Get up, stand up, don't give up the fight.

I saw the advert for Channel 4's Paralympic coverage earlier this week and I couldn't help but feel inspired. Here it is:

https://youtu.be/IocLkk3aYlk

Everybody on it is incredible, the athletes, the musicians and the dancers, everybody. (Apart from that prick of a headteacher obviously, nobody likes Mr Negative.) It got me thinking about things that inspire me. (Admittedly they don't always inspire me to do anything, sometimes I just look and think, 'Wow that's class.')

Becoming inspirational seems to be a byproduct of some other goal. You dedicate your life to becoming the best you can be and in doing so you can inspire others. I think you have to have overcome some form of adversity in achieving that goal to be described as an inspiration. (One doesn't imply the other though. Trump will have to overcome a lot of adversity from any sane minded American if he is to become president. He isn't an inspiration, he's an incredibly well educated idiot. Changing Obama for Trump would be like finishing your incredibly attractive girlfriend so you can have sex with a cow instead. A cow in a wig. Called Donald.) 

The ongoing Syrian refugee crisis is filled with inspirational stories. Competing at the Rio Olympics will be Team Refugee. To have fled from your home country because of war and made a living for yourself on foreign soil is incredible in its own right, but to do that and be an Olympic athlete is even more amazing. I cannot begin to imagine the sense of despair many of the refugees will be experiencing so to see people in a similar position to themselves competing at the greatest sporting event must be truly inspiring. You don't need to be in the eyes of the world to be an inspiration but stories like this one fully deserve the coverage they get and more.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/36604675

If we look for it, inspiration is all around us. What you may find inspirational is not necessarily the same as what I do. (And vice versa of course, I'd be surprised if there were many other people who find Bamboleo inspiring. He has great bounce-back-ability in the face of adversities such as locking himself in a room because he can't open the door. Admittedly some of that may be due to the bouncy ball he ate yesterday.) Whatever inspires us we should be grateful for it. 'There's always someone worse off than yourself' is probably the most unhelpful advice imaginable but thinking about what inspires you can help you to overcome the adversity you are facing, be that ill health, stress or even the horrors of a two-day hangover.

There, a blog about inspiration, which I realise is very different from an inspirational blog. It appears I have once again taken it upon myself to provide life advice. Take what you want from it, I'm taking credit because I wrote it.

What's The Story? (Morning Glory)

A lot has happened for the UK since my last blog. We've had the good – Andy Murray winning Wimbledon, the bad – England flopping at another major tournament and the ugly – Brexit! But the narcissist in me knows that all you are interested in is what has happened with me.

In short, not very much at all. My walking is a little worse than before the transplant but I can now use my bike on its indoor training stand which I couldn't do before hand. I enjoy cycling but in truth you can't get very far on a stationary bike so really walking would be more useful. I splash around in the pool and call it swimming equally as well (badly actually but I'm trying to be optimistic) as I did way back when. I do though have a realistic timescale as to when I can expect improvement... Autumn 2017! That's seems like a long time away and in my more despondent frame of mind I think it's longer than I can manage. But as I say, I'm trying to be optimistic and I know a year isn't really that long and the improvements will be life changing.

Realising that I have another year of dossing about I've been trying to think of ways to occupy myself. I did consider online dating but decided that probably wouldn't work. I'd use my Facebook profile picture of me balancing a bottle of water on my head to demonstrate how talented I am and my profile would just say, 'Hi, I'm Patrick and I am pretty class.' (I know what you're thinking and I agree, I am actually really class but I've heard modesty is attractive to some girls.) I imagine that would get any girl with a heterosexual cell in her body instantly interested but at some point I would have to tell her about what I'll call the relationship shutdown trilogy: I'm unemployed, I live with my parents and I have MS. (The kindhearted readers will be thinking, 'Any girl would be lucky to have you.' The less kind, by which I mean most lads, will be thinking, 'Man up.') So that put an end to my ideas of online dating.

Onwards and upwards and so I've decided to try and get into volunteering again. I have looked into this before but my unique mix of poor walking, horrendous tremors and impaired vision combined with no means of transport means I am of very little use to anybody for anything. (Apart from balancing bottles of water on my head of course. And really anybody could be a civil engineer for example, as Danny, Matt, Ben and Tom have proved, so who's the talented one really?)

