Photons on the Prostate - VIII

Fatigue is the issue

If you have been following my blogs over the last few weeks, the reason I have not given an update is because of exhaustion, I have been maximising the periods when my energy levels are high on activities on a priority scale.

In terms of the fatigue brought on by my radical radiotherapy treatments, I have not been able to schedule when I would have the strength to do anything. I take the rest when they come and the insomnia that results simply sweeps in without me being able to control the situation.

It is now obvious that at certain times of the morning into the afternoon strength wanes, and then late at night into the early morning, I feel much better about doing things.

A voice that wanes

This week has been one of many meetings I have prepared for but I found my facility and ability wanting. It started with a call from my GP and from the get-go, it was obvious they had very little knowledge of radiotherapy-related fatigue. The smart money was to chat to the radiographers and the doctor at The Christie Hospital, they know what courses of radiotherapy do to the body and they addressed the side effects with understanding and allowances required.

The thought of attending a 90-minute meeting on Tuesday left me concerned about whether I would make it through the first 30 minutes. When you feel weak, using your voice first belies that weakness and speaking is almost as energy-sapping as normal vigorous exercise. Eventually, your expression begins to wane and fade, and noticeably so. The conference lasted just under 95 minutes, on cancer support care and services available to me.

However, on Wednesday, I had favourable scheduling to address some activities assigned to me first, I apologised for my low energy levels as the morning was full of meetings and the afternoon session was at the point that I was ready to throw in the towel. My determination was to see it through and so I began, my voice a raspy whispery tone, slow and laboured, I made my points and successfully shepherded half my intentions with the other attracting three apologies from an interventionist that should have done their due diligence earlier.

My performance did not go unnoticed when someone opined that I was unwell and struggling. Struggling, I was, unwell, I definitely was not, and while fatigue might feature on a wellness spectrum on the lower end of it, it should not be confused with infirmity and incapacity. I fight the battles I can and retire when I need to.

Walking to full exhaustion

With enough time in hand before my hospital appointments, I boarded buses to my appointments though, on Wednesday just as the rush hour began, we were caught up in such a traffic jam, that I knew I could not walk the remaining 2.9 kilometres to the hospital, but I had to disembark to see if I could walk past the bottleneck.

My strut was excited and brisk, but I also felt as if, at any moment, I could just crumble and collapse in my stride. I willed myself on with the thought, not today, we’ll make it. About a kilometre later, I was beyond the constriction and an apparently traffic-free way looked ahead. I was also approaching a bus stop, having skipped about 10 buses ahead of my original one, I boarded the next arrival and got to the hospital in time for my 15^th radiotherapy session.

That walk was the most exertion I have had since I began treatment 3 weeks ago, in the 15 minutes that I was lying on the linear accelerator gurney, I had a catnap. My journey back home on the bus had me dozing off a few times, any of the last three stops if I missed any, I would still be close to home.

It’s now 4 to go

Yesterday, the session required an early start, and the bus journey was quicker, but my usual suite was very busy. For the first time, I did not have to present my scheduling sheet for a new time to have five in hand. We agreed yesterday that if the full schedule of appointments had been provided from the onset, it would have been quite psychologically daunting for the patient.

Giving you the first five and then for each subsequent day one is added to pace you without creating a burdensome and overwhelming schedule. It might affect your ability to plan well ahead of time, but it is very manageable.

I was called into another suite, my sixth in sixteen sessions, one of the radiographers had a Nigerian heritage as she was unsure of what her state of origin was even as her surname which typically would be of a northern origin was from the Midwest. I did hear my name called in the correct intonation, but we make all sorts of assumptions about people that might not be valid.

With that done, we now have four to go, I like to look at this in percentage terms, we are 80% done and I am drinking lots of cranberry juice too.

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - VII

Blog - Men's things - XX 

That human touch is always necessary

Meetings for the body

When it comes to my health and wellbeing, I look forward to my biannual medical consultation not with any anxiety but in anticipation of presenting myself to my consultants who have overseen my health over the last decade.

For instance, when I get the opportunity, I would like to return to Amsterdam and see the professor who first took on my care and gave a glowing reference reflective more of my personality than my medical condition, it prepared consultants in the UK for an interesting patient coming under their care.

My longer-term consultants have been in Manchester, in Wrexham and in London, I only had a few months of interaction before I was referred on to others. The reference from London brought me in contact with my first consultant who has retired to embark on humanitarian activities in Asia.

Meetings for the soul

When he left, my new consultant sent a letter of introduction from which I researched her background and career activities, I was better read up on her than she was on my medical notes, from it a relationship has developed that we are quite pleased to see each other when I go for my appointments.

