Happy Birthday (not!).

First of all thank you for all your birthday wishes and your best wishes for Jamie.

He was a star at the hospital. We always get more stressed than he does. I was more anxious about the night on the ward with him. Last time he woke at 2.30am and 'bimbled' until gone five. I spent the time trying desperately to stop him waking up the whole hospital! This time though he slept right through till 4.30, and then was quite quiet until morning proper.

He was first down on the list and so he went down to theatre at 8am. He was back on the ward, all done by 9.30am. All that for so short a time! Still it's where his fantastic neurosurgeon is based, and so that is where we have to go. I expect we will get called for a follow up appointment at Plymouth (he does outpatient clinics at Plymouth so we don't have to keep trekking to Bristol). Anyway it all seemed to go well, so hopefully that will be that for another 12 months.

The last three days have been about the most stressful of my life so far. The trip to Bristol and the lumber puncture were bad enough. But I think my birthday was worse.

My father has been having a few problems with his digestion, I won't go into detail. So his doctor sent him for the camera down the throat, to look for a hernia. His appointment was on my birthday so while we went out to lunch with some friends they went off to Barnstaple. Fine, we all thought, get it sorted out and we can carry on as normal.

We had a nice meal, Jamie had a great time watching the others play pool. We got home and did family stuff until my parents returned from the hospital. That was when the rug was pulled out from under us.

It's not a hernia, it's cancer. My dad, my wonderful, funny, happy, everything to me dad has cancer. We don't know how bad it is yet, but it looks like it's at a fairly early stage. With luck they might be able to do something. My grandmother (dads mum) had bowel cancer back in the '80's, she had an operation and went on for another fifteen years. And it was quite advanced. Maybe I'm clutching at straws, but the alternative is just too horrendous to think about.

Funny that just before I found out I had been blogging, and Frankie had left a comment saying that I was inspirational and always positive. I'm going to let Frankie down now because I don't feel the least bit positive. I feel crap, quite honestly. I had a good cry (out of sight) and then a bit of a rant (again in private). I refuse to accept it until they have done all the tests. It might not be cancer, and it it is then it might not be too serious. They might have caught it in time, he might have years. But he might be gone by Christmas, and I can't bear it.

As you can imagine my mental state is wobbly. I was already wound up about the lumber puncture, without this on top. Now we have got the LP out of the way I'm a bit calmer. And it's no more than a lot of other people are going through. Our own family have been here before several times. My grandmother died of another form of cancer nine years ago. And then there have been the sudden and/or tragic deaths. My mother in law died suddenly, but she was in her 80's. My cousin dropped dead (literally) from a heart attack age 38, to name but two.

One of the worst things is that there is nothing I can do. I can drive him to appointments and nurse him when the time comes, but I can't make it go away. What I can do is not waste anymore time. There are things I want to do with my life and I'm dam well going to do them.

Chapters 13 and 14 of MG is on WNR (and welcome Helen).