Requiem for a blog

I have always put up a number of blogs, mostly hosted on Blogspot, which is a free blog hosting service offered by Google. One blog that I was rather attached to was initally called "A Western Heart" and later renamed as "The Psychologist".

I did however put up on it a number of things that Google greatly disliked, so they abolished it. It no longer exists. I have however put up a partial substitute for it on a non Google plaform, find that here:

http://jonjayray.com/select.html

On the substitute blog I avoid mentioning the sort of thing that Google disliked so I hope they will index it.

People may however be curious about what appeared on the deleted blog so I have grabbed a random couple of months of it from the Wayback Machine and posted it here:

http://jonjayray.com/awe.html

It is a large file so may take a minute to load

Milestone

With much help from the incomparable Jenny, I have just completed my third session of radiation oncology. There were 5 exposures over 5 consecutive days. The first two episodes a few years back were completely successful so I have good hopes of the latest treatment.

So far, however neither main effects nor side effects of the therapy have emerged. I am told that it will take a couple of weeks for the final effects to be known. I do still have some pain but Ibuprofen and Paracetamol are keeping it down to a tolerable level. I need a 4-point walking stick to get around however

So I am at the moment pretty geriatric. Whether I will be bouncing around like Fred Astaire in a couple of weeks seems doubtful however,

Cancer treatment chronology

I have been battling cancer for about the last 5 years -- both metastasized SCCs (skin cancer) and prostate cancer. Each time it flared up, modern medicine has pulled me back from death and left me in no pain and in perfect comfort.

The latest flareup occurred when I noticed a pain in my chest a that would not go away. So I saw the excellent GP Dr Deep for advice. He ordered a couple of scans which revealed that I am full of cancer, with a tumour evident at the pain site in my chest. He recommended radiotherapy to fix it.

So I went to my oncologist to consult further about it. He compared the latest scans with a scan taken about a year ago. He advised that most of the cancers had been there under control for some time and that the latest localized flareup could be eliminated with radiotherapy. So I have now been set to begin 5 days of treatment starting from 26th.

Chronology:

Saw Dr Deep 6th August
Saw Oncologist 8th August
Saw Radiologist 12th
Setup process for radiotherapy 19th

There will be some time for me to get over the radiotherapy but I have gone under radiology twice before so I think I know what to expect. I expect to be well again around 6th September

I tried a number of pain medications while waiting for treatment, starting with Paracetamol. When that became ineffective, I moved on to the opiates, Targin, Tramadol, straight Oxycontin and Codeine. I paired them on all occasions with Ibuprofen as an anti-inflammatory. All were reasonably effective but the opiates all led to excesive sleep. Something -- probably the Ibprofen -- has however eased the pain to nuisance level only so I am not at the moment taking any pain-killers. So I am back pretty close to normal

My early life

I have just completed the first draft of a project to put up a chronological record of my childhood and early life. It was mainly aimed at supplementing my dire memory of my past but I have put it online for anybody else to scan who may be interested. See: http://jonjayray.com/earlier.html

My second wife, Joy

I have put up on this blog quite a bit about the ladies in my life so it has occured to me that I have said nothing about my second wife, Joy. There is much that I could say but I think the following short notes do have a place here

I met her at a Mensa meeting quite soon after splitting with my first wife but nothing much came of it for a while. Joy then put an invitation in the Mensa newsletter for people to join her in an evening run along Bondi beach (she was living right by Bondi beach at the time). I was one of those who responded and we got to know one another in that context. We started dining together after our run on the beach and one thing soon led to another.

She was a medical detailer (salesperson for a drug company) when I met her and already owned a few investment properties. She was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and grew up there

After travelling around a lot in Britain and overseas during her days as a nurse, Joy emigrated with her brother Stephen to Australia when she was in her early 30s. Her mother and stepfather (a retired Glasgow Police Inspector) followed soon after.

She had had various relationships before she met me but had never married or had children. That really is a bit strange as she was in my experience of her a very loving person. I remember I used to give her a lot of bear-hugs.

She has an almost obsessive interest in anything medical. No wonder she started out as a nurse. Our dinner conversations would sometimes be about the latest academic journal articles on matters of interest to her.

A curious thing about Joy is that she was a smoker when I met her but I never knew it. She knew my dislike of it so just did not smoke in my presence and then just gave it up altogether. She must not have been heavily addicted. It paid off, however. Some years later she did a spirometry test and was found to have early emphysema (of which her mother later died). The specialist who ran the spirometry told her that by giving up smoking when she met me she had added ten years to her life!

