Cancer update 16 weeks

When I wrote my last update things day-to-day were not that great, and were quite shit mainly due to the inability to stop saliva being over generated in my mouth when ever I did any movement like walking upstairs or driving a car. The result was it would just flow uncontrollably out of my mouth. If that happened too much then it would go down the wrong way and I would get an acidified reflux and feel sick for hours.

Well the good news is this although not completely fixed is now treated, I have a injection line in my stomach that I can put an injection into and that removes the moisture for a few hours and because there is no moisture, I don’t feel sick as often. I have also had Botox to try and remove the need for the injection but that has not worked that great at fixing the problem or at making me better looking 🙂

Although I still can’t swallow and am still very tired that injection has been a life changer, it is meaning that I can start to reconnect with the world and do stuff with family and friends and because of that I feel heaps better and much more positive about things.

The lack of swallowing is still very annoying, I have done my best to make it work for me and I am setting up little feeding stations around the house so I can eat at the table and in other places rather than being stuck in the bedroom.

So moving forward I will continue to be working on the swallowing piece and hope that I can do it by December.

The only other news is I have had a follow-up PET scan. It was inconclusive so will be having some additional follow-ups over the coming weeks.

my work

With three days notice before this cancer it was very hard to get all things organised well before I went on this journey. Our small team led by Grace , Amy and Arshpreet have done a great job of making sure that the software is running well and requests are being responded to. We however have had major delays in our implementations as these were heavily reliant on me. I have with the very limited-time I can been working through the backlog to get things back on track. My main focus is now on making structural changes so implementations can be better supported without being reliant on myself which will allow me to-do what I love which is architecting the best software for publishers there is. I am extremely grateful and humbled by the patience of my customers and am determined to both pay back that loyalty but also put in place a structure that can run without me if my health deteriorated in the future.

Having said the above this is of course done with a careful balance of putting my health first and trying to keep the stress under control as I am only able to spend very limited time on this task at this stage of my recovery.

Reconnecting with the world

This cancer shit makes you take stock of what is important and never to take anything for granted.

Part of that process for me is realising how important people and community are and the shit job I have done ensuring I keep connected to those people and communities that make me happy. I am making efforts to reach out and to go to more things but please don’t hesitate to reach out if you want to, I may not be able to turn-up to things for long or be slow in responding but I will do my best to get there.

Thankyou

They say that with cancer you learn who your friends are, and I am so blessed to have some of the greatest friends anyone could hope for. This sickness has gone on much longer than I would have hoped and those who have dropped by to see how I am and been so extremely generous in so many ways I can’t thank enough. This has contributed so much on keeping positive, not to mention making me feel so humbed and at times very emotional 🙂

There truely are some amazing people out there!

Kirsten and Lee

I don’t say it enough, but Kirsten is the best wife in the world and has taken on so much to support our family and me over these past months. This week to add to the list is coping with the sudden loss of one of her closest friends Lee. Lee was a really great guy and will be terribly missed and has been taken way to young. Lee I will miss you, it will be very hard to find someone else to call me Greek God by default:-) Kirsten I love you so much !

That’s me until the next time !