Incredibly though I have found something I can get involved in and it is centred around something I am genuinely passionate about: the city of Sunderland. (On a scale of things I am passionate about Sunderland sits somewhere between Percy Pigs from M&S which are amazing and the NHS which as per my previous blog I think is magnificent.) Sunderland is bidding to be the UK City of Culture 2021. I love the place and there are numerous ways I can get involved so I'm really pleased to have found this. I will no doubt be advertising various events taking place across the city in future blogs but if you would like to find out more now visit http://www.sunderland2021.com/. It's at a very early stage in the bidding process so raising awareness is the key at the moment. I will be at the airshow this weekend helping out in the Sunderland 2021 gazebo. (Quick warning, we'll be handing out leaflets and badges so if anyone takes one from me and ends up getting a paper cut or stabbed with the pin from the badge then I'm sorry, I'm nice but my tremors aren't.)

A very quick shout out to Victoria and Jonny, soon to be husband and wife (irrespectively obviously). Their wedding is on Monday and I am really looking forward to it. I'll look dapper in my three piece suit and get really drunk. But of course the day is about then, lifetime of happiness etc.

So that's the story. And the morning glory? Work in progress.

True perfection has to be imperfect.

I'm out! I got home before 1700 on Monday. It felt amazing and Bamboleo went crazy! I think the doctors would have liked me to stay another day (Baby if you've got to go away, don't think I can take the pain...) but my blood counts on Sunday were good (Good day all round after Andy came to visit. After five years of not seeing a mate there's quite a bit to talk about!) and when the doctor came into my room at about 0930 on Monday morning I was sat in the chair, fully dressed and with my suitcase packed next to me. They realised they weren't going to keep me and so got my discharge drugs and off we went! Seemingly perfect though that day felt (not getting the incredibly attractive Spanish doctor's number would be the imperfection here), this blog is actually about the NHS.

It's grossly under funded, mismanaged and riddled with bureaucracy. There can be long waiting times, bed blocking and too much admin for staff. The resources it does have are often used inefficiently. Doctors and nurses are overstretched, overworked and under paid.

And yet the NHS is the single greatest institution that is or has ever been. We as British citizens are immeasureably lucky to have free healthcare. Whether you need life-saving heart surgery at hospital, support with mental health from a psychiatrist or antibiotics from the sexual health clinic after sleeping with a dirty girl on a stag do in Amsterdam, it's all provided for. 

The NHS saves and dramatically improves countless numbers of lives every year. The money invested into research at our hospitals is helping to cure diseases, make lives so much more manageable and will continue to do so for as long as the NHS exists. Millions of us and our loved ones would not be alive today were it not for free health care, me included.

Our nurses and doctors work incredibly hard. They are under paid for the hours they are meant to work and most of the time they work longer shifts than they are paid for. The job is a vocation, very few on the front line staff are there purely for the money. Emotionally it must be a very draining job, they are caring for people often during the worst times of the patient's life. And yet they remain so positive, upbeat and friendly. The power of a smile is a wonderful thing, whenever you feel down, whether it be through ill health, a rubbish day at work or because Sunderland have lost (Again!), a caring smile is sure to make you feel comforted and the nurses always provide that smile.

The junior doctors strike has my full backing. Without them the NHS would collapse. A junior doctor is not necessarily somebody straight out of university, doctors need about 10 years on the job experience before they become registrars. And junior doctors will never leave a critical care ward unmanned even during a strike. Of course the numbers are fewer but they know how important their job is and so they effectively draw straws to decide who will provide cover. They are sacrificing the opportunity to demand what they are entitled to for the sake of patient care. This gets very little media coverage, unfairly so.

Very few of us can afford private health care, most of us are fully dependent on the NHS should something arise. (After nearly 3 weeks in hospital I could barely afford free healthcare. Retail therapy is a great way of passing time, I must have spent about £400 (Credit card!) on completely unnecessary purchases. I like to think that's my way of giving back to the economy.)  I'm not about to start campaigning for any political party. (My dad does enough of that. He's one of those annoying people who come election time post leaflets through your front door. He is very interested in and passionate about politics but I'm sure he only does it for the piss up afterwards. He'll say he's going leafleting on a Saturday morning and come about 2300 in the evening he rolls in absolutely smashed. It's also his birthday today, Happy Birthday Pops!) But I do believe health care is one of the most important government policies and whichever party pledges to best support the NHS will go a long way to securing my vote. (I accept this is a thinly veiled big up to the Labour Party. I realise Corbyn is a bit of a liability but Cameron and Osborne are far worse. And anyway, I live in Sunderland, the Labour Party could include the decapitation of ugly children in its next manifesto and it would probably still win our seat.)

