bob
Sleep: your best medicine: one certain way to prevent disease?
When it comes to sleep, one of the important things is time. The time you go to bed, the amount of time you sleep, the
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Bob and I have been married for almost 30 years.
We met as Samaritan volunteers, brought together by a filing cabinet
(as well as a desire to help people, of course!) – Bob had one (a filing cabinet)
and I wanted one; and the rest, as they say, is history.
I think I had a completely normal childhood. Like most kids of my age I was pretty active – because in the early years we didn’t have a car so I cycled everywhere just to get from A to B – it was the natural thing to do so I never thought about it – plus I’ve always loved being outdoors. Neither of my parents were particularly active until they retired, took up bowls and walked a bit. My father loved sport – football matches which I hated (much to his disappointment) and cricket – his true love (even worse), but always from a safe seat ie not actually taking part.
As I grew up nobody bothered about what they ate – they just ate what they ate and drank what they drank – it wasn’t an issue. But, also as I grew up I suppose I had a propensity of putting on weight and my Mother, who was tiny and bird-like, was always nagging me about it – so I’d go on a self-enforced diet for a while – but it never really worried me.
Health-wise – I was never engaged with anything of that nature, food was always an interest and it was the norm to over-eat and eat all the wrong things. I’ve always loved cheese and had a sweet tooth – so as we always had a tin of biscuits in our house (my Mother’s secret stache, she thought) which I always found and ate the lot which was a great comfort. Then for my work – wining and dining was all part of the job – taking people out and being taken out – and I drank a lot but only socially, so I developed a taste for proper food at proper restaurants. Also my Mother developed an interest in cordon bleu cooking which is one of the reasons I suppose I love cooking so much.
So, apart from breaking my arm twice falling off my roller skates and having my jaw fixed (I had a jaw malformation which caused it to dislocate), I didn’t get hospitalised at all as an adult until my late fifties – which I think is pretty amazing. Some people seem to spend half their life visiting doctors and being in hospital. I suppose I’m like my Father – he never went to hospital until he started to have strokes at the end of his life and I reckon he killed himself with smoking. I remember he seemed to have no circulation in his legs, they looked like china – probably a classic case for amputation if he’d lived.
And then one day, out of the blue (Myni’s birthday actually – we’d been to Rick Stein’s restaurant in Padstow for lunch) I had these terrible stomach pains. We came home and I went to bed, but the pains continued and so Myni insisted on phoning the out-of-hours doctor who told us to come straight in to our local Accident and Emergency hospital. The doctor examined me and said they wanted to keep me in; it was one of the worst things ever for Myni and I to drive to the hospital together, to be left there and watch her drive away without me.
I was hospitalised for a week. They found that I was completely blocked with an infection in the colon which, after all the tests, was found to be infected polyps in the colon – known as Diverticulitis, which they call the western disease ie caused by western eating habits. After a life health-wise of such constancy, it was a frightening wake-up call. The terrible pain attacks continued for about a year and so after that I learnt that I had to start taking antibiotics fast to zap the infection – or risk dire – possibly even fatal, consequences. I was given literature on the subject including suggested diet and Myni, who is big on research, would have looked in to it, but I can’t imagine I’ve changed my eating habits that much, but whatever was there seems to have gone and I’ve been pain-free in this respect since then – touch wood!
I forgot to mention a couple of years before all of this, I picked up a parasite in the gut (it’s called giardia) during my time of intensive travel in India or the Middle East. It took about three to four months before they identified the problem via the Hospital of Tropical Diseases, during which time at least I wasn’t really eating and everything I ate went straight through me so I lost lots of weight. We even had Environmental Health on the doorstep as Giardia is a notifiable disease and they were worried I’d picked it up here. Eventually they identified it was a water-born parasite that had taken up residence in my gut and which they were eventually able to zap with lots of really powerful, targeted anti-biotics. Being smitten in the stomach seems to be a bit of a recurring theme.