The medical matters are quite quickly dispensed with and we get onto matters of life, of the heart, of happiness and much else. A patient is more than the notes and the medication, doctors who explore beyond the medical into the person and personality hopefully have a more rewarding doctor-patient experience and it helps them know that what they are doing contributes to demonstrably improving the quality of life of their patients.

Meetings for the mind

Another thing I enjoy visiting the hospital and consulting room is we sometimes have medical students sit in on my consultations, something I welcome. I engage with the students, find out their intended specialisms and encourage them that what they are doing makes the miracle of medicine possible in the lives of people like me.

However, with this pandemic, that last time I saw my consultant was last year. I had a telephone consultation in April and a rescheduled one from next week to today this morning. It is very likely my next appointment in April next year will also be a telephone conversation.

Meetings for the touch

We were able to pass considerable information between ourselves from the medical to the personal, but it was over in about 20 minutes as she had a full book of calls to make. That interpersonal connection was lost even though we deployed the art of conversation to the best we could. A 15-minute window was scheduled for phlebotomy on Monday when I could also pick up my prescription for another 6 months.

All other indicators were good apart from a concern with how one of the components of my combination formulary interacts with cholesterol. That will be monitored and reviewed for our next session. Much can be done with technology, but you do without essential human contact and interaction, especially in medical settings. I would suppose my next human touch will be at the prick of a needle, something I am used to and I am happy all is well.

Opinion: For meetings that work

For meetings that work

Normally, I would tweet about this, but it behoves me to write a blog to accompany what the basic tweet would not do as efficiently as I would like it to.

A few days ago, you might have read a blog that appeared to suggest I hate meetings, having compared and contrasted the Dutch and English culture of office and team meetings.

Meetings do have a purpose, for interaction to create some familiarity between people, to share knowledge, gain understanding or give clarity and purpose to some venture so everyone appreciates intent, desire, context, theme, tone and drive of any undertaking.

Make clear with example

These meetings begin to lose their purpose when they have no agenda, when people ramble on and there is no control or when the simple language of communication is obfuscated with jargon.

Now, I tend to use very basic analogies to create a picture in the minds of the listeners to gain some effect, it is my way of carrying everyday experience into the seriousness of a situation with the hope that listeners would gain immediate realisation without wasting too many words. Probably, they get overused, but in many cases, I would see heads nodding in some understanding of what was said.

Not the English we know

What gets to me is jargon, the superfluity of endless nonsensical jumble of words that have become the stock of many management-types who have learnt this odious communication slant and threaten to bring everyone into speaking with the same vocabulary.

I was in a taxi cab with two work colleagues the other day, we were brought together by the need to share a cab since we were going to the same place, the conversation could have been as casual as any if they attempted to speak in plain English, but it was not long before I was lost to incredulity and bafflement.

I heard words I could for the life of me begin to understand even if I were to use the context of the sentence to elicit what the word pertained to. They were English words alright, but not used in the way standard English dictionaries define them.

Jargon is not cool

The conversation was suffused with business jargon that I was as perplexed as to wonder if people did have to go out and learn this stuff to sound knowledgeable and express a level of commendable expertise in some subject.

In my view, nothing beats the command of English that makes proper use of words, idioms and sayings, all of which the well-read would understand and the less so can at least reference somewhere and gain understanding.

That this kind of rotten jargon has crept into interviews has been a headache for me, some encounters have been so uncomfortable just because I do not speak the lingo. I state here with as must clarity as I can, I do not want to learn the lingo much as I do not use expletives that people are shocked if certain circumstances lead to my blurting out one.

Banish its usage

How much I would have liked to contribute to The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary, but I do not have an inkling about most of the jargon I have heard in the past few months.

There probably is no shame in asking a direct question or when washed down with a torrent of jargon, ask just what they really mean. “What do you really mean by that?” If after a couple of attempts there is still no clarity, then ask for a plain English explanation not forgetting to say, without the jargon.

Consign to oblivion

The curators of The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary have said, “We can only hope that you're not here to actually add buzzwords to your vocabulary.” This is not the time to impress with stupidity.

Meanwhile, if anyone knows what ‘steer’ in business jargon means, add to this dictionary. I know it does not mean to control or direct (verb) nor does it mean a castrated male bovine animal (noun), yet in context, I have heard it used as a verb and a noun. It is so annoying.

Let us work to consign jargon to oblivion.

Thought Picnic: Meeting Spaces

Dutch Communion

When I lived in the Netherlands, I used to think meetings were a chore, highly soporific talk shops of near inanity, I suffered.