Finally, the saying goes there's an exception which proves every rule. In this case that exception is my mam. (The rest of this paragraph is pretty soppy so feel free to move on to the next. I did consider writing a full blog about her titled Tribute so really you've all got off lightly!) I wouldn't have made it through the last three weeks nor indeed the last two years without her. I'm 24 and at times have been no less reliant on her than at any other point in my life. I tell her this every day and I'd like to say publicly, 'Mum, you're amazing. Thank you.'

So the transplant is done and I'm home. The hard work is out of the way. In the coming months I will get stronger and stronger. The doctors advised I rest for a little while but nobody ever got anywhere by just sitting around. (Definitely went for a swim this morning.) A big thank you for all the messages of support, best wishes, thoughts and prayers Clearly they have all helped!

Miracle Drug

The downside to being on a completely new treatment, a trial of sorts, is that you have no idea of what to expect. One of the lads (Dr Heavey) warned me the chemo would be tough. And indeed it has been. One of the nurses on the ward said that the chemo required when having a bone marrow transplant is as brutal as it comes. (I must point out, a bone marrow transplant, especially when it is your own stem cells, as in my case, is one of the simplest transplants. If transplant severity equated to leading characters in Friends then a bone marrow transplant would probably be Phoebe. Got to be in there but doesn't do a awful lot.) I escaped the process of getting the chemo into me fairly lightly. A little bit of sickness and that was it. The drug has a ripple effect though. Once it's in you it destroys what feels like everything in your body. The bone marrow is where it really takes hold. For a period you lose the ability to produce white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets. The result is your body is wide open to infection and you feel indescribably weak. All that gets you through is that you know it's for 'the greater good'. (A quote from Hot Fuzz which has been on twice now during my stay. What a film, if Nick Frost attempting to jump over the garden fence doesn't make you smile then you need to have a beer and cheer up.)

So faced with this uncertainty you have no option but to go into it blindly. (More easily done in my case.) I came into this treatment with naive optimism. In my dream world I thought I'd be in hospital for a couple of weeks and then leave cured of MS, a miracle drug of sorts. (Actually I'm not quite that stupid but I was hopeful!) Although no less significant the reality is much different. It'll take a few months for me to rebuild my strength and for the transplant to take its effects. (The registrar this morning said having a bone marrow transplant basically means I need to grow a new organ.) I'm sure this will frustrate me but it will be the polar opposite to the previous 23 months. Then as each week went by I became weaker, now as each day goes by I will become stronger. This will be exciting and rewarding, I'll find joy in being able to do things I previously could not. (On leaving hospital, not pissing into a bottle will be the first such thing. Nurses are mad keen on urine, I'm sure it must be a prerequisite of the job.) It'll be a gift that keeps on giving, much like Bamboleo whom I am missing greatly. (Though he wasn't a gift, he cost me £600 and he'd do well to remember that when he's acting the idiot.)

At the end of my last blog I had a temperature from an unidentified virus. (I know, were this blog a book, a page turner it is not.) I've since had a blood transfusion, two platelet transfusions (Both much less dramatic than they sound.) and a CT scan of my head and chest. The doctors concluded I had an infection, possibly from the Hickman line I had in my chest so that was removed and I am on to some antibiotics. I also had a large, black thing on the top of my head. Something between a wound and a spot. Attractive. I am on some different antibiotics for that and thankfully it is going as it really hurt. (And looked horrible!)

From early Tuesday morning it was a very rough 72 hours but things are seemingly on the up. Today my white blood count is up to 0.9. The average, un-chemo-ed (fairly certain that's a word) person has a count of between 60 and 100 but I don't care because once I hit 1 I can stop wearing my silly mask whenever I leave my room. (And anybody who brags about their blood counts clearly has little man syndrome anyway.)

Also once I hit a count of one and go a few days without a spike in temperature I can be released! Touchwood I will be out in the early part of the coming week. I say touchwood which is ridiculous. My grandad used to say it, increasingly so as he got older and more unwell, I seem to have adopted the habit over the last week, maybe it's a hospital thing? He wasn't satisfied just touching some wood as he said it though. As he neared death he was punching holes into anything that even resembled wood whenever he said it. I'm not superstitious in the slightest, I quite like the number 13, I'd walk under a ladder and I'd even pick up a spoon that I had dropped. (Abbe!)

