Graeme Smith 1968-2013

Graeme Smith died peacefully at home on Sunday, June 30. You can still donate to his fundraising page for the Beatson Cancer Centre. He is much missed by his wife Clare, his family, friends and his many readers.

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

I'm keeping out of supermarkets. Two quid for a bag for life? If I'm going to spend that kind of money on a plastic carrier, I expect it to last past the autumn.

I've just been cheated enough. Of about 40 or 50 years. And I want it back.

I went to see the nice oncologists at Glasgow's Beatson cancer centre on Tuesday, hoping for my next bumper bag of harsh chemicals to keep the evil twisted part of my DNA which keeps trying to eat my brain in check. Instead I found out that the chemo hasn't been working. Despite a successful second operation in January, the poison pills have failed to stop whatever was left from growing another head and I have a recurrence roughly the size of a Brazil nut.

It seems I may only have three to four months to live.

I would turn 45 this year. Given my generation, my social background and the relative longevity of my family, I was expecting to see my 90s.

I had plans: I wanted to be a published author; I wanted to be a dad; I wanted to grow old with Clare; I wanted us both to travel more extensively than we have. I'd even have quite liked to have finished learning to play the guitar properly. Circumstance is such a swindler.

It isn't fair. But of course it's not – fairness and justice are human

constructs, they don't exist in nature. I can ask the ridiculous question "why me?", but I already know the answer is "why not?"

Not that I believe there's anything to ask the question of, other than the logic and intellect we have evolved. And my lack of faith is a comfort. I'm not afraid of death. It's merely oblivion. There was a time before I was here, and I didn't suffer then. The religious have the foolish idea of vengeful gods and devils to terrify them through such dark times. I may have to eventually succumb to this terrible disease, but I will not succumb to the virus of faith.

I have some time left, and I will make the most of it. Of course I'm afraid of dying, but of the process, not the aftermath. Cancer death can be so cruel and undignified. At least with glioblastoma it seems that there is no pain, no suffocation on pneumonia, no dwindling out of personality into dementia. Eventually the tumour fatigue takes hold and you simply sleep it away. But until then, I fully intend to enjoy myself as much as I can. I will remain me until the end, and I will not waste that time on self-pity and fear. And I will fight with every resource at my disposal. I have a strong mind, and I'm not planning on going anywhere gently.

I have one more chemo option left to me. The prognosis of 12 to 16 weeks is without treatment other than the steroids which keep the effects of swelling under control and keep me feeling relatively well, but I also have the opportunity to spend a night plugged into a drip at the Beatson every three weeks for the foreseeable. That's pretty frequent given the timescales we're talking about and will leave me a bit gubbed for a couple of days each time. But in exchange for that, I get about a 10% chance of doubling the existing estimate.

There's a quality of life judgement to be made there, balancing a little short-term time I can be making the most of against not-very-good odds of slightly longer-term time during which I might not feel exactly lovely, but of which I can also try to make the most.  But I'm a fighter.

So I'm fighting for as much good time as I can get.

As part of that, Clare and I are currently enjoying a weekend break in the Lakes, something we like to do around this time of year. It's lovely here, and they have nice food and beer.

So, making the most of it. I just wish I wasn't also carrying about this poison sac of bereavement and anger in my lower gut. It's heavy and hurts, and gets in the way of my Good Time. Still, I just need to fight that, too.

I'll work out how I do that as soon as  I can.

Just getting my act together

Well, I've been off the chemocoaster for over a week now, and I'm starting to return to something approaching normal.

I can't say it has been one of my better fortnights, though. When I last left you I was beginning the 10-day cycle, and it seemed to be going not too badly. The dietary restrictions – quite a lot of the fun stuff, including alcohol, particularly red wine – weren't proving too much of a problem as long as I was careful. I didn't have much appetite anyway, and the anti-emetics seemed to keep the expected nausea under control. But there was little I could do about the exhaustion – this particular type of daily poisoning, Procarbazine, seems to be particularly draining. By the time the cycle finished on February 15, there had been whole days in which I'd been capable of little but sleeping – although I'd had some good days, too, including one in which my mate Dave ran me up to Balmaha for a nice plain cheese-and-alcohol-free pub lunch and I had a burst of unexpected energy.

I've been trying to replicate that over the last week, slowly recovering my energy and taking the odd trip out, and I'm getting there. Even went out to a concert last Thursday, and I was out for dinner on Saturday. So it's coming together,

The next cycle is in mid-March, and I'm hoping it will go more easily, not least because I'll be back at work by that time, and I don't really want to take any more time off. I'm sick of sitting about – I've had more rolling news than even I can take – I'm completely bored with the Pope, Oscar Pistorius, the Huhnes, and horsemeat. There must be something else happening in the world, a spot of light middle-eastern shelling for instance. I need to get to work.

Which I do on Monday, by which time my eyesight – which had been deteriorating because of the effects of the steroids on my eye muscles – should be up to some long-term screen use. I'm now on a self-reducing dose on the steroids, and it seems to be having a positive effect. I can focus much better, and reading is a lot easier.

In the meantime, I've got nearly a week to pull myself together. With my eyesight and the tiredness under control, it should all be pretty positive.

Which is the point. It's OK to be tired. It's OK not do stuff because I can't see properly. These are just symptoms, like the itchy swelling I still have around my wound which, combined with the baldy patch last year's regular cranial zappings left me, gives me a haircut I like to think of as the Half Black Adder.

Symptoms are there to be endured (ideally, worked around) until they go away, and they will. In the meantime, I'll just get on with things. Even if people are looking at the side of my head like I've just been let out for the day.

It's the best thing to do – life's too short for whining.

Back on the chemocoaster...

There are better ways to keep yourself occupied than being sick and tired. But it's something to do.

I started my new chemo regime this week and, to be honest, it's not too bad. Now the surgery is out of the way and I'm a lot better after it, it was obviously time for me to have something else to keep me feeling a bit crap. And so I'm back for a wee whirl on the Chemocoaster here in the Tumourland Fun Park.

I've been on worse rides. As with last year's Temozolomide regime, I get to take my chemo at home in capsule format, which seems so much less unpleasant than for those with other cancers who need to go to hospital to sit for hours with a venom sac attached to a vein as its contents drain a trail of burning destruction into their circulation. True, I don't feel exactly lovely, and there is a bit of a balancing act to be done to keep the contents of my stomach on the inside, but this is so much kinder.

The particular flavours of chemo I'm getting this time make up a combination treatment under which two separate harsh chemicals gang up to give whatever remains of the tumoury stuff a tanking, and stop it growing back. I assume one of them holds its arms. Since my blood tests were all OK, I kicked off on Tuesday as planned with an evening pile of capsules containing a drug called Lomustine which is taken as a one-off at the start of the cycle. That went without incident, and I got a perfectly good night's sleep, so Wednesday took me into phase two, fun with Procarbazine. This one I need to take daily for ten days and that, frankly, is a bugger, since it seems to be unable to play nicely with any of my favourite foods, not to mention a few others I don't even normally eat, just for good measure. So, no alcohol, particularly red wine, no cheese, no patés, no meats prepared with cures, smoking or marinades, no yeast extracts (which rules out a lot of gravies and sauces, apparently), no bananas or avocados, and quite a few other things TBC apparently – the list seems to vary from source to source.

I found one on Wednesday, I think, when reckoning that a wee ham omelette would be a carefully light lunch, I found that the apparently uncured and guaranteed allegen-free ham definitely had something else in it. Cue 12 hours of stomach pain. I felt much better at 2am on Thursday when I was eventually violently sick. At least that was some 18 hours after my last round of chemo, so I didn't lose any of that, which is the main concern with all this.

