An internal view

Today the postman came bearing a package marked private and confidential. I should have guessed what it was but the contents still took me by surprise. The CT scans and my final Xray came on three separate disks which also carries the viewing system allowing me to see sections of my body and move through it. Of course it's all in black and white and I haven't a clue what I'm looking at - but I'm impressed.

The final Xray I thought I'd share with you - probably quite against the rules and infringing copyright. But hey, it's my body so what the hell!

You can see the tremendous effort the remaining upper lung lobe is going to to occupy the available space and you can also see the staples - titanium I understand - which were used to staple up the various bronchial tubes which of course are now surplus to requirement.

A little white one

Well I was not wrong. Though my energy level is as high as ever, my Reiki practitioner explained that all but one of my chakras was blocked. I suspect that our whole family is suffering post-traumatic stress. It's going to take a long time and many tears before the loss of our lovely grandson ceases to be at the forefront of all our lives.

Yesterday we eat a family dinner all together and it's moments like that which are very important to all of us I think. It had its lighter moments, one of them being around deception. Earlier in the day four of us - three generations - had gone shopping. It's strange but I still don't feel right shopping on a Sunday; it's just that when I grew up you couldn't. Being in a rural area there simply were no shops whatsoever open on a Sunday.

Anyway, my crime yesterday was even worse than shopping on the Lord's Day - it was shopping at a certain supermarket that we love to hate. When the matter of what we had bought and where was raised later at dinner, the question was put to our seven year old granddaughter. Most amazingly she lied with the ease of a true professional con-woman. Not only that, but upon further quizzing by her mother (who was enjoying the joke enormously) as to which section the cream might have been located in that particular supermarket, the little star of dissemblance said quick as a flash: "milk and dairy".

Such accomplishment at such a young age. We did laugh. I remember a wise man telling me once that children are not civilised until they have learnt to lie politely, as in: "And how are you?" - "Very well, thank you."

Blocked channel maybe?

I remember hearing something on Radio 4 about dreams a while back; that you dream and work things out in your head about seven days after the event. I've been dreaming massively, not just last thing before I get up, but waking during the night due to cranial disturbance.

Maybe I'm slightly traumatised by recent events - it would be unsurprising if I wasn't - and yesterday I had an unmistakeable feeling of something not being right with me. At first I thought I might be sickening for another bout of vestibular neuritis where my balance is affected. It's something to do with the semi circular canals and the little hairs therein going awry. I used to suffer from it before I discovered my thyroid was playing up. But no, I don't think it's that. It's not anything I can really put my finger on; it's far more abstract, a sort of spiritual not-rightness - the antithesis of my usual (these days) right as rain and zooming along feeling.

I'm pretty sure I need another Reiki session and that something somewhere is blocked; some energy channel. So I've contacted my Reiki practitioner and I've booked for her to see me on Monday.

Busy, busy, busy

I'm just so busy at the moment; so much do do. We're about to fetch some damp proof membrane and four paving slabs from Travis Perkins and bed Franc the Van down in his winter quarters. It would have been lovely to have had another outing, but the weather's not so good now and we've just run out of time, so we'll tuck him up in his warm van blanket and empty all his tanks and wish him a happy winter.

Our daughter is much recovered and I see form her Facebook page that she did some retail therapy yesterday - which is a good sign.

Me? Well I'm now getting some of those strange nerve tweaks which I understand are what happens when nerves grow back. They are infrequent but just every now and then I feel a strange sharp tingle somewhere on my back or side.

I saw the GP on Monday and he has started the referral process for the ear, nose and throat consultant who will take a look at my thyroid. Using "Choose and Book" - yes, IT for the NHS really does work - I have secured myself an appointment in 60 days time. In the meantime I'm just going to forget all about it. I can't forget about the drugs though because the GP is relunctant to take me off the beta blocker and the asprin, although my heart has been in perfect order for the past month. He reckons while I'm still on track for potentially more treatment we should leave doses as they are. That's a nuisance as I think it restricts me a little, making me pause for breath when otherwise I wouldn't. Hey, ho, I'll just put up with it until November and then we'll see. It did occur to me that I could unilaterally stop taking the stuff and then I would remove from the GP the responsibility for the decision. I'm still thinking about that.

As I suspected

I received this morning the letter which follows an oncologist appointment. It is as I have always suspected: that I didn't have much cancer. My right and middle lung lobes - the ones I had removed - showed adenocarcinoma (a type of cancer that develops in the airways and is associated with cells that make phlegm) which was "very minimal, less than 5% of the lesion completely excised".

In other words the cancer in the lung itself was very small. I always thought this was the case because by the time I was starting chemotherapy my lungs had almost completely recovered their function and my coughing had stopped. It's quite nice to be proved right.

On a pertinent topic and one which has been in the news recently, about the standard of communication in the NHS of doctors without English as their first language, the medical secretary has for the third time (even after I pointed it out to her the first time!) typed "hyperthyroid" as opposed to what I am which is "hypothyroid". And* the pentultimate sentence of the letter lacks two words, one of which is a verb. Luckily the meaning is still clear.

*My late business partner said there were occasions where using "and" at the beginning of a sentence was OK - and he should know as he had a Cambridge MA in English. On this occasion the meaning is perfectly clear and as I'm talking in a style like normal speech, I feel I am entitled to break the rule.

A small ray of sunshine

The very small room in which our daughter has been incarcerated for the past four days was beginning to get her down. There's no TV there because of course it's not designed for anyone to stay very long, being on the labour ward. The arguments over blood chemistry continued into the morning but at lunchtime the consultant instructed that she be discharged on the grounds that she was much more likely to be relaxed at home than in hospital. I suppose where blood pressue is concerned this is a valid point.

So when I last saw her she was tucked up on her very own sofa in their very own house with her older sister drying her hair. Hopefully now the real recovery can start to take place.

Everywhere I went in the town that they lived I bumped into people either asking about my health or our daughter's. People are just so very kind; I know lots of you have have sent messages of condolence and support and we're all very grateful.

Reluctant but patient patient

Our poor darling daughter is still stuck in the local hospital while her iron levels very slowly improve. There appear to be quite a lot of different opinions about what do to with her and how to treat her. One advocates further blood transfusions and maybe IV iron, but all the time it must be referred to the haematologist. So she's still stuck in the labour ward, in a private room of course.

I know you're all thinking how dreadful that must be - hearing other mothers giving birth - but I understand there was even laughter in her room last night when a women was heard being particularly loud and opinionated during labour. Even when she hears babies crying, our daughter views that as very positive: "I know they're alive OK" she says.

Hopefully she'll be home tomorrow; fingers crossed.