Fully cooked - no more cancer boy !

As the title indicates I have now officially been fully cooked by my radiotherapy and my treatment for Hodgkins disease is finally, after six months, over ! :-))

It feels good just to write that.

I reality its all a bit of an anticlimax, I went in for my normal zapping and brought a nice big box of chocolate for the staff in the radiotherapy suite. They were pleased with the present and happy that my side effects, other than being a sleepyhead, are so small. We parted with the traditional "hope to not see you again" which is the happy ending greeting the staff all use for both chemo and radiotherapy patients. In reality one in ten of us which this disease will have to troop back into the game but we will not know who that is for about two years. For now we are cured unless someone tells us otherwise and plan to jump back into normal life with gusto, and a bit of a yawn occasionally.

Plans for gusto did not survive well today as I had to do the mundane stuff of picking up the kids who were playing at Jim and Sarahs. I did manage to pick up a cold bottle of bubbly on the way and Sarah and I opened it to celebrate the last treatment, Lee was at the airport picking up some friends from Brazil but phoned in to join the festivities and Jim came home from work just in time to raise a glass. Lee is off entertaining tonight as her big conference is winding up and we have a bunch of the great and the good over for dinner tomorrow so in an interesting role reversal I will be executive's wife for the day cooking (in between sleeps and looking after the childeren who I will press gang into setting the table and helping with the cooking).

So tonight I am sitting on the couch with Poppy, Lucy and Holly watching the "princess diaries" and doing my blog on the laptop - content domestic bliss actually, which I am sure I will miss once I get back into the swing of things at work. They seem to have stacked up a raft of nasty problems for me on my "return" (though as one colleague said - I never really went away) which will keep me going for at least six months to get things back on the even keel that I have taken a bit for granted over the last few years but which unravelled surprisingly quickly once I was out of the line.

So the next two weeks I am regarding as holiday, the consultant said my fatigue should peak around 7 days after the end of the treatment and then slowly get better over about a month, though I am on the robust side as far as my response to the treatment went - I just hope my cancer is not as robust as me !

The first part of the holiday I will take the kids to Donegal with Mum to her holiday house there, hopefully the weather will hold and we will enjoy days on the beach building sand castles, playing football and even the occasional swim. We will set off on saturday and meet most of my family in Bangor before heading to Donegal which will be great fun, we will try to organise a family dinner together. Lee unfortunatly will be stuck back here running her conference ( I have been fielding calls from the local and national papers all week as they are running publicity articles in the science sections of the papers and sunday magazines)

Once we get back then Poppy has a sailing course and I have a bunch of projects (including the much delayed back axel which is still sitting in bits on the floor of the garage) to finish in order to be ready for the building work on the house which starts on the 21st of August. Hopefully we will have on more weekend at the campsite in Aberdeen before we take the tent down for another year.

I will not be blogging when I am in Donegal so I will probably make possibily a final entry or two into the blog to outline how the recovery and the first few weeks in work goes before shutting it down hopefully not to need it again.

For now I would really like to thank all the friends, family and colleagues who have supported us through this whole experience and made what could have been a very difficult time actually a very fulfilling one. Your practicle help, cover in work, friendship, support, humour and taking us away from the grind have been wonderful and inspiring for me. Thank you all very very much you really made a difference, I hope I can be there for you all as much as you have been there for me and the family.

When I look back at this experience I would never wish it on anyone, specially at the start when we thought it was a 50/50 deal ( the odds for the most common types of lymphoma), looking at your childern and your wife and thinking "crap I probably only have a few years left" is not a good experience for anyone at any age. However having lived through the ups and downs and so far being one of the lucky ones, which has its own guilt edge attached having met many who did or will not make it, I can say that the experience will have changed me at a very fundamental level. I feel much less inclined to anger or annoyance, have more time and tolerance for people, and get less stressed about the normal "crises" of work and life. Lets hope I can hold on to that perspective when I am back in the flow of work and normal life, this can be a great learning experience if I am smart enough to learn and act on the lessons.

So back to the couch, the princess diaries, chocolates and childern curled up together, what could be better.....

Cheers and thanks


Gerry