Unexpected consequences of being terminally ill - mainly, the number of "peak experiences" I've been enjoying

The first is that I don't appear to be at death's door quite yet. Yes, I'm distinctly thinner, weaker and I tire more rapidly than I used to - but I'm certainly no worse than I was when I left hospital last September (or was it August?). I had expected to be bedbound by now, at the very least - but while I'm pretty much housebound, I've only failed to get out of bed and get dressed on a handful of occasions so far. I know I'm tempting fate even mentioning this - I don't in the least take it for granted and I know it can't last much longer - but I'm immensely grateful for being allowed to maintain a semi-normal existence for this long. The other thing - and the one that I really wasn't expecting - is the number of moments...

Latest health bulletin: fizzy drink are good for you - and when the NHS works, it's brilliant!

In order to still speculation by the international news media, here's where I'm currently at, health-wise. My stay at the wonderful Meadow House Hospice in Ealing just before Christmas, and the scan at Ealing hospital on Christmas Eve, revealed that all my recent digestive problems were due to two strictures in my duodenum, resulting from...

A Merry Christmas to one and all! I'm at home for it - which I wasn't expecting to be. Hallelujah!

Sorry for the long silence, but my digestive system has been giving me a lot of gyp - to the extent that Christmas lunch will consist of a bowl of clear soup, an unbuttered slice of cracker bread, and a small dollop of vanilla ice-cream, all to be eaten  v  e  r  y    v  e  r  y    s  l  o  w  l  y. Yum yum! Still, at least I'm home with my family, which I didn't expect to be. For the past few days I've been enjoying the hospitality of the Meadow House Hospice, attached to the unlovely Ealing Hospital, and was expecting to stay there for the rest of this week...but that all changed yesterday, because a CT scan which hadn't been expected to take place until after Christmas happened pretty much out of the blue yesterday afternoon...

Another health bulletin: the good news is that I won't be losing my hair! (And who is/was Garry Weston?)

Three weeks' ago, I had my first appointment with the oncologists at Hammersmith Hospital, where my wife and I learned that my inoperable pancreatic cancer meant that, without any form of intervention, I wouldn't be around to celebrate Christmas next year. A number of options were mentioned - one clinical trial involving chemotherapy and a series of endoscopic procedures during which the tumour would be "burned", another trial involving heavy duty chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and a standard course of weekly chemotherapy over several months. Last week, I returned to the hospital for a scan and a blood test, and this Thursday - having finally steeled myself to read all the literature they'd handed me on my first visit - I had separate chats with a surgeon involved in the trials, my oncology nurse, and my oncologist...

Health news update: Oh, bugger!

I feel a bit self-important posting all this information in a public space, but I'm so knackered, it would take me ages to email everyone who's been in touch individually. I had my first appointment with the oncologists at Hammersmith Hospital. My wife was with me, thank God, because the whole process took over three hours, there was so much stuff to take in that I'm sure I'd only have remembered a fraction of it if she hadn't noted down the key points - and I was so whacked after the first two hours that, if it hadn't been for Mrs. G, I'd probably still be slumped in a seat in one of the hospital waiting-areas trying to summon up enough energy to get home. Here, for those of you who are interested, is where I'm at:

I don't know about the rest of the NHS, but Hammersmith Hospital has improved beyond recognition since the late '80s

I experienced two week-long stays at Hammersmith Hospital about 30 years ago, both as a result of  attacks of acute pancreatitis. I'd suffered at least six previous attacks over a number of years, but a variety of GPs had misdiagnosed every damned one of them, whereas the Irish nurse who collected me from reception on my first hospital visit simply asked me where the pain was and immediately said, "Oh, that'll be pancreatitis". My experiences of Hammersmith back then were so depressing, I've always dreaded the thought of having to go back to hospital for an extended stay. On both occasions, I was stuck in an enormous, positively Dickensian, dormitory-style ward with between 25 and 30 other patients...