Thursday and today, however, went pretty well. Each day began with a cheeky wee early-morning anti-emetic, a half-hour wait for that to kick in, a handful of Procarbazine capsules, a wait for an hour or so to make sure that had all settled, then my usual Losec and Keppra and dex regime. Then a wee treat in the shape of some toast. It's been a gastronomic journey.

My stomach feels more than a little sensitive, but it's not too bad. And I had a pretty good dinner tonight – woo for lamb chops! With luck things are normalising, as long as I'm careful. I hope so, I've got a week of this still to go.

Still, it's only for ten days every six weeks and, as with the Temozolomide, once I'm used to it I should be able to go to work through the cycles.

What's more, tomorrow I get to try a different anti-emetic. There is no end to this adventure.

People try to put us down... Just because we're still around…

Well, not me, I thought as I parted with the best part of £160 this morning to watch a pair of septuagenarians rattle through a 40-year-old album. Whatever The Who may have sung back in the 60s; given my current condition, the sentiment "Hope I die before I get old" isn't one I'm massively keen on these days.

Anyway, My Generation isn't on Quadrophenia, the album/rock opera the surviving half of the one-time loudest band in the world are touring when they come round in June. And as far as I'm concerned, they can skip it from the hits selection they're planning for the end. Unless they're planning on changing the words to "Look, I got old and haven't died!".

Lumpy brain notwithstanding, I'm planning on lasting at least as long as Townshend and Daltrey have, and ideally a great deal longer.

The last thing I'm going to do is die.

Although if I'd had access to anyone in authority at TicketSoup, the SECC's ticketing service, during the booking process for this show, the early expiration wouldn't have been mine. What a mess!

My first shot was yesterday for their "pre-sale" system, which didn't seem to work at all at first. Despite an early start at the recommended 9am, I was over an hour in an apparent queue facing dire warnings not to refresh the page or face losing my place. A place I'm pretty sure I never had. Eventually I had to leave it to go to the doctor's, but four hours later I looked in again just to see the same page with its useless spinning logo and no information.  Later still I tried again and this time it did make me an offer, but of what appeared to be not very good seats (although still at the full price of £70 a shot) so I gave up to try again during the general public sales this morning.

Again, I went for it at 9am, and this time I was offered seats which became magically unavailable three times mid-transaction, until I ended up with something similar to the ones I balked at last night.

What a disaster area: websites aren't supposed to keep changing their minds. Online booking has taken most of the sting out of getting tickets for big gigs these days: you pretty much get them or not, all the nonsense of queuing or hanging about on phone lines is supposed to be behind us. The big agencies cope with it all the time – is this the best Glasgow's own TicketSoup can do? There's no excuse. If they haven't got the server capacity, they shouldn't be in the game.

At least I got my seats - my sister nearly didn't at all. Eventually she was stuck with single seats in different blocks, despite being offered and then arbitrarily refused pairs in other places on several occasions, just like I was. She couldn't get the pre-sale thing to work at all.

I can't help feeling that the SECC and TicketSoup should be refunding their obscene £8.40 booking fee per ticket to each and every customer they messed about today and yesterday – it's hard to see what service they've provided for it. If they can't get the servers in place, they shouldn't have the cheek to take people's money.

I mean, £70 a ticket is steep enough, but adding on TicketSoup's pound of flesh plus their cheekily inflated postage fee, I expect a seat on the edge of the stage and a lift home in Roger Daltrey's Range Rover with a trout supper from one of his fish farms, thanks.

Still, on the bright side, it's given me something other than cancer to rant about here for a bit. And now, at least with my tickets booked, I can look comfortably forward to seeing Pete 'n Rog creaking across the stage on June 12 and settle back down to the Recuperation-Go-Round here in the Tumourland Fun Park.

Which is going well, thanks for asking. That's two weeks today since they let me out of hospital and – boredom and tiredness aside – I'm not feeling too bad.

The stitches came out without incident last week, and the wound is well-healed, nice and clean and infection-free. It does still look a bit swollen and sound a bit squelchy, but my GP tells me that's fine. I've also had my steroids cut down to a relatively low dose, which I'm pleased about, given how unpleasant I found the high doses this time round.

There are still some other side-effects: dexamethasone seems to come with a whole package of 'em - there are some here on Wikipedia, but I'm not sure this is even the full set. You might remember that around this time last year I was singing the praises of the Joy of Dex in this blog. Well, not so much now, I have to say. I don't doubt it's an amazing drug, but I'll be delighted to be off it as soon as I can.

The worst just now has been the effect it has on my eyesight – I go through periods where things just seem to go quite out of focus, pretty much as if I'd taken my specs off, and others of odd photosensitivity, where I feel I'm either lurching about in the dark, or quite dim lights seem very bright. All of which makes reading, from paper or a screen, quite tricky at times. Which is a bugger given what I do for a living, and is also why it's been a bit since I've updated this blog. Still, I'm told that's temporary, and it does seem to have been better over the last couple of days.

The other side-effect which seems to be clearing up is an occasional intense pain in the muscles and joints of my legs, which has given me a couple of nights of really terrible sleep. It doesn't seem to be in a consistent place, and moves depending on my position, as if it's coming from my back. I'm hoping this one's just a side-effect – if it turns out I've got a bad back on top of brain cancer, I'm going to be very upset with someone. Probably George Osborne, since I'm fairly relentlessly furious with him anyway, and it would save effort.

Anyway, that's all stuff I will find out more about on Tuesday, which is my next oncology clinic, and also the day I find out what's happening with my new and exciting combination chemo, the one which will stop me enjoying red wine, cheese, and most of my other favourite things in what I suspect will be interminable-seeming 11-day cycles over the next few months.

Still, more on that next time – I'll keep you posted after my winey, cheesy weekend…

The Good, the Mad and the Ugly

Yes, I'm alive, thanks… just a little late. I've been home since Friday: lighter another chunk of brain but feeling pretty well on it; missing some hair and with the baldy patch tracked with some brutal-looking sutures to meet this season's trendy freshly-vivisectioned look, but I was never that lovely anyway.

So that's the Good and the Ugly. As for the Mad… well, we'll come to that. It's been a hell of a week, and hospital was harder to deal with this time for a number of reasons. It's good to be back here on my couch, tired but relieved.

Last year I was blithely blogging from my bed on the evening of operation day, which allowed me a certain professional smugness - reporting live from the field of war, all that stuff - and this year I'd planned to do much the same. 

And I nearly did. Tuesday, the day the actual cutting took place, went pretty well. 

I had a decent enough night's sleep, and it wasn't any surprise that at 6.30am I was being ordered both into the shower and into a charming little surgical combo of toeless anti-DVT stockings, backless hospital pattern-printed mini-dress, and a pretty much everything-less pair of what are euphemistically referred to as "modesty pants", but which fulfil neither part of their name well (if it hadn't been for the leg-holes, I'd have been inclined to put them on my head, and while I realise a paper shower cap would be a useless garment, even when applied to the right end these weren't far behind… not the roomiest fit I've had, they really weren't far behind).

But that was all OK, because it meant things were underway, so with this brief adventure in medical cross-dressing and a quick email-check done, I was all set and greeting Clare, who'd come in just in time to catch me being wheeled away to the recovery room for pre-op prep, much earlier than I'd expected.

As with last year, I don't remember much after that; there was a brief chat with the anaesthetist, a wee shot of his wares, a bit of a sore arm, and then nothing for four or five hours, by which time I didn't seem to have so much as moved. Obviously I'd been in an operating theatre and had some very intricate squelchy things done in my head, but as far as I was concerned I was in the same place as before but the anaesthetist was telling me it was now 1.20pm.  Pretty soon I was back in my room and Clare was in again to see me. At some point I also spoke to one of the surgeons who told me that the operation had gone very well, they'd grabbed 98% of what they were aiming for, and that was a very good result.

