welcome to the jungle sweet child of mine

Good morning … and I mean morning… it’s early.. and for the last couple of hours I have been listening to myself think… and I hate that .. so.. I thought I may as well make you listen to me think as well… misery loves company… not that I am miserable in the biblical sense, it’s just that as you get older you have memories and thoughts that are painful.

I had a gap of two or three years .. which only Fiend noticed by the way.. where I wrote nothing… well there are reasons for that… not that I would hesitate to burden you with them but that I hesitate to burden myself.. anyway welcome to the jungle sweet child of mine as I also have an appetite for self destruction….

You can hold back your sympathetic, pat on the back replies as this is not what this is about, as all of us, as we age, will suffer the vagaries of life as that is the beauty life … if we live long enough we all get our turn…  I wish that applied to wealth.. but then that is a whole nother story… (look I just invented a word)

Two getting close to three years ago now my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer… we were sort of expecting it… the diagnoses I mean.. cause you go through the lump thing … the biopsy… then the doctor gives you the good news… which even though you are hoping will be good you are expecting to be bad… anyway, along with other stuff in life ,birth, death and marriage stuff.. the effect was greater than anticipated.. when I got home I had to go to bed.. because the emotional effect was so strong as to result in physical symptoms.. I got sick… dam…

So the Doctors tell you about the treatment plans and options and that the survival rates are in the 80 to 90% range blah blah blah etc.. doesn’t sound so bad…then you have the biopsy and talk to the chemo specialists and they have little charts.. and suddenly it’s grade three aggressive with hormone receptors and the little computer graphic tells you the odds are 50/50 but look if you take this pill for five years, which has horrible side effects, the graphic changes to 60/40 in your favour…

Anyway mastectomy or lumpectomy.. we chose lumpy.. sounds cuter with a y, also less destructive on the advice that survival rates are the same… we did the chemo thing for six months… the wigs were interesting.. though the permanent nerve damage is not something they advertise .. the radiotherapy probably the easiest treatment.…

My gripe is… and I am the gripeyist  gripe.. is that after all this treatment over nine months if not a year in total.. you are told… “Well… if nothing happens in the next five years.. you are regarded as cured”.. thanks Doctor… so really we are no better off mentally than we were on the day of diagnosis.. however not that I am ungrateful.. skilled and compassionate people did wonderful stuff and we have the best chance we can get… but now we wait..

Cheers…. me…

Fonzie

I bet you did not expect another of these.. this is not what I want to write about but that subject is still too raw to put fingers to keyboard so to speak… so I will tell you about “The Fonz” … I met him through work… at a company called Siesmagraphic Services Ltd which was sub contracted to Shell Oil to search for oil within the Taranaki prospect… He got his nickname because he was the antithesis of cool… He was weedy, weak, slightly deformed and crippled… he walked with a limp… he could barely see even with his coke bottle glasses and even though he was working with a crew of low life ruffians, including myself, he was well liked by all… He was educated in British private schools where children of his stature and condition are basically tortured by the children of the elite… I visited him at the home of his parents in New Plymouth once and learned that he was the son of a Shell Oil executive… the mansion he lived in evidence of the wealth and privilege that he came from.. obviously his father at a loss with what to do with him got him a job through his industry position… he showed me a picture of his bother and sister… they were both blue eyed blonde haired beauties… think of the bachelor and his bimbos.. these two had it all.. good looks… education …wealth… his bother was Captain of the first eleven.. Captain of the first fifteen… and even then I thought to myself you poor bastard when god dished out the lollies in your family you were nowhere to be found… and after all those problems in your life both mental and physical how did you end up being the well adjusted.. all round good person that you are… so Fonzie… where ever you are… I think of you still… I think good thoughts… wish you well .. and remember the good times we had..

Uppie The Faithless.. who you knew as Dean..