Eighty

Today is my 80th Birthday.

It's a Marmite Day. That is to say one either loves it or hates it.

A friend recently reached that age and refused to acknowledge it.

I want everyone to know and I shall be celebrating. Nothing extravagant: just coffee with friends in the morning at The Woodlands. In the evening Gaz and Carol are taking me and my sister-in-law (who is staying with me at the moment) out for dinner.

The reason I am celebrating is not just for myself but in thanks to our wonderful NHS without which I would not have lived much past my 16th birthday. At that age I had a disease that still kills people today. However by a stroke of good fortune I was referred to a specialist who (and there were long waiting lists for some operations even then) removed much of one of my diseased lungs.

Since then I've lived with cancer since my prostatectomy in 1997 because some cancer cells had already escaped elsewhere my body. However every time so far that the cancer has started to show signs of asserting itself the medics have found a way to stop it. The last, and currenet, treatment started about 7 or 8 years ago with a drugs trial which proved very successful for me.

I had a heart attack in 2000 and had 6 stents inserted.

I could go on but I think that's quite enough evidence to justify my grateful thanks for the wonderful people who work in our National Health Service.

Thank you one and all.

Thank You NHS

So far this year has been unlike any I can recall. It's the first year since I started blogging that I've been away from Blogland so frequently.

I lost my younger brother. I still keep wanting to send him wee messages about things and have to remind myself that he's no longer around to answer them. 

This week my son, Gaz, had his fiftieth birthday. What!! 

When one gets to one's eightieth year life should, in theory, be slowing down. In practice it seems to me that it's speeding up instead. The date of my birth seems further and further away on a daily basis.

All of a sudden things that I thought nothing about like climbing up ladders and wandering around roofs checking them have become things to either avoid or think very carefully about because my sense of balance isn't what it was. 

My electric foldable bike has suddenly become too heavy and cumbersome to fold and put in the back of my car. Indeed my balance riding it had become rather problematic too. 

I've suddenly realised that I'm no longer the spring chicken that I once was. 

Don't get me wrong I'm neither complaining nor being maudling. I'm intensely proud of the fact that this body I inhabit and which, but for the then newly formed NHS would never have got past its teens, has served me well and is continuing so to do.

Despite having cancer since my diagnosis and operation in 1997 I am still being treated successfully. Every 4 months now I get my uretic stent renewed. 

I have 5 or 6 stents in my heart since a heart attack in 2000. 

I had a new knee eight years ago and it is so good I usually forget that it's not the original. 

All this makes me realise that despite the underfunding and apparent attempts to privatise it and all the unfortunate hundreds of thousands of people waiting for appointments and treatment there are still millions of us who have benefitted hugely and who are still here to say 'Thank You' to the 1948 Labour Government which had the courage to establish it.

The Time of Life

I am very fortunate. I admit it and am happy to shout it from the rooftops.

I'm not too far off the respectable age of 80. I appreciate that a good few of my readers have reached even more respectable ages but there's still a few of you youngsters knocking about too.

Despite the fact that I've got more metal and plastic inside me than many people (and have lost more parts than many people too)  I am still fortunate enough to be able to lead a very full, active and very happy life. 

Since my partial lung removal at the age of 16 and many other life-saving procedures for cancer and its effects and life-enhancing things like a replacement knee (due to the fact that I was a fencer and fencing coach at one stage of my life) everything that has been done to me has been done by our National Health Service. 

I hate to even begin to think of the cost over the decades. 

Of course if I hadn't had my lung operation (and as it was very major surgery in 1960) I wouldn't have needed the NHS for the next 70+ years because I'd not have existed much after my 16th year.

I would not be surprised if the gross income and national insurance taxes I paid over my lifetime was a net loss to the economy (although it did help pay a lot of NHS wages!).

Despite everything we hear in the news every day of the appalling situation that our NHS finds itself in, the majority of us still are net beneficiaries of the service.

So the fact that the hospital (on the Mainland) has had to delay my uretic stent replacement because there are no beds available, did not stop immediate treatment on Saturday when I presented myself to A & E (Emergency Room) in Stornoway. Longer term readers of this blog will know that I've got an unfortunate tendency to develop sepsis (because of the uretic stent) and constant UTIs. That's what I thought was developing on Saturday. As it happens the sepsis hadn't got established and after lots of tests and treatment I was out later that day feeling great again having been told that I'd done exactly the right thing and made their job easier because the sepsis hadn't got established.

I have no idea what the solution is to the problems of our increasingly aging and sickening population requiring more and more treatment but it's not just money and nor is it wholesale privatisation.