So Tuesday was a fairly full day, what with coming round, a Facebook and Twitter announcement along the lines of "surgery over, still alive, both 'woo!' and, indeed, 'yay!'", dinner (5pm is a big event in hospital), another visiting session over the early evening, a decatheterisation (much less eventful than last year's) and subsequent return to my feet (and to using the proper loo, also a major deal). Busy, really, but I did start to blog. Then midnight knocked on, and despite feeling that I'd been rattling away for some time, I'd only written something in the region of 160 words (the fashion show stuff above, pretty much), and I was feeling tired, so I thought, "well, I've done my bit for now – best I finish this tomorrow when I can make a better job of it."

And that was the plan. 

Until Wednesday happened. And so to the Mad...

If anyone ever offers you a night of sleep deprivation while on a massive dose of dexamethasone, topped off with an anaesthetic hangover and a dihydrocodeine hair of the dog, don't take it. I mean, do what you will in the spirit of experimentation and all that, but I really don't recommend it.

By lunchtime, twitching with steroid paranoia after a morning of fractured sleep peppered with bits of nurse chat from the desk outside my door as they dealt with at least half a dozen other people's emergencies, I'd invented my own MRSA outbreak. I had enough logic still about me to realise that since they still appeared to be checking people in and out and letting other patients wander down to the canteen, we probably weren't all crawling with antibiotic-resistant superbugs. But I still had to ask, and felt much better once the nice, if slightly concerned, nurse confirmed I was probably hallucinating on dex; I'd had steroid anxiety before, after all, so I knew the feeling, it was just that the previous occasions had been at home, milder, on a much lower dose, and without also inventing a major crisis in a busy hospital.

Still, she was soothing, so by the time my parents came in to visit me mid-afternoon I'd calmed down properly, not perhaps to my most lucid, but enough for them to go home apparently happy that I was fine, if a bit understandably woozy. Which was good, because not so long after they'd left came the teatime terror.

Alone again once more, I was now onto full-blown anxiety. At least this time I'd invented no little conspiracies, but that only helped a bit. In every other way, this was much worse because the panic was just so much more intense, yet utterly groundless: just the raw emotion with no underlying cause. That's horrible, not least because it's illogical. How can you tell yourself not to worry about something if there's nothing you're worried about?

Then the nice nurse came in to ask me how I felt.

Seconds after my slightly higher-pitched than normal response, "utterly and unaccountably anxious and tense", and possibly on sight of my white-knuckled grip of the sheets, she was on the edge of the bed gently listening to me explaining as measuredly as possible the unfounded nature of this blind, screaming panic, and that I knew it was the dex, but I couldn't bring myself down from it. Some more soothing words and a phonecall for pharmaceutical advice ensued, and diazepam appeared. And that, more or less, was that.

By the time Clare visited at 6.30pm, I was fine. Still a bit twitchy (although she says I looked like I'd had a terrible shock), but pleased to see her and feeling all right. Still, I didn't blog that day. It should be an internet rule – don't post while drunk, and don't blog while bonkers. It's for the best.

After a cut in my dex prescription, another wee diazepam around midnight and a unilateral decision from me that my choice of painkiller would from then be paracetamol rather than the DF118s (as dihydrocodeine is apparently known to the aficionado) which I felt were impairing my logic, I discovered that I could also now lie more-or-less flat without twanging the wound, and I had a great night's sleep.

By Thursday, I felt fine. It was a good day. Friday was better because they let me home a day earlier than expected. And I've felt pretty good since then too, thanks. The staples itch a bit, but I've had a pleasant, if inactive, weekend.

So you're getting this blog post now, in my own good time. Sorry, but there you go.

Anyway, thanks for all your kind messages of support; they're always appreciated, as are all comments left below.

And Happy Monday! I'm having one.

Remember, if you do want to follow me on twitter, look for @G_N_S

Here I go again...

So here I am once more… in hospital, awaiting surgery.

I've been here in the Southern General since this morning, during which time I've spoken to a couple of surgeons, an anaesthetist and at least one another doctor, and I've been scanned, examined, weighed (that was a bit scary) and had blood tests done.

Most of the time has just been spent sitting around, though. That's pretty much all I need to do, now.

Until the morning, when they'll be cutting my head open again.

That should go pretty much like last year. I won't be allowed to eat or drink from about midnight, and at some point in the morning I will be chemically knocked out and the cutting will commence. All I remember of last year's adventure is being taken to a prep room, having a needle put into my arm, told that the coming injection might be cold and a little painful, and then thinking, "oh, yes, that is a bit chilly… and a bit sore… actually, it's really becoming quite…" and then knowing nothing until four or five hours later when I woke up to see a nice man offering me morphine.

I'm expecting much the same this time. They'll be going in though the same hole, and ideally the same wound, too, so that's nice. No more bone cutting, all going well: just slice their way in through the scar, pop off the titanium plates or clips which are holding in the piece of skull which was jigsawed out a year ago, and commence the cerebral scrape. The aim is to get out as much new tumoury stuff as they can, ideally but not necessarily all of it, tidy round, get out and lock up. Last year I was back on my feet in hours (that delay mainly because I was still plumbed into a bag, and it's not really very amazing at all how that restricts your mobility) and I'm hoping for the same again.

I'm not getting to take part in the PARP inhibitor trial, as it turns out. Because of the procedures that govern medical trials there would have been a delay of perhaps six weeks to let me join that, and no-one, including me, seemed entirely happy with waiting that long before the scrape-out. So I'll miss the chance to help out with a science project, and be deprived of the comedic value of its name. But, never mind, I'll go for a Chinese meal when I get out and have prawn balls and squid rings instead. Even at 44, that still cheers me up.

Anyway, it was only a trial. The only people who really lose out are those running it, and they're my doctors and seemed pretty keen that I didn't wait. True, they lose some data, but there will  be more. From my perspective… well I'd liked to have helped, and it might have been a wee extra which might have helped me too, but it equally might have made no difference to me at all, and I probably wouldn't have known one way or the other. I'll get the gold standard treatment regardless – and that's tried and tested.

So now it's just after 9.30pm, I've just had some toast, I'm sipping a coffee, and that will probably be the last I'll have before the midnight fast. Apart from the fact that the hospital will ensure I stick to that, I wouldn't break it anyway – I've no desire to throw up into my own lungs while under anaesthetic.

After I've finished my coffee and this blog entry, I just have to wait, and later try to get some sleep. True, I'm a little anxious – after all, they are going to open my skull again, and they have really whacked up my dexamethasone pre-operation, which might not help in that respect – but I usually sleep well and I really have no reason to be concerned, so I'm not going to be. After all, I'm getting some of the best care in the world here.

The risks of second time surgery are higher than the first time in, but only very slightly. My attitude is that I've done all this before – and coped very well.

So, as Whitesnake sang, "Here I go again", except I plan to do it with less ridiculous hair. That's including after they've shaved up the right side of my head.

I should be going in mid-morning sometime, and that means I'll be awake for or during afternoon visiting hours and can come round to see Clare.

I'm looking forward to that.

Dex, more drugs, another hole…

Well, the same hole, really. It now seems the osseous trapdoor in the side of my head will be swung open once more to let some crack medical stormtroopers flush out some recalcitrant cells which have grown back after last year's drubbing.

Oddly enough, I feel pretty good about this.

It's not just the mood-enhancing effects of the dexamethasone (my steroid of choice). I'm over that now. But since I found out on Christmas Eve that this year's pressie was some new tumour (next year, a card will be fine, thanks) I've been aware there were different ways forward from this. Now, since I went back to the Beatson on Hogmanay for a long chat with one of my oncologists, it seems I'm in line for the best one. That's very encouraging.

