Smiles and Cries - Douglas's Diary

A friend and great inspiration to me died yesterday.

I got to know Dan Bayes online a few years ago. I don't know an awful lot about his life before that but I'm sure he was always car mad.

I'm finding it pretty hard to say anything much about him without appearing all sad and maudlin.

Dan had all sorts of cancers over the years. He had various bits of himself removed and spent more time in Hospital and on Chemotherapy and connected to the infernal bleep boxes than I would care to subject my worst enemy to.

He underwent this with an apparently enviably positive attitude and great dignity. If he ever was bitter, he never showed it.

He was 25.

Thanks Dan.

I've got a job in Aberdeen, I started last Monday, it seems to be entertaining enough.

Cool, huh?

Will keep you posted.

I have just had dinner. It was very nice. We had little fruit flavoured fromage frais for pudding.

I was reminded of hospital (and of course my sadly neglected diary), now more than a year ago, and a request from Team Nursey to nab one of my Petits Filous from the fridge for a chap who was a bit poorly.

He was so ill that he was entirely bedridden. He couldn't go to the toilet or feed himself. Or speak now that I come to think of it. Tubes entered his bed and undoubtedly his various unspeakable parts.

I think cancer was not the biggest of his worries if we're being honest. However, he had obviously found that taking 47 pills at once was much easier if they were all mixed in with a couple of little tubs of Fromage Frais which I observed him having spooned into him with great gusto on several occasions. I gave up my little milk-derived pudding gladly for this man. In return his daughter bought me a whole 6 pack to say thank you.

I rather suspect that this man is dead. I've no way of finding out, but today I find myself unable to look at this dessert in quite the same way.

Well since I last wrote, I've had a birthday. It was uneventful and I was quite grumpy. Peter bought me lunch which was jolly decent.

The day after was nice, I took breakfast to Linda and Blair.

Today has been good, I've been at a Sprint in Muirkirk. There were lots of cars, this kept me happy, but it's reminded me that I really ought to do something with the gallery as I've got lots of lovely pictures and nowhere to stash them so other people can looksee.

Hmm, another monthly update.

What is it with life? It suddenly seems to have become so much more serious over the last year or so.

I'm saying this because over the last 12 months, several people I know have passed away in pretty un-rock and roll curcumstances. People never used to just die like this, and certainly not in these numbers. It's not like the old days I tell you.

I'm not complaining about being sad, sadness is part of the cycle of life. I'm not kidding myself when I say that my new way of being sad is a good thing.

Conversely, the highs in my life recently have been higher, which is great. I seem to have developed more of a willingness to stick my head above the parapet. Perhaps some sort of sub-concious 'life's too short' thing I'm doing recently.

I've had a few days work here and there over the last few weeks, which has made me a lot happier. The last few weeks have seen my general fitness really come on in leaps and bounds. I've been telling people that since I got out of bloody hospital, but its true.

I'll be climbing Everest next month. Perhaps.

I bought a suit for work, I did a trackday at the Motorsport Club on the hillclimb track and hoovered my bedroom.

I'm flush.

Here I am again. Drawn to make another diary entry.

My life is easy. I was at the outpatients clinic today and things appear fine with my blood. I'm getting fitter by the week, still, which I was told would happen but I never thought it would continue to the extent that it has. Physically I am great and constantly improving.

I've been fixing cars and humphing washing machines over the last few weeks. I sold a roofrack to someone I've never met on t'internet and went to a couple of parties.

I became an uncle 2 days ago. Little Callum was 8lbs 7oz and is a wee angel. I wasn't as freaked out by him as I thought I might be, it's lovely, mother and baby are fine and everyone concerned is delighted.

Today was marred a bit by the my discovery of Gary's death, a week ago today. He wasn't fixable seemingly. I hope he wasn't afraid.

I am really cut up about it. I'm not guilty, I'm not angry, I am just sad.

I'm fed up fighting the fucking wellfare state. I have been claiming benefit since I got out of Hospital. From time to time I get sent a menacing letter telling me that if I don't jump through some hoops, they'll stop the benefit. Fair enough I suppose.

Accompanying one of these letters was a questionnaire a couple of months ago asking me whether I was too ill stand up and whether I could walk to the end of my bedroom or not which I filled in and answered as honestly as I could. As a result of this and a Q&A session in front of a DWP Doctor, I am now apparently not eligible for the benefit I was claiming.

So it turns out that what I should have done to avoid the hassle of this is lie through my teeth, tell them I am completely incapacitated, that I can't reach for a tin of beans on a shelf and even if I could, my eyesight is so bad that I couldn't read the label. I'm too much of a moral standard bearer obviously. It looks right now like the system rewards liars, cheats and thieves.

I understand that there has to be some sort of cut off, but in the month between the benefit being stopped and the date my GP says I can return to work, I'm not really sure what I am expected to do.

So I'm a bit annoyed. I'd actually quite like a job though. 2 or 3 days a week would probably happily sustain the same level of income as provided by the government in the form of the benefit I have been claiming, but as far as I'm concerned this goes against medical advice from my own GP and the RVNB.

Hmm.

It's a year ago today since I ended up in Hospital. Dunno how I feel about that. Not any different to yesterday, but I've put a lid on 2007 I think.

I took the hard top off the car and went for a roofless drive this morning, then I went round to Lorna's after lunch and we walked her dogs.

I've been in Edinburgh tonight, Dinnering with Sarah and after that we went to the cinema. I have been one busy little boy today.

I guess everyone may pretty much have given up reading the diary now.

It's a month since I last said anything here, in a way I miss the Diary, but making entries in it every day is something I don't have to do anymore.

For anyone still hungry for news and who didn't already know, chemo has finished and I have now been out of Hospital for nearly 5 months. I'll never know if that's me cured forever, only that I'm clear for now. I'll just have to change my life to suit that.

I feel great. I still don't have all my strength and stamina - it's taking a long time but I never really had any idea of when I'd be back fully.

I've tried not to do too much reflecting, but I'd like to say thanks. I'm going to get all soppy, perhaps because I don't think anyone is really paying much attention but I owe everyone I know and many many people that I don't, huge debt of love and support that I will never be able to repay. In a way I hope I never have to.

I can't put it into words very well, but here are some:

Thanks to the people who work at Monklands Hospital. I'm still alive. Medically that probably wouldn't be the case if they hadn't been around.

Thanks for all the stuff people did for me and each other that I don't know about.

Thanks to everyone who ever came to see me in Hospital - even if I was in a bad mood.

Thanks to everyone who sent invisible but wholly vital good vibes from all over the world.

Thanks to everyone for emails.

Thanks to everyone who sent me a card - sorry I didn't reply to any of them

Thanks to Mr IBM, who invented the Laptop, Mr Sennheiser who invented god's own headphones, Mr DVD, Mr iPod and the 3G Datacard. If Cancer hadn't killed me, without these things I think I would have died of Hospital instead.

2007 - probably the most interesting year of my life so far, partly because I spent so much of it in very boring circumstances.

By the time I die of whatever - I intend to have several rather more interesting years.

My memories of Hospital are fading fast. Probably at about the same rate as my fitness improves.

I'm not back at work so I've been tooling about in the Mazda and getting frustrated about having to find things to do with my time that don't involve spending too much money.

Yesterday I competed in Production Car Trials, which is driving a car up a grassy hill, trying to get higher up than everyone else does before you get stuck. It was the first time I have tried it and I managed to come 21st out of 24. I had a laugh and met someone I had met before when I was a bouncy castle delivery man.

In the evening I went to a Kevin Bloody Wilson concert in the Pavillion Theatre in Glasgow. It was good.