I’m still not 100% sure how I’m going to handle this, how much I’m going to talk about what’s going on, but for now this is up.

“When someone goes after you, the only way is to take the fight to them” – Sir Vivian Richards.

Not sure why I pulled out a Viv Richards quote, but it seems to fit after the last 72 hours. That time has been full of expletives, running around, discussions, emotions, distractions, planning, understanding, meetings, contemplation, talking, decisions and a few tears.

Everything has been so compressed, so sudden and once again first time I take a moment to breath I find friends have rallied round as soon as they heard. And they are being perfect. I’ll get onto what gets described as the tyranny of positive thinking at some other time, but once again I know I have the best friends and family there is.

The short version of events is this started about 6 weeks ago, it felt like an ear infection and I ignored it for a few days before finally going to me doctor. He looked in said “yep, text book ear infection” and prescribed some antibiotics and that was that.

The antibiotics did not do much over the next ten days, so he prescribed stronger ones and once again they did not do much. He referred me to the Ear-Nose-Throat specialist, and that appointment was Wednesday. The ENT looked in my ear, then stuck a probe up my nose and much to her credit kept a very professional bedside manner as she told me to wait while she arranged a CAT scan and MRI for Thursday morning and a follow up appointment on Friday.

Friday I arrived for my meeting to be introduced to a surgeon who asked me to sit down and immediately goes into how there is a growth behind my right ear that’s crushed the eardrum and has invaded the usually air-filled bone that makes up the base of my skull. He’s clear this is bad news and I suddenly want to throw up.

Over the next hour he talks me through the CAT scans and MRI. There are time I don’t understand what they are saying, there are othe moments when I’m just staring at the screen feeling numb. They answer my questions and then it comes to the $64,000 question we’ve both been skirting. What does it mean, and what are we going to do about it.

“The what does it mean?” part was easy, none of the three of us in the room had to say it, but he did anyway. The cancer is back, and it’s an aggressive one.

As for the second part, the “what are we going to do about it?” question, there was a moment of silence and he calmly said “We are going to shrink it, take the pressure off the brain and then we are going to cut it out.” Ever so matter-of-factly. I may go into the rest of that conversation another time, but I’m trying not to dwell on the cutting out part, that’s scaring the shit out me right now, by the current timetable it’s going to be sometime in late July.

I spent last night out with friends, they worked very hard at keeping me distracted and we ended up in Neumos in Seattle listening to Hells Belles, an all-girl AC/DC cover band who did a fine job in keeping me occupied and pretending everything was normal until late into the night.

This morning was another doctors appointment at UW, I’m not in the mood to go into that in detail, but the first round of chemo, oral this time, has been started and it looks like I can tolerate this OK. Which is good, as I’ve big plans for the next week that I really don’t want to break.

Again I will never be able to show my appreciation to the best group of friends anyone has ever had, how they were immediately there and understand the support I need by just calling to see if I’m OK rather than seeing it as a problem that’s there to be solved.

It’s ever so comfortable to have people I’ve known more than a decade just get how I am and what I need. The last three days have been brutal and I intend to write about a lot of that in some detail, but I believe in myself, in the team looking after me and maybe most importantly the people I choose to have in my life.

As I said at the beginning there has been a lot of tears and emotions, this is not straightforward, it’s been mis-diagnosed for approaching two months and this is a complication. It’s taken me a couple of hours to write this, I’ve stopped a number of times for little emotional breaks and I will get into the feelings and emotions behind those another time.

One of my friends this morning did suggest I name the tumour, and conveniently she had a name in mind for it. I’m not going to go into it here, but it’s not much of a surprise to people who know me. She finished the phone call by telling me to look forward to one day being able to say “X the bitch is gone!”

I’m open to suggestions about what it should be called; I really have the best people in my life.

I’ve not been posting so much of what I’d call heavy stuff over the last few months, there are a couple of reasons for that that I’ll get to. This weekend has sealed a few things for me. I spent some time with very old and close friends, people who tell me how thing are and don’t sugarcoat the bad, or play down the good. I feel privileged to have so many great people that I call my friends.

It’s clear that over the last couple of years I’ve been dealing with one of those hugely important moments that happen in life every now and again. In dealing with it I’ve not always been at my best and at times I’ve been somewhat self-destructive. But today I stand with my head held high, stronger, better prepared and happier than I have been for a very, very long time.

Looking at the birth or death of anything significant in my life, I think it’s the moments that lead up to these crisis points are harder than the actual passing through. I’ve come to learn a lot about myself, one of the things that surprised me is the need for a certain level of security. This is something I’ve really never understood before now.

I know people who crave control, they manipulate and bend the world around them to their will and the control that results is only illusionary. It’s something people set up for themselves, but in the end what is it? In reality it is nothing.

There have been a lot of interesting discussions about people needing that feeling of control and there are a number of threads that really resonated. People who seek that feeling, have that need typical believe their wants are not more important, but more right. It’s an interesting distinction.

These people do not trust or even particularly enjoy being with those around them. This is coming from a couple of professionals that understand this stuff way better then me.

I know he moment when it all became real for me, when I knew I had to walk. I left, I gave up and I’m not proud of that, but looking back it was the right thing to do.

In the last year I’ve discovered I have the most wonderful friends in the world, and I mean that quite literally. I have a terrific family and an extended circle of friends that is just incredible. I feel so rich, fortunate and at times humbled to have the people in my life that I do.