But all of this was leading up to the main event ….For about two and a half years Myni had been commenting on the frequency with which I went to pee. I wouldn’t have any of it, refused to listen and came up with every excuse including genetics ie my Mother had to pee every few minutes, but eventually Myni actually made a doctor’s appointment for me and forced me to go – and there I was ‘Cancered’.
Whatever is happening around you, if you believe in something, go for it.
I can remember everything all too clearly – the unimaginably awful tests – which seemed to go on and on and the six biopsies taken either side of the enlarged prostate (wonderful!) and then an eventual diagnosis of Stage 2 Prostate Cancer (ie it had just broken out of the prostate but had not spread to any other organs or bones). The consultant told me if I hadn’t gone to my GP when I did the prognosis would have been a very different story.
And then there was the 37 days (that’s every week day for 7 weeks) of commuting from the Lizard, (where we live) to Treliske Hospital in Truro, which amounted to about two and a half thousand miles – which was no joke. And because I had to stop – for what seemed like every few minutes, during the journeys, I reckon I should produce a good loo guide, as I know every loo stop between here and Treliske.
Drinking is an issue; the ‘experts’ are always telling us to drink more – but the more you drink the more you pee. So when I know I’m going to be on the road (or anywhere away from home, actually) for any length of time I am acutely mindful of the ‘stopping off’ points.
And then there were the bad effects of hormone treatment – severe fatigue, hot flushes and depression, which after about 18 months – and in discussion with the hospital and my GP, I have now come off. So I am off all cancer-related medication now (just keep on with the medication to help with the waterworks), and the hospital have adopted a wait and see policy – with my GP checking my PSA levels on a regular basis to see that the cancer is stable; so far so good.
I suppose looking back over my journey with cancer, I’ve had a hell of a time. Myni tells me I have been stoic – and I guess I have, but she also often accuses me of being ‘levitational’ ie floating above reality – especially anything unpleasant. (We always called my Mother Hyacinth Bucket – so I’m probably like her). And although I must have been worried at the time, I’d still say ‘it’ (the situation) doesn’t worry me and I just get on with things. Perhaps it’s a bloke thing; women can scream their heads off and bawl but men deal with stuff internally.
There’s just so much of this Prostate Cancer around – probably my Father had it but was never diagnosed. I think, what’s more worrying are the less-known cancers like testicular Cancer, which seem to attack much younger guys under 40. I was reading a book by Nigel Farage recently (The Purple Revolution). He had Testicular Cancer in his early twenties, which if it had been left up to the NHS, would have killed him. But fortunately the company that he was working for at the time had private medical insurance – which sorted the situation with the necessary surgery, otherwise he wouldn’t be around today. Prostate Cancer is well documented and the sufferers brilliantly supported – in the main, but the people with the lesser-known cancers just don’t seem to be able to get the help and support they need anywhere.
There have been positive sides to all this – especially in terms of my own help and support. When I went back to the hospital to say how isolated I felt, they suggested I go to the gym in Falmouth run by Steve Winnan, who is not only a Personal Trainer but has some knowledge of how exercise can help with all types of cancer. I’ve been going there twice a week for almost three years now – and, yes, I get to exercise which is a known health boost but it is also a great place for ‘shed men’ to chat about all sorts of things – bloke things, of course, but also comparing notes about what different treatments we’ve had – or more importantly what treatments we haven’t had.
And now some real friendships have started to develop. I was watching this TV interview with Robert Webb and he was talking about the great benefits of ‘Bromance’ – ie men having someone or a close group of friends (a sort of brotherhood) to safely share their feelings with – well, I can really vouch for that.
I have to say that I really don’t like talking about health issues – it reminds me of when my Mother used to get together with all her old chronies – it was all they ever seemed to talk about, and I think it can become an obsession – which is neither good nor healthy.
So, yes, having said all this I have to go on to talk about arthritis which seems to have crept up on me all of a sudden. There is no treatment for arthritis, but exercise keeps the muscles in good condition – another reason for going to the gym on a regular basis, so that as I find walking increasingly difficult, I do, at least, keep moving around; and, of course, the less you do, the less you can do – I’m mindful of that.