Health bulletin - the good news and the bad news

Recap: I'd been feeling ill since the 20th July, with stomach pains, exhaustion, weird-coloured, dayglo wee the consistency of treacle, weight loss, itchiness, fever etc. Around the start of August I began turning yellow. After a week or so, when the colour intensified and it became obvious I had more than "a touch of jaundice" my wife booked a same-day appointment for me with my GP, who wasn't entirely convinced, but ordered blood tests to check out my liver functions and, in particular, the level of billirubin in my system. (Billy Rubin sounds like a Western gunslinger, but is in fact an orange-yellow waste product of haemoglobin which the liver is supposed to process and which causes jaundice if unprocessed.) A phlebotomist took blood samples a week later, and I got a call from the surgery the next day asking me to come in as a matter of urgency - my liver functions were all over the place, and my billirubin levels were so high they hadn't been able to register a reliable reading. Go to hospital at once...

Apologies for my prolonged absence from this blog - heat, health and deadlines are to blame

I had a deadline brought forward on me two weeks ago, which resulted in spending three oppressively hot days slogging away at a review (see previous post) in my sweat-box of a study at the top of the house. As a result, I got to experience first-hand the delights of serious chronic fatigue, as opposed to the  relatively moderate version I normally suffer from: instead of waking up with only 25% of my normal energy supply, I was waking up with between 1% and 5%: one morning it took me almost an hour to summon sufficient oomph just to get out of bed (a common enough problem at university, I remember, but I'm now 65 and retired and I actually like getting out of bed). After a few days...

If Jean-Claude Juncker stumbles because of sciatica, why doesn't he use sticks?

I've suffered bouts of sciatica over the years, and...

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - I've tried the NHS, and now it's back to the drawing board

Dr James Le Fanu's column in yesterday's Telegraph caught my attention. It started with the question: "When the findings of an authoritative scientific study into the efficacy of some treatment appear to be contrary to the experience of at least some of those taking it, which is likely to be more reliable?" Le Fanu then cites two examples, the first of which is a study whose results were published in the Lancet in 2011, which essentially viewed CFS as a psychological condition, and "found" that 60% of sufferers would benefit from a mixture of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and graded exercise therapy (i.e. a steady increase in the amount of exercise undertaken by patients) - and 20% would be cured outright. The NHS developed a course of treatment for CFS patients based on these findings. The only problem is that the Lancet (or PACE) trial has since been exposed...

SHUT UP!!! Okay, I admit it - other people's noise drives me nuts

Ever since my mid-twenties, I've been annoyed by other people's noise to such an extent that I could probably be described as mildly phonophobic or misophonic, i.e. certain noises in certain situations trigger an instant, almost overwhelming "fight or flight" response - if I can't make it stop, I have to escape it. The effect is so powerful, that it has, over the years, become what Jung termed a "complex" - i.e. a separate personality which temporarily takes over from the normally placid, easy-going, fun-loving, tolerant "real me".  It's different from the anger I feel when someone insults, cheats or threatens me or a member of my family (admittedly an extremely rare occurrence): this tends to evoke a rather icy, controlled sort of rage, whereas the anger produced in me by certain types or noise is very hot - I imagine it's akin to road rage...

I used to imagine "fat lip" was something you got in a fight or an accident - I've recently learned otherwise

Some time between Christmas lunch and a late night turkey sandwich, I became aware of a bump on the inside of my lower lip. Although the skin wasn't broken, I assumed I'd bitten down on it earlier while negotiating a chipolata or a spoonful of Christmas pudding. But a cursory examination revealed that the skin wasn't broken, and by 3am the whole of my lower lip was very red and absolutely enormous - it looked like it had been turned inside out.  It wasn't painful, but slightly worried I'd developed some form of irreversible elephantiasis, I checked online and discovered that I was suffering from a condition known as "fat lip".  The only remedies...

Definitive proof that the NHS can help you lose weight!

The good news is that I've lost 11lb. in just a few days! The bad news is I've done so by adopting the tried and tested "puke your guts up" crash diet. On Wednesday, I had a hospital appointment with a physiotherapist, as part of my CFS clinic programme. It went well - he was kind enough to say that, given my existing daily routine of walks and stretching exercises, I was already half-way there. He made a number of suggestions, showed me some new exercises, and another appointment was arranged for next month. My wife had been kind enough to drive me to the hospital and wait to take me home again (there is literally no way of reaching Hillingdon Hospital by public transport, and finding a parking space in any of its four car parks is virtually impossible). I got into the car feeling quite pleased with myself...but then complained of a sensation of "tightness" in my stomach...

