog, which also brought traffic but not as much as a mention on his main blog. Twitter won't have the same impact given the follower / following model and being just one of the 20,000 or so that Robert already follows. I'll report back if that changes (current benchmark is that I have about 600 followers). For those who laughed at this paragraph, the equivalent in your world would be a mention in your favourite newspaper by your favourite journalist.
I don't say much in this diary in respect of my care but it's about time I mentioned my girlfriend and acknowledged the help and support that she gives me. We've only known each other just over a year and in that time we've gone through my diagnosis with cancer and the trauma of my divorce. All this pales into insignificance beside the trauma yet to come and I can only imagine what that is going to be like. It's bad enough having to be around when I suddenly need to be sick and to have to cope with the sight, sound and smell of that. Whilst that should get better in the short term it's only likely to get worse in time. She has been my absolute rock and I could not have asked for more in terms of my care. The logistics of being diagnosed with cancer are a nightmare. Consultant consultations, chemotherapy sessions, scans, GP consultations, medication regime, support group meetings all add up. Then add in all the things I am not able to do because of the fatigue or other impacts of either the cancer or the chemotherapy regime. I'm never going to able to properly express how much all this support means to me, but you can take it from me that it means the world. What has happened to me is scary. It would scare anybody. She has made the whole journey less scary. The phrase "For that I will be grateful to my dying day" actually means something real to me and has real applicability to my situation.
Finally, the right result from Strictly Come Dancing. I thought Ann was very gracious in defeat, well done to her. Given that the Strictly result is democratic to the extent that it's entirely driven by the audience vote then Ann had every right to hang in there and enjoy getting through despite the misgivings of the other participants. I guess the overarching issue is the extent to which the show is only a dancing competition or it's a dancing competition plus an entertainment and reality TV show in which popularity plays a part in the outcome. The biggest issue is the extent to which the people who believe it's purely dance don't accept the other factors. If they did you wouldn't, for example, get stories like those in today's papers suggesting that the remaining participants had put formal complaints to the BBC management.
More complaints reported in the papers today. This time it's the X Factor participants letting off steam about Cher and "what a little mare" she is. Actually these stories ring true, maybe not to the extent to which they were bigged up by the journalists, because in truth they validate something I have been figuring out for myself. Cher comes across potentially as nasty piece of work besides some of the other contestants past and present who have been such genuinely nice people. I hope Cher, therefore, doesn't make the final although I fear she might. My top three firms up therefore as Matt, Rebecca and One Direction. Tonight I'd like Cher to go, but it could well be Mary.
I guess I could see that coming. Simon voted for the artist he thinks might make money. I think he might live to regret that. Felt very sorry for Mary, she’s played her hand well and I, for one, wish her lots of luck.
Comically bad start to the week. It was time for my CT Scan this morning. For the first time since the diagnosis I had to drink the contrast fluid before the scan which is done over an hour between arrival and scanning, but I was promptly and very violently sick about three-quarters of the way through bucket of fluid presented to me. I told the staff, who just went ahead and did the scan immediately. Bearing in mind they can see on monitor screens whether or not there is sufficient contrast it makes you wonder if the fluid (or that much fluid) really is necessary or not. I see the consultant on December 7th.
Tuesday 30th November
Brrr. It's very cold outside.
I spent a good part of the day "virtually" attending the Social Recruiting Conference. A conference that actually eats it's own dog food in the sense that being all about social media it makes effective use of social media tools to reach out beyond the audience of people able to attend the conference in person. A really well organised event from what I could see on the streaming video, kudos to Social Recruiter of Crexia and to Alan Whitford of RCEuro. The main takeaways from the presentations I saw was "finally" some case studies about the ROI of using social media in recruitment....
(1) 65% of EA Games hires globally come through Social Media
(2) SAB MIller has saved between £1.2-£1.8m through direct sourcing with social media
(3) At Deloitte NL, 3 people hired directly via Twitter in one year and 18 via Linkedin. Aim to be first organisation in Netherlands to kill use of job boards.
I originally missed the following point but picked it up from Doug Shaw's blog feedback...
(4) Cummins has been using social recruiting, they have reduced cost per hire from £6k to £1.5k and reduced the time to fill a vacancy from 14 weeks to 7.