Last year, because we were thinking of travelling long haul, I went to see the hospital consultant and so I know that at least one of my knees is knackered with osteo-arthritis. But now I also know the NHS waiting time for a knee replacement is only seven to eight weeks round here, I am not so worried now and I plan to put off the operation for as long as I can. I am completely against pain killers on a regular basis and the dangers of getting addicted to them – and other side effects, has been much talked about in the media recently – plus where do you go from there ie taking pain killers leads to taking more and stronger pain killers, eventually there’s just nowhere to go. So I’m going to do all that I can to maintain my situation as long as possible. Ages ago, Myni forced me to go and see her registered dietician, to try and get me to consider the essential benefits of a balanced diet. And when recently my GP identified that I had a Vitamin B12 deficiency and was threatening me with injections, by going back to the registered dietician to get advice and by upping my consumption of red meat, dairy products, nuts etc I was able to reverse the deficiency…so no injections. So it just goes to show how important it is to know about things – probably most people don’t have a clue. Because of her own health issues Myni is really clued up about food now – and whatever affects her affects me because we are clones.
Recently – a recommendation from another sufferer, I have started to take turmeric (in yogurt with black pepper and honey) as a medicine to help with arthritis – disgusting, but we’ll see how it goes. And even more recently I have started acupuncture to help with pain relief. And the next step is to send a copy of this story together with a 19 page Institute of Functional Medicine questionnaire I’ve completed to Glinys Johnson to get her perspective and advice of what else I should or shouldn’t be doing – that god of small steps that Myni is always going on about.
I know that Myni despairs about me not being bothered, and certainly never being bothered about doing anything to help myself on a regular basis …and I know I can be an asshole (pardon the expression) about things that matter. But I do know that, at the end of the day, I have to make changes in my life and that only I can do this for myself. But, will it happen? I don’t know. I guess I just don’t seem to find it so important plus – and even though I’ve seen the effect of changes made, I’ve still got this thought running in my head that I’ve managed to get to 69 years without worrying, so why should I worry now? I know, I know I’m hopeless – so keep reminding me, keep chipping away.
Bob is in his early 70s, and was born in Brixton, South London. The only child of working parents – his Mum spent pretty much all of her working life employed by John Lewis in their accounts department as a number cruncher, and his Dad – a practical man (Bob takes after him) worked in the timber trade.
Bob was a solitary child, completely happy in his own company mending radios etc in his shed – only emerging from there voluntarily when the benefits of socialising presented itself sufficiently to make him join the Boys’ Brigade and later the Royal Naval Reserve – a substitute for the Royal Navy, which was his true career choice but which he was unable to join because of his poor eyesight.
Bob managed to combine his love of the sea and travel within his subsequent career with IBM as a trained computer engineer – a job which allowed him increasingly to travel the world. His jet-setting lifestyle also led him, increasingly, to an appreciation of the finer things in life – art, music and especially good food. So when we came together – whatever else we had in common food and weight were high up there and it gave me great pleasure to tell people that we were the Tilley-Tubbies.
Like his father before him – and probably like many guys, actually, Bob has an issue with communicating at an emotional level and when we first met talking about matters up close and personal was a no-go area. After 30 years of being perpetually battered by an ardent communicator like me – you will be able to see – by reading his story that he has moved his position slightly in this respect, but under pressure Bob always reverts to (the silent) type. Bob’s mantra is – and has always been, that he has never worried about ‘it’ (ie life) and that ‘it’ has never been a problem, (hence, he says, he remembers very little of his childhood); Bob always operates from this position.
Bob’s response:
“Although it is true to say that I was, initially, dragged into Bridle Ways – and now into ‘Take nine lives at least…’, I’d like it to be known that there was always a willingness on my part to be involved in other people’s lives altruistically!”
When it comes to sleep, one of the important things is time. The time you go to bed, the amount of time you sleep, the
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