The best route, it seems, would be surgery to hook out the new growth, preceded and followed by a new drug the Beatson is trialling (called a PARP inhibitor, which is funny in itself) plus a slightly different regime of the same chemo, Temozolomide.

This seems to be best because the bad stuff gets scraped out, the chemo is the kind I coped with well last year, but I get it for longer, and I get to do another medical trial, which won't interfere with the standard treatment but might well enhance it. PARP inhibitors have been used successfully against other cancers, and they've now proven that they can get into glioblastoma (something many drugs apparently find difficult) and the oncologists are "very excited" that they can do so effectively. I'll be one of the first to find out if they're right.

There is a big part of me which looks at stuff like this and breathes, "Oooh! Science!". When people with "ologist" in their job titles tell me they're "very excited" about a treatment I might get, I do have to slow myself down to make sure I read all the paperwork before signing it. It's not my fault, I'm a geek.

But, having done that now, the route it appears I'm likely to follow seems to be the best available. The trial might help me, but even if it doesn't, I still get the gold standard treatment and the data it provides should help others. Since I need treatment anyway, it's hard to see the downside.

Look at Cancer Research UK's new TV ad: Cancer has an enemy – research. (Oh aye, and me – and ye're pure claimed, ya malignant wee neoplasm, ye.)

So, yes, I am embracing the combatant metaphor pretty whole-heartedly: "Research has beaten polio, research has beaten smallpox, research is beating HIV. And, one day, research will beat cancer."

The other reason I felt so much better on leaving the Beatson on Monday was the length of time they took to explain it all to me. Despite it being Hogmanay, and despite the fact that he was undoubtedly busy, the oncologist took great care to explain as much of the detail and implications of what I'm facing to me, and to answer all the questions Clare and I had. Even when I pulled out my notebook full of them. Information is all, and that kind of care and attention from highly-trained specialists makes it all so much easier.

Next week I get a similar session with the neurosurgeon who will be going in (assuming he agrees to, and it looks like he's keen). I don't know the exact day yet, but I'll let you know how that goes. Then there will be scans, blood tests, a chest x-ray – all stuff I've had before – and a further clinic with the oncologists. Once that's all sorted out and everything's as hoped-for, we can get a date fixed and the cutting starts. Should be sometime this month. But, again, I've had brain surgery before, I remained a smart-arse, and I was back on my feet in hours. Sure, I'll be in hospital for a few days after that just to make sure I'm OK and nothing's running out my ears, but that's a good place to be in the circumstances – it's where all the doctors are, for one thing.

So I don't expect 2013 to be a particularly easy year. I'll be off work for a few weeks post-surgery, and the chemo is a bit debilitating, but that's mainly just fatigue, and I've coped with that pretty well in the past. I avoided the other major side-effect, which is nausea, and I imagine I'll do so again. But there's no radiotherapy to take this time since I've already had my maximum 60 gray (a gray being the SI unit of absorbed radiation, which doesn't come in shades and has nothing to do with handcuffs, and anyway, you get ten more) and that was the biggest exhauster. It shouldn't be any worse than 2012, and I dealt with that. Never bothered to read 50 Shades, though – life's really too short.

Right now I feel strong, healthy, and optimistic. There's good science out there to help me feel that way as much as possible.

So let's go.

If you'd like to help, please give a donation to the Beatson via my JustGiving page (there's also a puff you can click on at the top left of this blog). Or why not give something to Cancer Research UK and be cancer's enemy, too?

And now the Christmas comeback tour

Just in time for a happy holiday, on Monday I popped into the Beatson for my latest scan results. And, like a crap 80s band, it seems the tumour has been reforming for a bit of a Christmas comeback tour.

Not in a big way. Not with the full original line-up. But there's something there which wasn't when I had the last scan back in September. That's why I felt so tired for a few weeks there. It wasn't so terrible, but it left me unfocussed and too weary to work, although I felt better again once I was back on the steroids, and after I'd got over the highs and crashes they threw into the mix. I feel OK again now.

But my early unwelcome Christmas pressie from the oncologists was a shock. While I always knew a return was likely, I'd been hoping that because of my age and resilience it might be quite a bit away for a while. I'd been hoping for, pretty much expecting, a festive all-clear.

But no. So there we go. Something else to be dealt with. So let's get on with it.

I'll know soon how that will be done. So far, I know of some options.

The first is more surgery, the door in the side of my skull gets swung open once more and the Southern General's neurosurgical crack troops get in there and scrape out as much as possible of the new head that glioblastoma just loves to try to regrow, and maybe apply some chemo directly to my brain while they're in there. If surgery is possible, there will be a new flavour of chemo to follow and, if it's appropriate, I may also be given a trial drug which is currently being pioneered at the Beatson, and which they think is pretty effective. So that, I suppose, is the one to hope for. Get it out, get the surrounding area severely poisoned with as many harsh chemicals as it takes, and get on with things. It seems I'm good at coping with major surgery, so if that's the one, bring it on.

What I suppose is the next option to desire is the surgery and the chemo without the trial drug, if it's not appropriate for whatever reason. I don't yet know why it might not be, but I'll find out soon.

The other is that if the neurosurgeons feel they can't get the new stuff out without doing me too much damage, I go straight onto the new chemo regime. That one at the moment is my least favourite, simply because I can't help feeling "better out than in" (as Jo Brand said about Simon Cowell and a life raft).

Looks like the new chemo isn't much different in terms of side-effects to the Temozolomide: fatigue, possible nausea (and I escaped that one last time) and, rarely, actual sickness. Still just capsules to swallow, none of the long sessions plugged into a venom sac with hours of pain and illness that so many other cancer patients have to endure, so no biggie. This one will be, if I remember this correctly, on a two-monthly cycle rather than monthly, but each session will last eleven days rather than five, and there are some dietary restrictions – no alcohol, no cheese, and none of quite a few of my other favourite things. So that's a bit of a bugger, but just something else to put up with. And only during the eleven day cycle – for the rest of the time, I can carry on as normal.

So there are still treatments I can have, and good ones.

This Friday, the oncologists will meet with the neurosurgeons, and take a view on their approach. They've told me they'll give me a call once they've had that meeting and keep me updated. But I'll know everything on Monday (yep, Happy Hogmanay, Graeme) when I have to head back into the Beatson first thing for a full and frank chat about the whole thing. If they do go for surgery, I think it will happen pretty quickly after that.

This time I'll go prepared with more and better questions, too. On Christmas Eve I was a bit too shaken to ask everything I probably should, and my reporter's instincts to haul out the whole story deserted me a bit. I'll let you know more when I know myself.

Anyway, I got over that quickly enough. By the time I was on the bus home I'd converted the panic into fury, and that in turn to my usual equanimity. By the time I was home, I was ready to explain it all clearly and calmly to Clare. And she, my rock that she is, took the news with her usual incredible kindness and strength. She hadn't been able to come with me to the appointment for once – she'd had a dose of something, and while it might just have been something she ate, it's just not fair to take what could equally have been norovirus into a hospital full of sick, vulnerable people – but she still ran me up to my parents so I could let them know. And they took it with their usual support and calmness, too. They're good like that, we're a strong breed.

And, after all, there isn't so much to worry about. There are all those tried-and-tested, effective treatments to have. It's kind of like I've had my head MoT'd and they've found something which needs sorting, so I now need to pop it in for a service.

So, I'll cope with it. Just another battle to fight and win.

Christopher Hitchens wrote during his final illness that he wasn't fond of the combat metaphor so often used in dealing with cancer – everyone's always said to be fighting or battling it, while he said something about seeing it more as being under siege: "I am not fighting or battling cancer - it is fighting me".