So does a miracle drug exist? Define miracle.  In six, nine months down the line I will be so much healthier, stronger and happier than I have been in over two years (Touchwood!) and that will feel like a miracle. And hopefully in a few days time I will be back home, and so will that!

Does the body rule the mind or doors then mind rule the body? I dunno...

Morrissey might not but I know it's the latter. (He was probably off his face for most of the 90s, I'm in a much better state to judge.) This was always going to be a battle with the mind for me. The doctors are telling me it's day six (post transplant). Bollocks to that, I arrived here a fortnight ago, it's day thirteen. They can throw all the medical jargon they want at me (Neutropenic this and blood count that.) but I know I'm ready to go home. They might have the qualifications but I've seen enough Scrubs to know I'm fine.

I'm trying to keep myself busy but being confined to a room is difficult. Reading would be a good way to pass time but I'm missing a few vital qualities to be able to do this. Namely sufficient eyesight, the dexterity to hold a book let alone turn a page and of course a concentration span. I've been pondering over my Desert Island Discs but until my eclectic mix of wit, humour and sarcasm brings the stardom it deserves this is a bit pointless. I'm fortunate to know people in high places at Sky TV (one person actually, thanks Andy!) and so I have access to all of Sky Movies and Sports on my iPad. Again though the absence of a concentration span diminishes this perk. And so my main past time is whingeing to my mam that I want to go home and eating. And writing this blog of course but as I'm sure you can tell, I'm running out of things to say! (Maybe I'll start making things up? Next blog I'll tell you about the three ninjas and a dragon I fought off last night.)

My Monday afternoon was significantly improved by the unexpected visit of the fabulously glamorous and devilishly handsome Lynne and Ernie respectively. My parents know them through church but I met them at the coffee shop I go to. A lovely couple and it was an extremely generous gesture for them to come.

Egg on face time! And I'm talking about raw, out of date eggs. I began writing this blog on Monday. In my mind I was ready to leave hospital. Fast forward to 0145 Tuesday morning and I was in A Whole New World. (And not that class one Aladdin found on his magic carpet. This one was somewhere between limbo and hell.) In short, I had a temperature. It spiked at over 40° C. With no immune system how such a fever manifests itself isn't pretty. For about the next 12 hours, I threw up, occasionally sweated and most of all I shivered. My mam compared it to a scene from The Exorcist. I was shivering and shaking so much the bed was banging on the walls and the nurses put the handles up on the side of the bed so I didn't fall out onto the floor. The doctors and nurses promised me this would happen and so it became a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

I still have a temperature and don't feel particularly well (Terrible actually.) but at least it's started. I'm not really sure what the message of this blog is. Maybe Morrissey was right and sometimes the body does rule the mind. I dunno...

Nothing's gunna hurt me with my eyes shut.

The man in the room next to me was released on Friday. He had been in for a few days having being re-admitted after a longer stay on the ward. I was surprised initially because I could hear through the walls that he wasn't well. He had leukaemia. On speaking with the nurse I realised he had been released because there was nothing further the hospital could do for him. He is going to die.

Sometimes life is grim. Cancer is an exceptionally cruel disease. The treatment is nauseating at best and usually much worse. And depending on the type of cancer, you are far from guaranteed a happy outcome. This doesn't come as a shock to me, people in my family have had the disease and my Nana died from it. I can only hope she didn't suffer like the man next to me was. 

Everyone has in some way been affected by cancer. Yet still on Friday morning I felt naive, stupid even. I hadn't even spoken to the man, he is nothing but a stranger to me. But the news of his fate really shook me. (Chemo by the way can pull down your mood, I'm not soft or anything, I mean I don't cry at most films!) (Although the first time I saw The Lion King I had to be taken out of the cinema because I was crying so much when Mufasa died. Scar was a bastard.)

Unless directly exposed to them, we are blind to the injustice of life. You have to be, any kind hearted person couldn't function otherwise. But this experience has taught me that life is a gift, not a right. We should treasure it and live it to its fullest. (Maybe I should join the priesthood? I haven't had sex for a while and this is sounding very preachy!)

I'm pleased we have our own separate rooms on this haematology ward. Most people here have leukaemia (cancer of the blood). All are unwell and some are dying. Throughout the last two years I have never felt unwell with MS. I have felt weak, demoralised and humiliated but not unwell. I feel slightly fraudulent being here. The treatments we are receiving are no less dangerous, many on the ward won't be having a transplant at all. The difference is my treatment is life defining, theirs is life deciding. Given the conditions we have we are all fortunate to be here but I feel especially so.