They are a cultural thing with the purpose being consensus and the achievement being you had spoken, having made your views known regardless of whether it did anything to promote consensus.

The convenor whilst heading the meeting never made unilateral decisions; that just created resentment, some meetings achieved nothing more than the convenience of a séance.

Time for crime

Amongst us was always a contrarian with a tangential thought planted in our midst as an advocate of Lucifer to bring disarray, disorder, distraction, confusion and chaos to the proceedings, it took tact to shut them up with finality.

Back in the UK, much as there is a culture to meetings, and like the Dutch, meetings that could go on until we were found centuries hence, bones of a long lost civilisation giving archaeologist grounds for specious speculation, salvation comes with the need to attend other meetings.

I once asked why we did not have the meetings standing up, they would be done in 10 minutes flat with clear decisions made, discomfort makes for agility and alacrity.

Useless words and sentences

We mostly attend teleconferences now, this links people together from various time zones and cultures.

Whilst in the Netherlands, many speak English murdering with aplomb the rules of grammar that the cringingly loathsome becomes funny and incredulous - accents abound, here, we do converse in English with the generous abuse of spiel, -speak and jargon.

Specious space

Everything as I have recently learnt is a space, we have all sorts of spaces for ideas, objects, plans, events, people, vacuums and dare I say, idiocy, or rather sensible idiocy and tolerable stupefaction.

The space is taken up by the space of fresh manure that an observer might creditably call bullshit. There is space for fertilizer in my garden too.

Yet, for all the space that takes up space in the space the agitates the eardrums, the sound-space does suggest the medium of interaction is the English-space, only that the space for understanding the multitude of words is void of meaningfulness.

Not my kind of English

It is as tortuous as it is desperately tending to intemperance to have to live through it without becoming suicidal, but many subsumed into this space revel in saying so much to say very little. It is English reserve that prevents one from stating the obvious.

At which point you really want to ask as the essential salvation of slumber does not spare you this encounter - Is there space for a little bit of plain-speaking effective communication?

The straw man touching base with his offline priorities can only look up at that point for inspirational Blue-Sky thinking, the kind of thinking that is outside the box.

Why am I in this meeting?

Thought Picnic: Indulge Incidence

Ingress into

All our focus is geared towards a three-hour conference call with our colleagues in South Africa tomorrow morning.

Much as we might have many questions to frame and scope what we have to do, my view is that we be more the listening party than the talking party.

In fact, even when we should seek clarification, it is somewhat important to allow with consideration and patience everything to be said whilst we take notes and contextualise issues.

Incubate indicate

The day started slowly as we reviewed the agenda over Starbucks lattes ensconced in high-backed privacy seats with cushions to either prop us up or give some support to our backs. Usually, these places are taken up that we sit around ready to pounce on a place that comes free.

We are in danger in getting bored as it is early days, I would say we savour the moment because when things start we might be squeezing 36-hour days into typically 8-hour working days offset by the two-hour time zone ahead where South Africa resides.

Our laptops arrived in the morning, all stops pulled and favours cashed in, ready for our mailboxes to be flooded with idea, indication, intention, invention and interjection as we respond with interest and inquiry hoping that our induction has adequately invested us with information.

Insight ingénue

This would probably all be down to introductions first and the much that would follow. The first design activity we embarked on was to craft our email signatures from the template provided by the boss, obviously with a personal touch.

Some observations mean that our minds would be active with suggestions to bring finesse to some wonderfully crafted solutions before I start squinting at logs to divine what has gone into the some products being tested at present.

Insipid ingestions

The apparently Chinese meal I had prepared at the restaurant was served in a dish best reserved for Italian pasta which meant using chopsticks was almost impossible, and after the rice was stirred into the black bean sauce, we were closer to risotto than oriental fare – this barely made a passing grade.

That is not to talk of the coleslaw yesterday which scored average for my colleague which in my view was almost too generous a compliment – you ask – how do you get coleslaw wrong? Apparently, you can, and to add insult to injury, we paid for it. That it did not presage a sick-bag moment must be credit to our incredibly robust constitution.

And so, tomorrow is another day with thanks.

Thought Picnic: The Questions That Challenge My Writing

Must I?

The urge to write but the absence of drive to type in the words that occupy my thoughts in waves of angst and debate sometimes haunts me.

As if there is an agenda and a deadline to meet, I find myself counting the days since I last put something on my blog realising it is not really the absence of things to write about but some involuntary decision to leave some issues to incubate to hatch into something more engrossing or when the whole idea seems incomplete, it is not ready for sharing.