He had a point, since there isn't much I can physically fight myself. But I have the best possible army of highly-trained specialists at the Beatson and the Southern General to fight my war for me. Which I know they will do to the best of their great abilities.

And anyway, there is a battle for me to fight. It's not one I've found too hard so far, and I'll keep it up: I will maintain my optimism and equanimity. I just will.

I won't be doing depression, because life is so precious that it would be almost criminal to waste it being miserable. And I won't be doing self-pity either, for the same reason. And just watch the news: there are so many people in the world facing terrible inevitabilities I will never have to, every day, and it would be self-indulgent – and not even in a good way, but in a destructive, wasteful one – to spend time on whining about myself. Better to watch, and understand, and feel compassion instead. Negative emotions are the things to be fought, and in my own mind I will be rising to the mountaintop, clad in anger, spitting iron and fire, to drive them away. And if I'm going to be self-indulgent, it'll be in enjoying myself when I get the chance. It is, as the song says, later than you think. (But not that late).

So, I had a lovely Christmas Day. Clare and I had a nice breakfast, and opened our presents, and then we went up to my mum and dad's, where we had an excellent feed and some very pleasant drinks, opened some more presents, gave others, chatted with the relatives, played with my sister's kids, and had a comfy, warm Christmas time. Then we came home and watched Doctor Who.

As good as it gets, all in.

Getting off the Information Overload

Here in the Tumourland Fun Park, there are many rides. Not all of them much fun.

The one which has occupied me most recently is The Big Dipper,  the rollercoaster while hurtles the lumpy thrill-seeker from the pits of fatigue to the peaks of steroid anxiety over and over again, by way of an afternoon's entertainment.

I've been off work for a couple of weeks playing on that one. I don't recommend it - it gives you all the low bits first, which is kind of rubbish, then a quick reintroduction of the old dexamethasone chucks in all the highs and subsequent plummets in quick succession: now I'm wired, now I'm tired, now I'm tense, now I'm knackered, now I'm anxious... woooargh!, throw hands in air, go for a wee nap. There are better ways to spend your time. One of my friends told me my last blog had a "great amphetamine flavour". It was intended as a compliment. but I've never had many aspirations to be Hunter S Thompson.

The other popular ride in the Tumourland Fun Park just now is the Information Overload. I've written about this before: it's the one where you get handed a huge tightly-wound tangle of difficult to process data and are somehow expected to unravel it for use; to work things out for yourself and explain them to other people without doing too much further damage in the process. That one's a real blast.

Just to make it a little more exciting, the Information Overload also throws in the internet and the press as an exciting twist. Then it spins you round and round until you're really very confused and quite dizzy.

The internet is one thing, uncurated as it is: if you must journey into its hinterlands, at least remember that you're also probably reading randomly, and check things out with a trusted source – don't just accept everything as if publication somehow bestows an equal value on it all. The news media, however, ought to be one of those trusted sources, providing its readers with reasoned, balanced analysis in easy-to-understand form.

It doesn't, though.

Take the case of Sally Roberts, who ran off with her seven-year-old son Neon (I know, I know) in order to prevent him receiving radiotherapy which medical opinion says he quickly and desperately needs, because she was frightened of its potential side-effects and wanted to investigate more "holistic" alternatives.

Although I think Roberts is a very silly woman, and I don't believe for a second she had the right to make that decision on behalf of her son, I have some sympathy for her insofar as I presume she is also very afraid, and very shaken around by the Information Overload.

Look at it this way…

Suppose you were presented (as I was) with radiotherapy as an option. And the doctors (ooh, suspicious, authority figures) explain that they've done years of research (ooh, scary difficult science funded by big evil companies and probably involving bunny-blinding) and they've worked out that it works very well (ooh, why isn't it perfect?) but there are some risks, some of them potentially quite nasty (ooh, scary, it'll happen, it'll happen, aargh!), but it's the best they've got, and actually very good for most people.

Supposing instead you were presented with… let's call it fluffytherapy, as another option. And the alternative therapist (ooh, alternative!) explains that after centuries of natural holistic chanting (ooh, natural, holistic!) done by some Amazonian tribesmen for no related purpose at all, they've just decided it works (ooh, just works!) and because it's never been tested but is quite possibly too ineffectual anyway it has no known side-effects (ooh, no side-effects!) and it smells quite nice (ooh, natural, therapeutic!) so it must be good for you.

And so the Information Overload spins the gullible, and even the not so gullible, around until they're too dizzy to get off on the side without the cliff. Did I mention the cliff? That's the third option, which is that the major side-effect of not taking the radiotherapy is death.

All that data, so much of it worthless, and no-one except for the medical establishment Roberts seems to regard with such suspicion to put it in perspective, to explain why the evidence supporting radiotherapy carries more weight than any supposed alternative. It's a shame that she sees them like that: they were very good to me - I had a meeting with an oncologist, a radiotherapist, a specialist nurse and others right back at the beginning, pretty much just so I could ask questions, and it was very useful even if I've barely stopped asking more since.

But maybe she needs another trusted source. Yet even in the quality papers, in the last week I have read columnists who instead of trying to analyse the situation have reinforced her silliness by wittering about how not enough consideration is given by doctors to parents' instincts, as if some vague feeling somehow has to be given equal weight to years of research and experience. Sure, doctors should take parents' feelings into account, insofar as they should be making sure that they understand why the recommended treatment is the recommended treatment, and not Hopi ear candling or whatever. But there the line is drawn - after that, parents have to realise that they have a responsibility to protect their children, not a right to endanger them. Some parents are full-body resurrectionists who want to prevent their sick kids from receiving blood transfusions, others think the vile practice of  female genital mutilation is in the best interests of their wee girls. Against hard evidence, instinct, belief and mere preference mean nothing at all.

So that was the quality press. Worse again, though, was the huge steaming turd of an article dumped by one of the mid-market tabloids on its readers, under the headline "Do Cancer Alternatives Really Work?".

I'm not going to link to it, because I don't want to encourage it. But, below the meaningless headline (what is a "cancer alternative"? – a new way in which our cells can explode into uncontrolled growth?) this piece of non-journalism used the Sally Roberts story as a run-in to a seemingly random selection of descriptions of supposedly alternative therapies, some of them quite dangerous in themselves, others inherently useless, but all potentially harmful if regarded as in any way alternative to the properly researched and continually developed treatments which we know work and are getting better. And so a British newspaper and its website managed to give apparent equal weight to the stupid and the real.

It's not unusual. The standard of health and science reporting in the country has long been appalling. Once again, I recommend Dr Ben Goldacre's insightful but also very funny book Bad Science for a well-written and clear take on this, and for some pretty shocking stories about so-called alternatives therapies, too. Why not try his new one, Bad Pharma, as well?

I also recommend the website Sense About Science, which aims to help us all decide what's real and what isn't when it comes to science and health. It claims a database of 5000 scientists from whom to draw, including Nobel Prize winners and famous names such as Dr Simon Singh. It also currently carries a corrected version of the tabloid piece I mentioned before, and I do encourage you to read that, because it manages to point out some dangers and clear up some misconceptions.

I'd also like to point to Sense About Science's excellent leaflet I Don't Know What To Believe. Please give it a read, and bear in mind its ideas when you read science and health stories. More so if you write them. It's nice and clear, even to us journalists, who were quite often the arty kids who weren't that good at sums.

It doesn't contain all the answers, but it makes getting off the Information Overload just a little bit easier.

This year's Dexmas season begins...

Just a year ago I was sitting in a bed in the Southern General's very fine neurosurgery department, bored and slightly bewildered  from a night rendered sleepless by general hospital racket, an octogenarian escape artist in and mostly out of the bed opposite and his nightwear, a 3am catheter removal, and regular unironic professional awakenings to check I was sleeping naturally and knew who the Prime Minister was.