I didn't make it all the way through till the end of the day; so I am sad that I didn't get to see Bill Boorman on the closing panel but I understand there is a boxset of CD's being made available for purchase sometime soon. I'm pretty sure details will be available at the RCEuro website (www.rceuro.com). I'm looking forward to reading some of the blog output from today too.
Am taking a fair amount of "extra" morphine to control aches and pains and to enable a restful nights sleep. Am sure that it's probably contributing to stomach problems but it's difficult to find an acceptable balance... very difficult.
Wednesday 1st December
Feels like I am on the countdown to Christmas already. I guess the good news is that without chemotherapy I would not have lived to see Christmas this year. I now fully intend to see Christmas next year too.
We put our Christmas tree up today. The house looks great and ready for Christmas... I even like what my girlfriend calls the Christmas "tat". I suspect the house is more ready for Christmas than we are.
Thursday 2nd December
It's five weeks since my last chemotherapy. Mentally I am turning the corner, at least I'm fairly sure that this is the case. Physically I'm nowhere. My taste buds are not back but I can sense that they are still coming back, almost day by day. The vomiting has eased off but not gone. Unfortunately it's making me gun shy with food a little in the sense that I worry about what my stomach can and can't handle much more than normal. The fatigue is definitely the worst of my issues. I had a full on proper nap yesterday and also had my usual nodding off in the chair routine going the rest of the day. I was shattered when I went to bed just before 9pm. All I seem to do is sleep. That's really putting a dampener on what I am able to do. By now I was hoping to have had a day trip out to pop into work or something like that but there's no way right now I'm ready for that. By the time the journey there is done I will be wanting to sleep. At home I can do things in bursts, resting in between.
I have moved my journal from an app called Simplenote to Google Docs. In theory Google Docs has a bucketload of functionality compared to Simplenote, but the main reason is that in moving my journal from Simplenote to email I keep losing formatting and theoretically that won't happen going from one google product (docs) to another (gmail). I have the same access capability as Simplenote in that I can get synchronous access from all my web enabled devices i.e. iPad, iPhone and laptops.
We watched the Sorceror's Apprentice tonight. Cast led by Nicholas Cage, who can, in the right vehicle, be awesome, but in this he was just okay. This is a superb Disney story who do these family type films with great panash.
I have had the most awful late afternoon and evening with aches and pain. I have loaded up with Morpine and headed for bed.
Friday 2nd December
An exceptionally bad night marked by being woken up with aches several times. I spent an hour or so downstairs at one stage because I could not get comfortable in bed. Took yet more morphine to get the pain under control. Managed to use a bit of the time productively by beginning to put together a Christmas card list. I guess that is one thing there is kind of no reason not to be on top of this year, other than general procrastination, which has kicked in a bit I guess. The simple reason being that I am beginning to resent the dates that mark the passage of time for the obvious reason that each marker brings "that date" closer, or at least the thoughts of "that date". I know that if I read back in my journal I went through post chemo pain before I bounced back and that is what I am experiencing now but it's slightly worse this time than last time and lasting longer. It has been mentioned that perhaps I should prepare my mind ready for feedback from my consultant, post CT scan, that my tumours have grown. As my girlfriend has said, that's not really the issue. The issue is how long a pain free period will I get and what is the quality of life I will have during that time.
Finally cleared level 1-12 of Angry Birds after weeks of failure. Finally gave in and looked up the solution on YouTube. There is a video that shows you exactly how to beat the level and get a high score. What did we used to do before we had the Internet as a resource for problem solving? Mind you, there would not have been Angry Birds either, so that's alright then, isn't it.
Saturday 3rd December
After a couple of rubbish days I seem to have found a bit of energy today. It has been a couple of dreadful days and I can admit now that I was having some dark thoughts about what has been going on. It's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking any pain is the beginning of the end. That said, the pain has been hard to take, not especially in terms of depth of pain but the sheer persistence of it. It’s like a nagging toothache in the sense that it’s just there all of the time and it’s all that you can think of and there is no respite from it and you’d give anything for it to just stop and why is this happening to me. An incredibly difficult internal circular argument.
The X Factor very hard to call tonight because performances are being affected by illness. I guess I haven’t changed my opinions about the top of the table and that really unfolds next week at the final. The issue is who is going home. My call would be Mary and Cher to be bottom two with Mary going home. I’d prefer Cher to go home but if the judges vote then they will keep Cher as the more likely to sell a few records to the record buying public.