I’ve worked hard to be the person they deserve, and am conscious of that every day. This week I got affirmation that the work I’ve put in is making a difference. There have been some telling and important conversations, we are only as strong as the people we chose to have in our lives, and I’ve never felt more sure and stronger than I do today.

It’s stopped raining; it’s taken time, emotions and scouring deep down inside. The work is not over, but it’s stopped raining and the sun is coming out. I love my life, today and tomorrow is spectacular.

I’ve been making a lot of notes and doing a lot of writing for myself over the last few months and I’ve been trying to distill it down to a few points.

• You can walk away from the things, it’s tough to do, but it can be for the best.
• Inspiration comes from the strangest places; I’ve learned not to dismiss anything.
• You get to start over, you live with the consequences and that’s part of the choice.
• Life becomes simpler: I’ve learned that if I downsize the overhead, I leave more time for what’s important.
• “Less can be more” suddenly makes sense.
• I know the people that supported me when I needed it and really value what they did for me last fall and over the winter.
• It’s now possible to really understand what’s truly important in life after all.
• Surrounding myself with professionals to do what they do best takes worry away and replaces it with confidence.
• The more distance I’ve put between today and yesterday the clearer my mind has become.
• Change is good, not just in moderation, but in big important ways too. It’s scary, but exhilarating.
• Challenge inevitably follows change, and again it’s exciting.
• Being stretched forced me to grow in new ways, make discoveries about how good it can be.
• I’m not going to be a new person, that’s not real, but I can be the best Dave I know how to be.
• Every morning I wake up excited about the possibilities of today and tomorrow.

As for the big news, I’ve been approached to write a book based on my site and experiences, this is incredibly exciting and was completely unexpected. With work it’s going to be a year before anything is ready, it’s not something ever expected to have the opportunity to do. I know from the feedback that a lot of what I’ve had to say here has hit home with people while that’s never been my aim, this blog is way too selfish for that, I feel very humbled and at the same time validated.

For everyone who reads this, thank you from the bottom of my heart. It’s a community that’s helped and at times has been part of healing me. Thank you.

Yesterday I saw the A-Team movie (and admitting to it). It’s not exactly an intellectual challenge, but taken for what it is was a decent way to distract me for a couple of hours. The body count was not huge by Hollywood standards, but a couple of the bad guys met with some spectacularly violent ends.

I know in real life people die every day, go to any date in wikipedia and you’ll see a list of people that died in that year or on that day. It’s not personal,  it’s just a name and date. We can click on a link, perhaps dive a little deeper and find out a little more, but quickly we turn the page.

Occasionally it’s personal; maybe it’s a parent, a close friend, acquaintance or lover. It’s surreal, it’s an unchangeable fact and the ripples will be felt through the years on both special occasions and random days. Birthdays, anniversaries, mother’s day and days that mean something to only you.

Many years ago a very close friend Steve was killed in a car accident. Steve and I shared an office, we shared a room when traveling, competed again each other and were incredibly close. Over a couple of year period we spent a lot of time on the road for work and I spent more nights sharing a room with Steve than his wife did (which is an awful lot less George Michael than it sounds).

Steve’s death was as sudden as it was tragic. His wife was three months pregnant with their first child and I lost my closest friend and colleague. Every year at the end of May I spend a few minutes thinking about Steve, it’s the anniversary of his death and I remember.

At the time I acted as though nothing strange was happening, after all, the world was still turning. I busied myself in the office, stopped sharing a room while on the road for a while and pretended everything was normal. All this was done in a pointless attempt to blunt the pain. Even though that was 17 years ago now, I find it sad that I’m never going to get another Christmas card or his daughter Amy will ever know her father.

Grief is a strange thing. I find that it makes an appearance at odd times, little reminders cause it’s to catch me by surprise. I’ve said before when I call my parents house and dad answers he phone rather than mum. There are many others and while the immediacy of the grief goes away over time, it still makes it’s presence felt occasionally.

I remember the cards and flowers arriving at my parent’s house when mum passed, dad would spend a few minutes every day examining the cards. He liked, actually we all liked, being reminded that mum was missed by others and how we were in peoples thoughts.

Parents and grandmother, 1990ish

We were continuously asked if we were OK, this rhetorical question typically follows the “I’m so sorry” statement. Sometimes it was asked all by itself. I’ve never had any idea how to answer, Yes, No or Maybe? I typically tried for quiet dignity, some kind of affirmative I’m doing OK, and a thank you. Reality was “I am not okay, but I’d rather you did not ask”.

I’m not sure if it’s just part of being British and actually living the stiff-upper-lip stereotype, but it seems to be very difficult to admit admitting we are not doing well. I am not okay, but I’d rather you did not ask.

So when does it all start getting better, when does it all end? In my experience it doesn’t ever get better. It slowly gets more bearable and incrementally the bizarre feelings become somewhat normal. It’s never really over, but we learn to deal.

Everyone goes through it at some time and everyone deals with it differently. Afterwards life is never quite the same, but the world is still turning.

I have found that some gestures were incredibly meaningful on a personal level, it was less about how I felt, more about what I need or most importantly providing a distraction, that hopefully involved great beer or good wine. Here are some things that people have said to me that actually did help:

What do you need?
What can I do?
Here is food.
Here is wine.
Forget that, it’s taken care of.
We should go to the bookstore
The 3P’s has some good beer on nitro, lets go.
Wanna watch Star Wars
Come by the office; we’ll go for lunch.
Here is candy.
Why don’t you write about it?