It does?

Meanwhile, when I do get to post a tweet or two on Twitter, some of those thoughts attaching themselves to some personality, event or idea finds expression which could well trigger some debate and in that one does get some fulfilment.

However, the blog still remains in my view the compendium of thought, allowing acuity, application and purpose, ensuring the complete train of thought is properly given the rigour it deserves.

He was?

Having attended a book launch on Saturday or better still a launch of books that featured Nkem Ivara’s Closer Than A Brother [On Kindle] and Victor Ehikhamenor’s Excuse Me! [In Paperback and On Kindle] along with recitals by poets I only just learnt of at the meeting, Inua Ellams & Afam Akeh, I almost fancied myself a writer until I realised I am probably not as cut out for that level of genius that gives words the ability to excite spontaneous laughter and deep thought – blogs will suffice.

Interestingly, amongst the writers was a man whose mellifluously caustic and acerbic wit in his review of many books is worthy of a Pulitzer and much else – he says he is a reader, but there are many who want to read his opinions of many issues so whilst he reads, he must by all means write too. We know him as Pa Ikhide on Twitter and this is where he blogs.

And them?

By the time I knew what was going on, I was meeting @chemelumadu, @ChikaUnigwe, @RGAMeyer, @ChiomaChuka, @IkeAnya who was the compère, my cousin, then some names that had to get away for another event were in the audience apart from some Nigerian High Commission bigwigs who later joined us to make a table of 16 at a Thai restaurant afterwards.

As the life form of blogs go, I have gone from the lethargy of writing to name-dropping and thoughts of other blogs I could write about so many things that happened from the week past until today, but we’ll end here – the keyboard has a way of tapping into my subconscious and that’s me back in flow.

A small world of uncanny reunions

A ticket to Lancaster

Looking at the scales of maps online you imagine the large expanse of land and water that makes up the earth; the seemingly close friends, acquaintances and colleagues who appear to be a few inches away in cartography are not so much a walk away but further and it takes time to travel as the passage of time ekes out years of the last time your paths cross until a certain day.

One certain day, as I boarded a train to Euston to Lancaster, a couple sat in front of me became part of the idle banter that becomes engaging conversation once you know the journey would be long and boring without talk.

They had brought their own drinks onto the train rather than buy the over-priced and usuriously marked-up drinks on the drinks trolley that got wheeled through the carriages.

The conversation started with my appreciating their smarts in having had the choices a store offers over a train trolley and what situations I used to endure on the trains from Ipswich where I lived then to Liverpool Street.

I know your daddy

It transpired that they lived in Ipswich; that was quite interesting and so the conversation developed as she being Caucasian which should not have mattered asked where I was from and the usually trotted out line came with the refrain – of Nigerian parents.

To which she responded she was born in Nigeria and the dots seemed to join up in what would have been the surreal to both her husband and her; in the inquisitive, I wondered if she was born in Jos to which she responded in the affirmative and it was a slam dunk from there on end as I confidently said I suppose her father and mine worked for the same company and even offered the name of her father.

As she composed herself, I told her of a conversation I had with her father some 21 years before in Rayfield, Jos in Nigeria where I had asked where she was and I was told she had returned to the United Kingdom – her father, sadly had since died.

On a train that was going all the way to Scotland, it was strange to realise they would also be getting off at Lancaster and going off to a village just a few miles from where I would be spending Christmas – it was such an uncanny moment.

An invite from church

A few weeks ago at church I got formally introduced to a couple I never fully identified with having the assumption they were from another part of Africa until they spoke to other friends in a Nigerian language I understood.

We were then invited for a get together at theirs in two weeks and that set the stage for the meeting we had on Saturday.

I was picked up and we drove up to North Holland to well-appointed detached house in an idyllic village.

The ladies occupied themselves in the kitchen as we chatted in the living room about all the general topics that range from the serious to the trivial.

The wonderful sumptuous meal of pounded yam, beef and chicken stew and cow leg spinach soup was served and we tucked in ravenously almost exceeding the allowances of our appetites.

To a place born

The conversation swayed back and forth about the Yoruba language, the issues of culture, traditions and myths and it got to where we were born.

She said she was born in Birmingham more in terms of it being the biggest known city in the West Midlands and I surprised said I was born in Walsall which just happened to be where she was born. I got transferred by reason of premature birth to the hospital where she was born just within 2 years of my birth.

Her mum knows mine

That being within the time my parents were residents in Walsall, it was possible mine knew hers and just before I completed the sentence about the social club I felt our mothers were members of she offered the name.