Either through the sleep deprivation or some sort of morphine hangover, I felt particularly disinclined to open the second door on my advent calendar – the previous day's had been in the side of my head and the choccy had been horrible. But I otherwise felt pretty good, under the circumstances.

Now, exactly 12 months later, I feel pretty good again. Well, actually I feel slightly sick because one of the cats licked my hand while I was typing that last par and left a brown residue. Other than that, though, post shower I'm all right.

I haven't been feeling so good for the last couple of weeks, though. Not ill, but tired again. I was told that chemo fatigue could last for up to six months after I stopped popping the poison back in August, but it had calmed down a lot and I'd hardly had to take a day off since September. Yet just around the beginning of November it started to come back, and around a fortnight ago it got worse, this time with an exciting new edge of… well, a kind of low feeling (I'm hesitant to use the word "depression") which made the weariness just that bit more wearisome. I'd also had a weird set of intermittent allergy-like symptoms - sneezing, runny nose and congestion, but none of the other nasty cold stuff - for about six weeks, and the pressure in my sinuses was starting to give me headaches.

I'd been warned to watch out for headaches, but these were mild and passed quickly, so I wasn't concerned. I emailed The Beatson, but they didn't get back to me, so I assumed they weren't very concerned either. But I went to see my GP, who took some bloods, gave me an antihistamine, and signed me off for a week's rest.

Which I needed. I went in to work the next day because I had a meeting and wanted to make sure everything was set up for my absence, but I must have looked a bit unfocussed and was told to go home. I then spent the next few days flubbing around the place doing little more than eating or sleeping, with the cats watching me with a triumphant air, seemingly convinced they'd won the larger of the two feeding monkeys over to their ways. One of them also began to see me as a conveniently well-padded immobile warm thing on which to sleep, but that was OK because I was starting to regard her as a sort of personal furry draft excluder. For most of the past week I've slept the days away, and it has been chillier.

I don't really like sleeping during normal waking hours because it seems like a waste of precious, escaping time. There are also side-effects, one of which turned out to be further headache potential from failing to nod off in a comfortable position and waking up with a stiff neck until I could crack it out. Another turned out to be waking up and reaching for my Android tablet, only to find its black, shiny surface covered in sticky pucker marks, as if someone had been repeatedly kissing it. Well, I quite like it, but I'm not that taken with it. Seems one of the cats had been sitting on it. So that made me feel a bit unwell for a while.

At least the antihistamines had sorted out the sinuses. But I'd discovered the other ill-effect of daytime sleeping, which is letting broadcast media get too deeply into my psyche when I'm in a suggestible state.

As usual, I was starting my day with GMS on the radio for the Scottish news and an entertaining grumble at the presenters for not asking the questions I would have asked, followed by BBC Breakfast on the telly, which I watch largely because I feel slightly sorry for Bill Turnbull ( it's his wee face when he has the latest point-free celebrity talent-vacuum plonked in front of him for interview, and I feel I can almost read in his expression: "I used to report from The White House, you know", a sigh, and then, "never mind, just two and a half years to the next general election".) Problem was, though, that if I then fell asleep during Olly Murs or Joss Stone or whoever that morning's personality gap was, I'd be out until lunchtime, which meant I'd wake up irritatedly humming the theme from Bargain Hunt. 

At least, I think it was Bargain Hunt – it might have been Cash in the Attic, I'm not certain – the one presented by the slightly effete, mustached man who reminds me vaguely of Lenny the Lion. Actually, it might have been the theme from the one about the rescue helicopters instead. I really don't care much – it's just the start of the evidence that falling asleep in front of the telly just doesn't work for me in terms of relaxation but subconsciously adds to my inner pool of bile and spite. 

If I've managed to switch to a news channel and it's midweek during the day, I might just wake up shouting during PM or FM Qs, but if I've gone to Channel Four I might sleep all the way through Countdown and then wake up feeling hate-filled because Noel Edmonds has come on. Sleeping later is worse – I've been so tired that kipping off  mid-evening hasn't affected my night's sleep, but I have now found myself with a compulsion to enter Masterchef, not because I fancy my chances as a cook, but because I want to stand face-to-face with Greg Wallace and say, "right, baldy, you and me, car park, square go, now".

So, anyway, that was my pattern for last week – sleeping, despising… oh, and hoping for a virus. That was because the blood tests I'd had were for a viral cause for the tiredness, but also for diabetes, so a wee bug seemed like the far preferable option.

Then on Thursday I went back to the GP and it turned out I didn't have either of these things, so she gave me some antibiotics and signed me off for a further fortnight. Later on she phoned me to say she'd been in touch with The Beatson, who weren't terribly concerned but wanted me to go in for a scan ( I was due one soon anyway) and to start taking the steroids again.

It's a low dose – 2mg a day – but that's four times as much as I was taking when I came off them back in July. So I took that on Thursday afternoon, and took the same again on Friday morning, and by Friday mid-day I was ripped to the molars on dexamethasone and no longer doing the dinosaur after I'd hauled myself to my feet. Instead I almost skipped down the road for lunch, insofar as that is possible for an overweight, middle-aged Scottish man, and then felt a bit of a con as I emailed into the office to say I'd been signed off for another two weeks' rest. But I couldn't have gone in then – I'd have been unbearable. Anyway, once I'd finished my paper and got myself all worked up about Leveson I was exhausted again and had to go back for a bit of a sleep, from which I woke up hyper at teatime and chattered at Clare all evening. I thought I was being quite insightful and witty, and she rather charitably agreed when I checked, which suggests I was possibly also being slightly paranoid.

I've been much closer to normal levels of energy since, but there is still a slight steroid edge – looking over what I've scribbled here this morning,I can see it in my own writing. It doesn't exactly read like The Diary of a Drug Fiend, but it does read a little like The Blog of a Slightly Cynical Man who's had Too Much Coffee.

Under more normal circumstances I'd probably have left out the bits about the cat residue and Greg Wallace, for instance. But this is supposed to be an accurate record of what's going on for me as the cancer treatment proceeds, so here you go - you can keep the weird bits, too.

It's now Sunday evening, and I think I need a nap. By tomorrow, I think I'll be more used to the steroid again. I've been on higher doses before, and coped fine.

By then I'll be waiting for my MRI appointment, and then comes the scanxiety. More on that next time.

A new hope?

There isn’t a good place to get cancer (I really don’t recommend the head, for instance) but some are better than others.

For a while there, it looked like America was about to become one of the others. Again.

But the good guy won their weirdly complicated election, and although ObamaCare doesn’t really come close to our free-at-the-point-of-need NHS, it’s a step in the right direction, and it’ll be nice when it’s finished. It’s also a progression Mitt Romney had pledged to reverse, despite having introduced something similar in Massachusetts during his tenure as Governor there. Which seems odd, unless you uncharitably see Mitt as a spineless flip-flopper who only won the Republican candidacy over his more extreme (no, really) opponents because he dribbles less and can dress himself, but is nonetheless in thrall to the far right, which thinks ending ObamaCare is the right thing to do.

It’s odd that there are people in the world who think that it’s morally correct to deny people accessible healthcare. Apparently it’s to do with their right to choose. The choice between them paying a little less tax and someone else getting to live, I presume. Yay for civil liberties.

But that’s not a choice to be made for now, because Obama gets to keep the nice Washington mansion for another four years. Which is good: he must have just got the couch in front of the telly worked into his shape. That’s something to strive for, and it’s a terrible thing to deprive a man of his own properly-grooved sofa. Happily, Barack gets to watch his West Wing box-set in comfort, and US patients get an era of renewed hope.