I began writing this blog on Friday morning. The man next door was never released. He was clearly too unwell to go home and presumably they could not find him a bed at a hospice. I think he died in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Life is finite and we spend so much of it worrying about the most insignificant of things. (I've lost my hair after the first stage of chemo a few weeks ago. I don't look nearly as good with a bald head as Natalie Portman did in V For Vendetta and this disappoints me. Doesn't surprise me like, after all I never looked nearly as good with hair as Natalie Portman in Black Swan!) As long as we and those we love our safe, healthy and happy then we should be grateful.

This has been a bit of a gloomy read and I think part of appreciating life is to laugh so I'll leave you with a joke.

Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid, the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other one off.

(Copyright Tommy Cooper.)

What are you waiting for?

Allow me some pop music, I'm not well! And even though she divides opinion, I think Ellie Goulding is fit.

The good news is I've had the transplant and all went well. It was no different to getting anything through an IV drip. They defrosted the bags of my stem cells and put them back in me. The only unpleasant part of it is that the preservative the stem cells are frozen in stinks of sweetcorn. As a result, I and my room now stink of sweetcorn for a couple of days. Good job I'm not a puff and I know BBQs are for meat and not corn on the cob because I'll be avoiding sweetcorn for a while!

The chemo is starting to take its effects. I've been lucky so far and I just feel tired. Very tired. My biggest problem is feeding myself. In my last blog I said what makes you bad makes you better. Actually, what makes you bad makes you worse then makes you better! My tremors are horrendous, I feel like I've sparred with Mike Tyson just brushing my teeth. Getting food from a plate into my mouth therefore is difficult. I've  already lost some weight and anyone who's seen me knows there's not that much to lose! (Only in comparison to you John and the ever shrinking skinny Quegan!)

Reinforcements have therefore been called. My mam (the angel that she is) is coming down today so she can help to feed me! I've insisted on my independency for the last two years to the point of spilling, throwing, smashing and falling but I'm now past the point of embarrassment. The more I eat, the stronger I will get and the quicker I will get out of here. I've also been given more menus. I eat a healthy and varied diet so the standard menu of pie and chips didn't really suit me. (Strange, I used to eat plain food only. I also used to be about two stone overweight!) I've now got the kosher, Indian and North African menus. So really I'm going to be hand fed curry for the next fortnight, it's not all bad!

Two years ago I wouldn't take a paracetamol if I had a migraine. Now, they're giving me about 20 tablets a day and I'm on an IV drip of antibiotics three times a day. I don't like it but I know I need it. From the chemo I'm currently Neutropenic. That means my white blood cell count is dangerously low so I'm wide open to infection. I have to wear a mask over my mouth and nose to wade off airborne bacteria. I look a bit like a Japanese tourist walking around London with a SARS mask! I like to think I'm a duck with a beak. Quack.

So now it's a case of waiting. I've had the treatment, had the transplant and now need to sit here until my blood counts return to a normal level. About two weeks. The nurses have told me having a transplant is a bit like planting a seed. It takes time for the effects to become recognisable so I will see no improvement quickly. I'm quite impatient and have never been a horticulturalist so we'll see how this goes!

I'm bored so this has been a bit of a ramble. As a thank you for reading, I will leave you all (especially the blokes) with some life advice. Do whatever you can to avoid having a catheter put in you. On Sunday when I had the temperature and fell over they told me I couldn't leave my bed. Man's got to wee so I needed a catheter. (If you're eating you probably want to stop reading now!) A thin plastic tube is inserted into the penis, up to the bladder and then inflated. You then dribble piss what feels like constantly into a plastic container at the side of you! It was the single most uncomfortable experience of my life and it lasted less than two hours before I told them to take it out. I've fallen plenty of times now and none have hurt like that so if the choice was to fall going to the toilet or sit with that in all day i'd take the fall every time! Between this, the oral tablets, the daily temperature check and thermometer in my ear, the nose swabs to check for MRSA and not forgetting The Bullet experience at the sperm bank, I've had something put into every orifice of my body now. I didn't like hospitals beforehand and I sure as hell don't like them now!

A massive thank you for all the messages of support. I haven't replied because I'm too sleepy but everyone is a morale boost and is helping me through this. Much love!