Joining the dots was easy from then on, our fathers are both accountants, I am familiar with her maiden name and other names that came up just showed that our paths had crossed in England in the 60s, in Nigeria in the 80s and now in the Netherlands in 2011 in the most unlikely place for a coincidence to become a happenstance.

The world is a small place by reason of the people we met before and who we meet again or through others who know them so well – you cannot run away from the world in which you have lived. Uncanny!

Up in the air

Meetings for surprises

Nothing could have prepared me for the day I encountered today, with one being the proverbial grass on which elephants seem to have fought to the finish.

There were uncertainties and definitely no guarantees but assumptions were made, plans laid out and the idea that a future existed was the picture until as late as this morning.

I had planned to get to work by 10:00AM but arrived a bit later, meanwhile, even yesterday on my day off I was getting engrossed in typical office politics about ownership, responsibilities and deflections – they never tire in finding someone to dump the shit on.

A meeting was planned for 11:00AM and I arrived just in time to be pulled into an unplanned meeting where I thought we would be discussing strategy – maybe I forgot it was also July the first, the beginning of the new month and as it happens, I just happen not to have a contract anymore.

The squabbles that affect us all

That explained why the office looked emptier than usual, everyone else had already been informed to stay at home pending the time the bigwigs sort out if the contract can continue and who would be needed to man the contract.

It has probably come down to money, hard-bargaining and all that but as a self-employed consultant, consultant is hardly the word to use, one feels like a day labourer at best in these circumstances because just a fortnight ago we were to be in employment up until November.

There are prospects as I have been informed, a possible cooling down for the month of July and a return to activities in August, but no one really knows – it is all up in the air.

Up in the air

To think that just two days ago I watched Up In The Air starring Goerge Clooney on DVD about travel and the laying off of staff being outsourced to smooth talkers who were engaged to do the tough-talking for timid Human Resources departments, I could just imagine the feelings everyone had when told they were being let off.

A feeling of emptiness with that little voice of hope trying to scream in your head that you should just be calm, be cool, be collected and be considering of your future as a new opportunity for new challenges, those are your possibilities.

I had my timesheets signed, sent in my invoices, got on the wrong bus and made for home, and then it occurred to me that I could call on some ex-colleagues and so there I am.

With stories to tell from when I left, fell ill, got well again, had work and now on a loose end, it really is all up in the air.

Local situations in global straits

Global rates

The effects of globalisation have come to my little corner of the world. 6 years ago when I bought my place, I accepted the going fixed rate of interest on my mortgage because I felt rates would go down for the foreseeable future and they did for at least 5 years.

This November is the time for a rate reset and suddenly I wish I knew back then in 2005 that there was a possibility for a rate hike that would see one shelling out a lot more than one ever has done before – that is the credit crunch and rotten sub-prime loans in America filching my disposables. Arghhh!

Local arts

At the same time, I have attended the meeting of our house-owners association which in itself is a bureaucracy that churns out rules that makes one think it is a hostel block.

Beyond that, the entrance atrium had the Y-semaphore indicating the name of our block, but some of the residents felt it did not match up to their aspirational goals of having escaped a working-class label.

So the uppity ones banded together into an arts committee to remodel the atrium which has ended up with a dark green marble wall and plants that cannot stand the atmosphere, any wonder? – it could as well be the well-appointed entrance to a funeral home – how depressing.

Global talk

In the early times, all notices were sent out in Dutch, after a few years, we had them in English too, but imagine my surprise when the notice that ended in my mailbox also had a Japanese translation.

Translation is an inappropriate word because the English version leaves out information found in the Dutch version which states that someone on the fourteenth floor had been pouring deep-frying fat down the drains which were are all clogged up again, just over a month ago. Again? Miscreants!

All versions advise us that it is forbidden to throw fat down the drain as the native version states that translations are offered in English and Japanese to which many a nationalist might remonstrate that we all have to learn Dutch if we live in the Netherlands.

Strangely, the English version goes on the offer the tip to pour warm (not hot!) fat – in their words – in a milk carton and throw that in our communal refuse bin, nothing that the Dutch or Japanese would find useful it seems.

Local meets

A Japanese colleague at work did laugh when he read out the Japanese bit, though I thought there were a good too many pictures (kanji) for little information, I must commend the writer for bringing the Far East to the West.

I do wonder if English would now be allowed at the annual general meeting because the I last attended, my Dutch comments were applauded for their comical value than the seriousness of what I had to say – I have not be that participatory in apartment block politics just for the fact that they end up like Dutch meetings – the desire to congregate and be heard but never reach workable decisions as one stands out antagonising everything regardless of substance.