Which is apt, because this is a hopeful week, running as it does towards Remembrance Sunday. Which should be a day of hope, each scarlet flower a symbol of optimism that the human species can renew itself after horror and will remember not to repeat the stupidity.

Of course, we don’t always remember. Which is why we need the reminder.

One spectacular example of forgetfulness recently came from our plate-faced pudding of a Prime Minister, who seems to think that despite the economy remaining in the toilet, a postal order for £50million would be just the ticket for a wizard wheeze marking the start of the Great War, to “capture our national spirit in every corner of the country”.

Right, Dave. Because the First World War was just like the Jubilee and the Olympics, which went awfully well. Let’s have another one! After all, we won, didn’t we? There must be some brand advantage in that.

Or you could just buy a bloody poppy. It would be a lot cheaper, and commemorate the end, not the start, of one of the least laudable periods in our history, when for complicated political reasons an almost entire generation of youth was encouraged to trot enthusiastically off to conveyor-belt death by disease, drowning in mud, and the exciting new inventions of chemical warfare and machine-gun fire.

It’s because of buffoons like the leader of the Eton Mess that poppy day is at all controversial, that white poppies become a popular alternative for those who wish to celebrate peace rather than war and others simply refuse to wear a poppy at all.

I appreciate that sentiment, but I don’t agree. Abandoning the symbol doesn’t help: we need to keep the red poppy, not as a celebration of war, but as a annually-renewed reminder of its bloody foolishness; of the needless, wasteful horror and terrible loss; that Dulce et Decorum est really is an old lie.

We need to keep that splash of blood with its blackened core, the gunshot wound worn above each of our hearts, centre stage amidst the military show of Armistice Day.

That’s our renewed hope. Every year. Sometimes, it even works.

Happy birthday to me...

My earliest memory, I believe, dates from 42 years ago today: November 2, 1970. It’s dark, I’m lying down and my father is bending over me, saying “and tomorrow you’ll be two”.

I think this is a true memory. I’ve always thought it to be so, and I seem to have recalled it many times throughout my life, particularly as my birthday approaches. But whether this has refreshed it, or merely rebuilt it and I just remember my own construct, I can’t be certain. According to Wikipedia’s entry on childhood amnesia (the phenomenon that adults cannot remember early childhood clearly), "memories from early childhood (around age two) are susceptible to false suggestion, making them less trustworthy". A bit like Wikipedia. 

I mentioned my memory to my dad some time ago and he doesn’t believe it happened, but that could be because he doesn’t believe I could remember it. I think it is more or less accurate, but I may have altered some details. I’m pretty convinced of the words spoken, but my father’s face is blurry – it’s undeniably him but I’ve no clear picture of him in his late 20s. Also, I think I’m in a bed, not a cot, and in my own bedroom: that’s dubious because of another early memory I have, of being just a little older and breaking out of my cot, which was in my parents’ bedroom.

That apparently quite regular escapade is still occasionally the subject of an amusing family anecdote, but I'm convinced of my memory of doing it because I remember what it felt like. One end of the cot was an integral blanket box, the outer face of which was a curved roller door. I remember clambering onto it from inside the cot and then the discomfort, the pressure on my ribs, as I spun myself round on my chest on its angular surface so I could slide down over the roller. It hurt, but not enough to stop me doing it over and over again. I think it would be hard to construct a memory of physical sensation like that.

And tomorrow I’ll be 44. How very middle-aged. Still, it’s fashionable to be middle-aged – everyone I was at school with is doing it, even the cool kids.

I’m not quite sure when you become middle-aged. Not halfway to three score years and ten, anyway – 35 is young these days, and counting anything by Biblical reference leads to nonsense about the Earth having yet to reach its 6000^th birthday and our ancestors having the opportunity to own pet stegosaurs. 

The generally-accepted gateway to middle age seems to be at 40, and that is closer to the halfway mark suggested by UK National Statistics, which is just about 80 (except for viewers in Scotland). So by that token, I have been middle-aged for four years, or ten per cent of my life. But these averages don’t really mean much, middle-age is more a matter of mind than of numbers. I think it happens when mortality first bites, at that point when our sense of invulnerability quietly slides away and we see the final curtain flapping in the wind, even if it is still some way away.

In my case, that was just about a year ago. In the run-up to my 43^rd birthday various doctors interviewed, examined and scanned me to ascertain why I had thrashed epileptically across the office floor at the start of October; a week later I went for my first MRI, and disturbingly quickly after that had what is probably still the worst day of my life so far - November 16, 2011 - when I woke up to a phone-call telling me my lovely wee Gran had died, and then went into hospital to learn that I probably had a brain tumour. 

Less than a week after that I was chatting with neurosurgeons who asked nicely if they could cut into the side of my head to check. And on December1, they did.

Just days before that operation I started this blog, so everything that followed - the whole unpleasant business of being told that I did have a tumour and it was likely to try to grow a new head, having to tell other people, and then the vaccines and radiation and chemo, the tiredness and sickness and hair-loss – have all been well documented.

So if you've read at least some of that, you'll realise that on the whole 43 hasn't been a great year for me. But while I hate to cast myself as relentlessly optimistic – I do like to examine all available silver linings for clouds – I can’t help seeing the upsides to this year: I married the love of my life, had a couple of great holidays, and my new-found sense of mortality reinforced my sense of how precious time is, which has given me greater ambition to do things for the fun, satisfaction or hell of them (more on that in later posts, perhaps).

And tomorrow, I’ll be 44. So tonight, Clare and I are off for some posh drinks and then a nice meal in a new and highly-recommended restaurant. Tomorrow, I will go out with my mates for some not-at-all posh drinks, some increasingly badly-focussed pool-playing, a curry, and further beerage to finish.

Wish me a happy birthday. And if you want to make it happier, click the donate puff at the top of the page and give The Beatson some money.

They’re the reason I’m feeling good and ready for another year, after all.

Enjoy yourself (It's later than you think)

Autumn was always my favourite time of year. Specifically now, mid-autumn, when Keats' mellow fruitfulness is coming into its own but we haven't quite got to the mists yet.

I should perhaps add that Keats' poem goes on to witter about bees for whom "summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells". I'm not keen on the image of clammy cells o'er-brimming at the moment; what with the brain cancer and everything, I feel there's been quite enough of that sort of thing going on.

Still, I like mid-autumn. I like the light and the colours and the smell of the season, and even though it's the time of year when things are dying off, ready for the bleakness of winter, for some reason it always gives me a sensation of excited optimism. And not just because there are conkers to be had.

So it was into all this that I stepped from hospital yesterday, walking into the cold, low sunshine of a beautiful autumn afternoon in which it was good to be alive and abuzz with the knowledge that, for the time being at least, I'm fine.

I'd just had my latest set of scan results, the pics from my third quarterly intra-cranial photoshoot. They came out nicely, thanks. No change - I'm still prettier from the inside out.

I still have a hole in my head, but that's it - no extra tumoury bits are visible.

So I have another clear quarter to look forward to. That's the pattern from now on: another scan, another set of results, another all-clear. Grabbing life in three-month chunks.

The next session in the big, bangy machine is around Christmas, with the results due a couple of weeks later. Until then, no worries.

Yesterday was also something of an ending, as it was the last time I was needed at the Beatson's Clinical Research Unit, where I'd been taking part in an experimental vaccine programme. I gave my last round of blood, and my involvement was over.

When I joined, at the end of December last year, I was among the first on this programme being conducted at the Beatson and a few other centres around the UK, which was slowly accumulating willing and suitable subjects on whom to test a vaccine which had been used successfully against other cancers, but not yet on glioblastoma.