"And the light shineth in darkness..." - me and my splendid new Serious Reader bedside light

On 19th December I posted what I described as "one long whine" about my worsening insomnia, and how my body seemed determined to keep me up all night by piling one distracting annoyance on top of another - itchy legs, stomach pains, restless legs etc. Yesterday, I woke up around 10.30am, having gone to sleep at around 2.45am. The previous day, I'd woken up just after 10am, having gone to sleep at around 2.30am. After rummaging through my memory banks, I realised that I'd been to sleep before 3am every single night since... well, Christmas Day. Now, with CFS, symptoms come and go: as one recedes, another reappears - either as a single spy or in a battalion. But as I haven't managed to fall asleep by 3am for two weeks in a row for at least two-and-a-half years, and as no new symptoms (or old favourites) have appeared to replace this one, I began to wonder what had changed since Christmas Day...and a lightbulb went on in my head.

Sleep Wars: me v. my body - I think the body's winning

WARNING: What follows is one long whine, which I suspect will only be of interest to anyone suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or insomnia... or both.

I had a chat with a long-term CFS/ME sufferer earlier this year, during which he showed me his Fitbit phone app, tracking his sleep patterns for the previous week. He hadn't once fallen asleep before 10 o'clock in the morning, hadn't had any deep sleep on most nights, and hadn't had any sleep at all during the hours of darkness. For the past four years, my body has been trying to turn my night into day - i.e. it wants me to sleep during the day and be awake all night. As I've always been an owl rather than a lark, the temptation to give in has been powerful, but I've just about managed to resist - my body and I reached an accommodation whereby I got to sleep between 3 and 4 AM (usually nearer 4 than 3) and woke up no later than 11AM. Not ideal, but bearable.That all changed...

Did "Marathon Man" put people off going to the dentist?

WARNING: while this scene doesn't include the most gruesome bits of dental torture from Marathon Man, viewers of a nervous disposition may find it upsetting:

It gets a lot worse. Nevertheless, rumour has it that the "Is it safe?" sequence had to be severely...

A neighbouring council has allegedly spent £55,000 a head on getting 21 smokers to quit!

The above figures come from a fascinating article, Council anti-smoking campaigns are an expensive failure,  by Harry Phibbs, published on Conservative Home yesterday. The council in question is Hammersmith & Fulham, and their grotesque squandering of the Public Health Budget - which comes from general taxation rather than the rates - should be enough to make anyone, whatever their political leanings, weep with frustration. Ultimately, that represents £1.2m taken from the private sector (where all the tax ultimately comes from - the tax paid by public sector workers was taken from the private sector in the first place) to help a handful of nicotine addicts who could have visited either Totally Wicked or Shop E-Cigarette on King Street and...

News headline: Big Man Fall Over, Nothing Breaks!

No, that isn't news, I know - but it happened to me yesterday evening around 8.30. I was about to head upstairs to fetch some Piriton for someone being driven mad by itchy Greek insect bites, when one of my wide-fitting size 13s had a run-in with a dining-table chair, and I proceeded to go spectacularly arse-over-tip. I ended up sprawled on the carpet, gabbling "I'm all right, I'm all right", because I was embarrassed at doing something so old-blokeish. Despite weighing somewhere around 17st. 4lbs and hitting the ground pretty hard, all I appear to have suffered is a sprained wrist - and, luckily, it's the left wrist: hurts like hell, but I can waggle my fingers, so it's unlikely that anything's broken. I could have...

Enchroma glasses: what it feels like to discover you're not in Kansas any more...

Enchroma glasses don't work for everyone who is colour-blind, but the profusion of YouTube videos showing people...

What is your "right" weight? The NHS thinks I should look like a famine victim.

I went for my annual diabetic check-up a few weeks ago. The good news (for me, at least) is that my Type II diabetes is under control. The bad news is that I'm between five and six stone overweight (that's 70 - 85lb. for American readers, and roughly 35-42Kgs for Remainers). I stand just under 6'5" tall, and, while I'm not built like a second-row forward, I'm no beanpole with disproportionately long, matchstick legs - finding trousers long enough is never a problem, but finding shirts that stick in my waistband for more than two minutes at a time definitely is. So I'm naturally a large man. When the nurse told me that, in effect, I was morbidly obese, I was so convinced that she'd made a mistake, I insisted on her showing me the NHS's "ideal weight" figures on the computer screen she was gazing at. No mistake. I informed her that...