The one thing I am absolutely certain about is that I, and my generation, have lived through the best of the times Britain has seen. I think that subject may be continued at some future blog date.

Disruption

I dislike disruption. I suppose that we all do. Midday Saturday and I'd just finished having coffee with a friend at The Woodlands. I'd been right as rain and twice as wet as the saying goes. I stood up and immediately felt the early signs of an onset of sepsis. I've had it so many times now that I'm pretty well attuned to the symptoms. It's just become part of normal life but it is disruptive because there is absolutely no knowing when it will strike. Anyway the Nurse Practitioner and Member of the Society of Master Bumjabbers had given me antibiotics to take should I be unable to get to an A & E (Emergency Room) in reasonable time. So I decided to try and stave it off at the pass and within half an hour of the onset I had taken my first tablet. 

I had friends coming for dinner for the Final of Strictly Come Dancing (good result but I did so want Anton and Emma to win) so decided to see how it went and rely on the oral antibiotics. The meal was already in the slow cooker (Moroccan Lamb if you're interested) so I went and had a sleep. I woke feeling quite reasonable so decided against A & E.

At 1.40 am I woke with rigours which were so bad I actually had difficulty phoning for an ambulance. Hospital. The usual cocktail of intravenous antibiotics. Brilliant care and attention (thank you once again NHS) and last night I was home again. Wabbit but well.

The disruption? Ah yes. Sunday had been allocated to getting my UK cards done. Monday was the day for icing the 5 Christmas cakes I still have to ice.

So now, after a fabulous and solid sleep, I'm playing catch-up. 

But first I have some Thank You notes to deliver.

Hopefully I'll get some blogs read this evening.

You Should see The Other Bloke

A couple of months ago I was diagnosed with a carcinoma on my nose and a melanoma or two on my forehead.  This morning the consultant surgeon who removed the squamous carcinoma on my neck four years ago removed the nose lump and grafted skin from my neck to repair the hole.  The amount of damage on my forehead was such that she removed various bits so that they could be sent to the pathologist for analysis. 

I have to say that the whole operation was quite amazing. I had read some while ago that the anaesthetising of the nose was a deeply unpleasant experience so, whilst I wasn't concerned about the operations themselves, I was dreading the anaesthetic. As it was there was less discomfort from that than from the average taking of blood from one's arm and, as you will know, that is a pretty okay event.  So all in all there was no pain or discomfort and I haven't even had to take a paracetamol since the anaesthetic wore off. 

The nursing care was a mixture of efficient professionalism, comforting reassurance and light-hearted banter helped by the fact that one of the nurses had looked after me when I had my first bout of sepsis. 

My plans to go South and stay with my brother and sister-in-law have been thrown into the dustbin because my stitches will not come out for two weeks by which time it will almost be time for my Cancer Trial Review in Glasgow.  So I have re-scheduled the visit to October when, hopefully, there will be no obstacles to a relaxing time away.

Anyway the Good News is that I've been told not to undertake any strenuous work for the next week or two. Seems a bit unnecessary to me but I'm not going to argue. Hopefully I will be spending more time sorting my photos and catching up in Blogland.

The National Health Service (NHS)

I wrote this a while ago.

On Friday I had my scans to see how my cancer was doing.

On Saturday I was called into the hospital because an eagle-eyed doctor had seen that my kidney stone had moved and was blocking the exit to my kidney.

On Sunday I had an ‘emergency’ procedure which was not successful (because of previous cancer operation damage).

On Monday I had a Nephrostomy.

On Tuesday I had a day of waiting.

On Wednesday morning I had an exploratory dye-scan and was discharged in the afternoon to come back another time for an operation.

That was 96 hours and four nights in hospital.

Four nights when I slept well.

96 hours when I didn’t have to think but had all the time in the world to think.

96 hours when the NHS looked after my every need.

96 hours when I observed hard-working dedicated staff at every skill level each doing their bit to provide a wonderful service.

96 hours when I had a lot of time to ponder on how darn lucky my generation has been with its free-at-point-of-delivery health service.

I do not have an extensive knowledge of the health services of other European countries and our press regularly says that the French and German services are superior to ours. They may be. We do not have a monopoly on being the best at everything.  

However one thing that my research has thrown up is that other countries which are held up as paragons to us have critics in their own countries just as we do.

I do know that in many countries I would have been dead in my teens because I had a disease that is often fatal today.  My parents could never have afforded the operation and treatment that I received.

So I, for one, have a great deal of praise for the NHS.