Around 1975 I moved in with her and married her about a year later -- on 15.5.1976. She was 43 at the time and I was 32 but that did not worry me as I had been told that I was infertile and could not have kids anyway.

The wedding was a "Scottish" one (at the Waverley Presbyterian church!) with many of the male guests (and myself) wearing the kilt. I also made up a tape of all the best Scottish sentimental songs and played it for a large part of our wedding reception.

You should have seen the funny faces as all the Scots tried to restrain the tears! I hadn't quite foreseen that but perhaps I should have. Anyway, it certainly did a lot of Scottish hearts good to see a Scots lass wed so far from home but amid such devotion to all things Scottish. Just writing that sentence brought tears to my eyes so I must be a pretty solid sentimentalist too.


On honeymoon at Peregian beach

Joy and I were together for about 8 years and she suited me very well. During the day I would usually be busy at University with my research and writing but I still kept good working class hours and would arrive home at about 5 p.m. -- like my father before me. Our usual routine of an evening was for us to sit around and chat between 5 and 6 p.m., go out to an ethnic restaurant at 6 and take a bottle of wine.

In 1977 I went to London on my Sabbatical year. Joy came with me but stayed only 2 or 3 months. While she was there she wanted a job. As she was still an SRN from her Glasgow days, so she first looked into becoming a "temp" nurse. She found it offered one pound an hour. She thought that was a bit derisory so looked for a job as a "temp" secretary. She also had those skills. She found that she could get TWO pounds an hour as a secretary so did the obvious. But something seems wrong there. British socialism?

She also noted that some of the hospitals she knew had new buildings attached. She was excited to see the new wards. Alas, they were office buildings: British bureaucracy. Puzzle solved. All that health bureaucracy required a lot of staff. So the big demand for secretaries bid up the wages of secretaries to double the wages of nurses. No doubt all those extra clerks cured a lot of people of their illnesses!

When I got back to Sydney I resumed my interest in Real Estate. I bought a block of flats at 13 Wallis Pde., Bondi in conjunction with Joy. I put in 25% and she put in 75% of the cost. They were the first places I "did up" -- prior to strata titling them. We later bought other properties but most of our business activities for some years afterwards consisted of managing what we had -- cleaning up after tenants, getting new tenants etc. We seemed to be doing a re-letting almost every second weekend as we had over 20 properties between us.

We lived for a couple of years in a rented unit at Randwick and then also for a time at 6 Norton St, Kingsford -- a house which Joy bought. It was next to her mother's house at 4 Norton St. 6 Norton St was just outside the Uni of NSW fence so for a couple of the 12 years I was a university lecturer I used to walk to work. When we eventually let 6 Norton St out it was to a Chinese man who liked the property because he thought it looked "very crean" (sic).

Leaving Sydney

When I began to get near 40 years of age I began (as many men do) to feel that I was in a rut (the mid-life crisis) and resolved to retire to Queensland. Joy and I had a great life together with everything more or less as I wanted it but I still felt that I wanted to make an entirely new start for the second half of my life -- including a new female or females in my life.

Joy always had more property (Real Estate) than I did and she would have been worth a couple of million at that stage (during the Sydney property boom of the late 80s). A lot of men aspire to marry a millionairess. I actually divorced one! Also to her credit was that she eventually got her Masters degree in Psychology

Her constant pleasantness, good cheer, enthusiasm and intelligence did make her a quite remarkable person and I do regard myself as lucky to have had so much time with such a fine woman.

I have not heard from her for some time but she would now be 92 so may be deceased. My pleasant little world seems likely to come to an end soon too

A reprieve

Earlier this week I had a pain in my chest, so went to see a GP about it -- the excellent Dr Deep. He immediatey ordered both an X-ray and a CT scan of my chest.

The reports that came back from the radiographers were dire. They showed me as riddled with cancer. Dr Deep took that onboard and sent me off for urgent radiotherapy. I left with the impression that I was a dead man walking. It was very upsetting but at age 81 that seemed reasonable.

I thought however that I should consult my oncologist before further action. Jenny and I saw him at 2.30pm yesterday afternoon. He had some useful scans of me from my past and concluded that most of my cancers were regressing or stable and already being successfully treated. There were just a few breakouts that could be successfully treated with radiotherapy

So once again my horizons were extended. I will not die of my present conditions

Jenny and I celebrated at 4pm with salty biscuits, Tarama and some good cheese; Jenny had some leftover wine and I had Sarsaparilla

And at 6.30pm I had Scotch steak & salad with bin 555 Shiraz followed by Pavlova and fancy icecream -- via Jenny

The treatment has not yet begun so I am still in pain, but my customary positive mood has returned