Sunday 4th December
Started the morning off quite well, having slept well on the back of the extra morphine I took last night. Felt like I have some energy so pottered in the kitchen a bit. Had some cheese on toast as a late breakfast / early lunch and lo and behold was promptly and very violently very sick. Oh joy.
I refuse to let that stop me today. I must get out, get some fresh air and enjoy a bit of time away from the house. If willpower will make me feel better then I will feel better this coming week.
Just back from a good trip into Northampton. I feel better prepared for Christmas than I have in years in terms of things like Christmas Cards (all purchased and a list made, aim to write them this week) and Christmas presents (a few to get but almost done). I have never left it to the stage where I'm running round like an idiot on Christmas Eve (since making that mistake once in my 20's) but I'm way ahead of my usual performance. The Christmas Market, which is what had drawn us into town, was frankly awful but the High Street wasn't too busy so we managed a good stroll around and even a Costa Coffee stop. I used up the balance on my W H Smith gift card that the gang at work bought me on a couple of magazines, one on iPads and one on websites. I'm going to build a website again, something I haven't done since my first days on the net and I'd like to try again. I noted on the iPad mag was a pointer to the fact that iPad 2 was likely to be released in January. Given the way Apple works that won't be gospel and the specification of the new device won't be confirmed until Steve Jobs actually stands up and confirms when he performs the launch.
I've been Scobleized on twitter. In other words Robert is following me. Robert is my favourite technical guru / journalist and I've read his blog since his early days as an evangelist with Microsoft back in 2005. In those days I used the phrase "being Scobleized" to refer to the fact that Robert linked to your website or blog, as it brought a tidal wave of traffic from the other people following him. It was known to crash servers. Semi-scobleization was a mention on his link blog, which also brought traffic but not as much as a mention on his main blog. Twitter won't have the same impact given the follower / following model and being just one of the 20,000 or so that Robert already follows. I'll report back if that changes (current benchmark is that I have about 600 followers). For those who laughed at this paragraph, the equivalent in your world would be a mention in your favourite newspaper by your favourite journalist.
I don't say much in this diary in respect of my care but it's about time I mentioned my girlfriend and acknowledged the help and support that she gives me. We've only known each other just over a year and in that time we've gone through my diagnosis with cancer and the trauma of my divorce. All this pales into insignificance beside the trauma yet to come and I can only imagine what that is going to be like. It's bad enough having to be around when I suddenly need to be sick and to have to cope with the sight, sound and smell of that. Whilst that should get better in the short term it's only likely to get worse in time. She has been my absolute rock and I could not have asked for more in terms of my care. The logistics of being diagnosed with cancer are a nightmare. Consultant consultations, chemotherapy sessions, scans, GP consultations, medication regime, support group meetings all add up. Then add in all the things I am not able to do because of the fatigue or other impacts of either the cancer or the chemotherapy regime. I'm never going to able to properly express how much all this support means to me, but you can take it from me that it means the world. What has happened to me is scary. It would scare anybody. She has made the whole journey less scary. The phrase "For that I will be grateful to my dying day" actually means something real to me and has real applicability to my situation.
Finally, the right result from Strictly Come Dancing. I thought Ann was very gracious in defeat, well done to her. Given that the Strictly result is democratic to the extent that it's entirely driven by the audience vote then Ann had every right to hang in there and enjoy getting through despite the misgivings of the other participants. I guess the overarching issue is the extent to which the show is only a dancing competition or it's a dancing competition plus an entertainment and reality TV show in which popularity plays a part in the outcome. The biggest issue is the extent to which the people who believe it's purely dance don't accept the other factors. If they did you wouldn't, for example, get stories like those in today's papers suggesting that the remaining participants had put formal complaints to the BBC management.
More complaints reported in the papers today. This time it's the X Factor participants letting off steam about Cher and "what a little mare" she is. Actually these stories ring true, maybe not to the extent to which they were bigged up by the journalists, because in truth they validate something I have been figuring out for myself. Cher comes across potentially as nasty piece of work besides some of the other contestants past and present who have been such genuinely nice people. I hope Cher, therefore, doesn't make the final although I fear she might. My top three firms up therefore as Matt, Rebecca and One Direction. Tonight I'd like Cher to go, but it could well be Mary.
I guess I could see that coming. Simon voted for the artist he thinks might make money. I think he might live to regret that. Felt very sorry for Mary, she’s played her hand well and I, for one, wish her lots of luck.
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