Sure, there was some small risk, but it seemed like no choice at all. I was assured it would have no adverse effect on my other treatment, and since at this stage they were testing for side-effects, I'd get a full therapeutic dose, not a placebo. So if it failed, I reckoned, no problem, I'd still be getting the gold-star treatment in which the Beatson specialises; but if it succeeded... well maybe, just maybe, it would help that treatment along, maybe even save my life.

So I signed on the dots and since then I have had eleven pairs of itchy intradermal injections into the same bit of my leg, and given blood in various quantities, but no ill-effects. The programme is getting close to its required number of subjects, which is heartening, my inner geek is pleased at getting to contribute to cutting-edge science, and my sense of social responsibility is satisfied, too. I'm proud to have been part of it.

Looking at my MRI pics, each shows a kind of rind around the hole where the tumour once was, and that's apparently been seen in other recipients of this vaccine. It's not cancerous and is perfectly harmless, and I like to think of it as a barrier, either defending against or containing the bad cells: I realise this is probably nonsense in medical terms, but I like the image.

I'm under no illusions: I know that radiation, chemo and vaccines notwithstanding, the cancer is likely to come back. Not least because the doctors keep telling me that, which I think is a good thing, as time is short and precious and it's important not to fritter it away in the warmth of a false sense of security. With or without cancer, we all waste too much of our least renewable resource when we should be making the most of every minute.

And right now, I feel good. My fatigue is less frequent and less unpleasant, and the stiff legs are easing off.

I was told yesterday, "This is your time feeling well. Enjoy it."

Yes. I think I will.

Welcome to paradise

A year ago from Tuesday, I was to all appearances perfectly well, just back from an autumn break in the Highlands.

A year ago from Wednesday, I was sleep-dancing across the office floor, on the right side of my ribcage and with the sides of my tongue clamped between my teeth, wakening in a wheelchair to a paramedic's kind offer of air and a bewildered trip to hospital. The first of many.

The time between has been packed with scans, bad news, surgery, worse news, fear, intra-dermal injections, radiation, blood tests, chemotherapy, fatigue, steroids, stronger adjuvant chemotherapy, more jags and sangrial sampling, a gastric problem which could have pebble-dashed a warehouse, marriage, euphoria, more adjuvant chemotherapy, more fatigue, more scans, more blood, even more fatigue, stiff legs and the resultant Cyberman stride. Yet it honestly doesn't feel like a year. Time flies when you're enjoying yourself.

One year ago today, October 4, 2011, I was at home; slumped, drained and bemused, on my leather couch with which I would become so familiar, on my first of so many sick days with which I would become so bored, wondering what the hell was going on.

A year later, I'm sitting at a picnic bench under a big tree, in an almost perfect little cove on the north shore of Bermuda. It's 28°,  the sea is blue, something's singing in the next big tree along, and there's just enough cloud cover to let me see my tablet screen and type this. Soon I will go in search of beer. Life's tough.

We're here in this island paradise as guests of my friend and former colleague Raymond Hainey: gentleman, journalist, and all-round good chap; and also one of the finest operators the Scottish press has allowed to escape. While he has been chained to the type-face, Clare and I have beached and lunched and beered, and when he hasn't, Raymond has generously driven us to the sights while we have generally got under his feet and cluttered his flat.

And I feel much better for it. Sure, I sunburned my feet on day two (I never burn anywhere normal, like on the shoulders - for me it has to be somewhere awkward, such as the ankles or forearms or feet), and I twisted a knee falling down the stairs in a pub (it was lunchtime, and I'd only had the one pint), but I feel so much healthier; lighter even.

I'm not going descend into hippy wittering about a healing atmosphere, because that would be nonsense. But sunlight lifts the mood, warmth relaxes, and the light exercise of sight-seeing is probably doing me no harm. The Boris Karloff stomp has eased off as my legs feel stronger, and although I still get tired, it feels cleaner, a warm sleepiness compared to the sickening, bone-deep fatigue which hit before. It would be nice to think that easing will continue back in Scotland.

Of course, I will have to return to the results of the scan I had just before leaving.

But in the meantime, I'm relaxing in Paradise. Still with a hole in my head, but relaxing.

I'm not worried. I feel good.

So far it's a happy anniversary

Walking the walk

I’ve started making the old-man groaning noise when I get out of chairs, except with more swearing. I’ve got to say – this cancer thing’s full of surprises. My legs have seized up.

Not entirely, I should say. But it’s not comfortable.

Every hour or so I try to remember to get up from my desk and take a stiff-legged stroll around the office; to the kitchen, the toilet, the vending machines - any destination which has some point to it and which takes me out of view for a bit, so I don't look like I'm doing some kind of circular Boris Karloff impersonation among the islands of workstations.

My wife Clare was first to call it my Frankenstein walk. Frankenstein was, of course, not the monster but the scientist, who as far as I remember had no mobility problems, but Clare's far too sensible to let that get in the way of a perfectly clear description which everyone will understand instantly. I, on the other hand, am far too much of a pedant not to, so I privately call it the Bangles Bimble: I'm thinking of the mummy from Scooby Doo - I Walk Like an Egyptian.

The stiffness is the result of coming off steroids about six weeks ago. I've mentioned it here before, but it's currently the after-effect of my treatment which is bugging me most, so now it's going to bug you again.

Apparently the ligaments in my legs and back have loosened up, but it doesn't feel like looseness: quite the opposite. I stomp around straight-legged until things slacken off, I haul myself out of chairs with my arms if I have sat for too long and am having difficulty with the knee-unbending and thigh-stretching, and going up stairs is difficult. Which is a particular bugger when you live up four flights. My adventures on Google suggest this could last for three or maybe up to six months.

But it will pass.

I'm also now off the chemo. Its abiding after-effect is fatigue, which is much worse than the locked-up legs. But at least it comes and goes, while the stiffness is always with me.

As usual, day one of the final chemo was fine, but then... who'd have thought there could be so many flavours of tiredness? Degrees, yes - but types?

Over the remaining four days of the course and for a day or two after I experienced a weird series of ups and downs ranging from mildly sleepy to bone-sick exhausted.

At my worst, while I was still popping the poison, I noted that each type of tiredness had a different feel or texture, and wondered if I should become a connoisseur of fatigue and catalogue them here like whiskies. Then I wondered if I might not just be rambling: I was quite tired - at that point a dull little number with a sort of numbing sensation in my shoulders and arms, if you're interested.

That was about three weeks ago. Since then I have had days when I have been alternately energetic and shattered, days like yesterday when I have woken up tired, and days like today where I feel more-or-less normal.

I’m told the after-effects of the chemo could also last perhaps six months. It might not be so long, given my relative youth and strength, but I'm prepared for the days of unpredictable tiredness to continue for a while.

And eventually this, too, will pass.

In the meantime, the trick is to make the most of things even when the symptoms are making their presence felt. Just marking time, looking forward to the end of the stiffness, the end of the fatigue, and ignoring the present would not be healthy. It would be like treating the working week as days to be endured until the weekend comes, the month as time to be tolerated until payday; people do that, but it's wishing your life away, and those of us on the cancer-go-round are a bit sensitive about that.

So I get on with things. I go to work. I make plans to do stuff as I always have and, mostly, I keep to them. I went to see Patti Smith in concert last week and loved it, even though my legs were in agony after the two-hour stand.

Maybe if I were a sporty type all this would be harder, but I play with gadgets and with words, and I don't have to move much for either.

Anyway, most days aren't tired days, these days. It's getting better.

But when they are, I read and write and watch and listen and generally learn new things. Oh, and play obscenely violent computer games - that's a good one. Obviously, all that is as far as concentration allows; the fatigue regularly dictates that I put down the newspaper, Kindle, laptop or handset and just kip. I do resent that a little as wasted time, but it can also be pleasant, so I feel I should just enjoy it.

Here in the Tumourland Fun Park, it's important to enjoy all the rides.