Yeah, sounds a lot like all the things that were told to me when I had that stuff looked at properly.

So long as you stay in shape, none of it should cause any kind of trouble. If, like me, you don't, I found an osteopath to give the best results of the various practitioners I tried.

Seems to be a particular strain that is laying everyone off for weeks.

Traditional Spanish remedy for sore throat and cough - chop up onion and leave it beside your bed at night while you sleep. I have never tried this.

Kow wrote:

Traditional Spanish remedy for sore throat and cough - chop up onion and leave it beside your bed at night while you sleep. I have never tried this.

I tried this two months ago and now I'm even more ill.

Maybe you're supposed to leave it that long.

I've had my first day off for a fair few years. Still feeling really ropey but have a whole day of teaching tomorrow and then 3 hours of parent's evening straight after. Then there's creating and setting all the cover and the guilt at loading on one of my staff to sort all that out. Plus the Head will probably guilt me out for not being in. It will actually be easier going in and feeling like utter shite all day. Ho hum.

Stopharage wrote:

I've had my first day off for a fair few years. Still feeling really ropey but have a whole day of teaching tomorrow and then 3 hours of parent's evening straight after. Then there's creating and setting all the cover and the guilt at loading on one of my staff to sort all that out. Plus the Head will probably guilt me out for not being in. It will actually be easier going in and feeling like utter shite all day. Ho hum.

There should be no guilt in taking time off for illness, especially self-imposed guilt. It's better for everyone in the long run if you're fully recovered quicker and not spreading a virus around the place.

My teeth. Pain when chewing on the left where I've got an old crown which likely means it'll have to come out and incredible sensitivity to hot and cold on the right so eating anything other than soft food at room temperature is no fun right now.

Likely exacerbated as I've let the problem with the crown go on too long because, well, who wants to have a tooth extracted? Plus a costly bridge will be required to replace it.

Despite all my efforts to take better care of my teeth in the last decade, I'm still paying the price for poor dental hygiene and diet in my younger years mixed with some bad dental genes. Ugh. Time to get back to the dentist I guess.

I think the original tooth under the crown was in pretty bad shape as part of it had broken off and I'd already had a root canal treatment so my layman's understanding is that if a root canal and crown fails at some point, it's difficult to redo it so extraction is generally the preferred option.

I could be wrong about that but I suppose if I am it will be something of a bonus

Yeah, I guess that's sound logic if it just keeps causing problems. Appointment booked for Monday anyway.

I’ve got to get a re-root canal done. Been putting it off for ages now.

Very sorry for your discomfort bud.  To be sober for a moment, onions and avocados seemed to help my immune system shake a long term chest cold.

I had it early November, cough lasted about six weeks. It will get better, be strong.

Playing rugby at the weekend. Hopefully my ribs won't shatter.

JonB wrote:

Bosses can be pretty terrible of course. Pisses me off when their first response is 'what am I going to do?' rather than 'get well soon'. I'm ill, you deal with it.

I’ve been pretty lucky in this respect. Especially my current boss, who’s been lovely about my recent absence. Christ, she even bought me chicken noodle soup earlier in the month.

I did have one, a particularly useless supervisor (a man who would panic if you offered him a cup of tea) who interpreted the ‘maintain regular contact’ protocol as ‘phone the absentee daily, and give them a hard time if the don’t answer’. Moron.

“I was hoping that it would be some type of lymphoma.”

That’s a sentence you don’t ever particularly want to hear from your consultant, wishing that the unwelcome intruder currently strangling random bits of your insides was a really serious form of cancer rather than the extremely serious form that you have instead.

So, in the end, we’ve settled on “late recurrence germ cell cancer, unknown primary,” which apparently translates to “cancer of cancer.” A very small number of cancer cells that have been dormant in me for over 20 years have mutated and reactivated. Again, unfortunately (I’ll stop using that word in a minute), this has then spread through my lymph system, and throughout my body with no noticeable symptoms, until of course, it’s too late.



Too late for what?



Too late for a total cure. Instead, we go ahead and treat what we find with a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, balancing toxicity with quality of life (the basic premise of each of these treatments being to poison/irradiatiate you over a period of time and hope that it kills the tumours before it kills you). The first stage of this has gone really well (high praise from my consultant, who I don’t think has ever exaggerated anything in his life), with significant shrinkage of the primary tumours, no new occurrences of cancer, but still traces in my lungs and spine, which will be treated as and when they become a priority. As an aside here, I should suggest to my consultant that someone should write a paper on the euphemistic size comparisons for tumours. Every image I’ve been provided with are very masculine: golf balls, cricket balls, bullets, grenades, ruminant testicles. At no point have I ever been told, “You’ve got a cancer the size of a fairy cake.”



 So, anyway, for now key objective for treatment is not particularly making me any better, but not letting me get any worse.



This basically means that currently, I’m quite well, rather, all my symptoms are a collection of petty annoyances. One day my back hurts, then that goes away and I’ll have a stomach ache for a couple of days, then I lose my appetite. This terminal cancer thing is extremely inconvenient.



On the plus side, I now have a permanent port fitted in my chest, just under the skin from which blood can be taken or drugs delivered without the need for a cannula to be stuck in me. Portacaths are amazing. God forbid any of you, or family goes through something like this, but if you do, I recommend that you explore the possibility of having one fitted. It saves a lot of hassle and pain.

Actually, seriously, everyone should have one. It makes everything so much easier. In fact everyone probably will in the future. We could put food into it. And booze. And vitamins. And software updates. And cheese. Or whatever passes for cheese in the future.

Also on the plus side, due to the private health insurance I have through work, I’m not draining our NHS of resources. I’ve no issue at all with our health service, indeed, I’d be receiving the same treatment from the same consultants (albeit in a slightly less comfortable bed), but if I can reduce waiting lists or resource requirements by one patient, that’ll do me.

Work have been amazing up to now. With a slight change in my responsibilities they have been happy to keep me off the “long term sick” stats, meaning that I’m still on full pay, and can indulge myself in a bit of gaming action as well as do work, although I’ve had to have a break from both since Xmas due to a couple of infections. 

On a more spiritual level, things become a lot simpler. Friends, family and here have been a lifesaver (note, if you could actually save my life, that would be great, thx), no need to put up with extraneous bullshit, I am lucky enough to know that my out of control bus is on its way whilst I stand whistling at the bus stop and the time I have left should be used to enjoy myself and truly live for the day, health permitting. Basically, “I’m not going to die today, or tomorrow so let’s enjoy it.” Fucked if I’m going to spend what time I have left (which could be months or a couple of years) moping and morose. 

I have found though, that a surprising number of people all of a sudden have their own favourite magical diets, homeopathy and religious new-age cures, or at least a conspiracy theory about big pharma hiding the efficacy of vitamin C, kale, magnetism and weed. I am slightly interested in the last one to be honest, if it doesn’t make you better, at least you don’t mind as much, and fancy a selection of snacks.

So anyway, that’s my update. Sorry it’s not better news, and more importantly, don’t stop posting in this thread, everyone’s ailments are perfectly valid, and to be honest, probably much more painful than mine. AMA, and I’ll keep the thread updated (whether you like it or not) with current treatment, how I feel, and what is being stuck in me and where. I’m good like that.