Regular readers of this blog will know that in May I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Actually I suspect regular readers of this blog would have known that even if I hadn’t mentioned it here, since pretty much all regular readers are my mum. In September I had a radical prostatectomy—my prostate was removed—and last Thursday the consultant told me that the histology looked very good. All the signs are that the cancer has been removed from my body. There are more tests to come before I can be certain, but for now, let’s assume that I’m cured.

7th Movember

It’s been a rocky road getting here. To start with, there was the coming to terms with the idea that I have cancer. And then some difficult decisions.

Option A is reputed to have the highest chance of no recurrence, but only by a tiny margin. Besides, the problem with studies into recurrence rates at 15 years is that they necessarily study treatment techniques in use at least 15 years ago, so the reality is that you’re going in blind in terms of long term success rates. Option A also causes urinary incontinence—usually short term—and carries a high risk of permanent loss of erections.

Option B has a slightly lower risk of not getting it up again, but a significantly higher risk of bowel damage resulting in faecal incontinence.¹

Tough choices. And not just for men, but for their partners too. Consider it women, what would you prefer? A total change to your sex life, or never accepting another dinner party invitation for fear your bloke will poo his pants half way through the evening?

So, that’s my motivation then? I’m growing a mo so that men in future will never be faced with these horrible choices because they were vaccinated in their teens and prostate cancer has been eradicated?

No. Get real. That’s not going to happen any time soon.

OK, so that men will not be faced with these choices because the Urologist will just hand them a prescription and say “take one of these three times a day for a fortnight and you’ll be right as rain. I’m afraid there’s a risk that your erections will be an inch or two bigger, but we can probably treat that if it’s a problem to you”?

Nice fantasy, but no, not that one either.

I’m decorating my face and spending a month looking a complete pillock so that men will be faced with these difficult choices in the future. Because around 10,000 men each year in the UK don’t have a choice of treatment². They discover they have prostate cancer too late. It kills them.

It feels a very strange thing to say after being diagnosed with prostate cancer at 47, having had my fitness, my self esteem and my love life shattered by the treatment, but I was lucky. I caught it early and I’ve probably been cured. And it’s the catching it early that’s the key. Caught early it can be cured. But let it spread and things look a lot worse. Prostate cancer has a strong preference for spreading into the bones, and once it’s there, it kills.

So I’m growing a mo this month to give me a chance to say “Guys, don’t ignore this”. Problems with your boy bits are scary, and it’s all too tempting to bury your head in the sand and pretend nothing’s happening. Don’t. Find out about the symptoms. Talk to your GP about check ups. Never ignore strange changes—it may be nothing, but get it checked out.

The choices I’ve faced were shitty, but a shed load better than dying.

Of course, a little bit of extra money for research into better treatments wouldn’t go amiss either, so do visit my Movember page and sponsor me.

Like so many of the rivers of England, much of this stretch of the Avon is privately owned. There’s no right to kayak along it. Unlike Scotland, in England we’re denied the right to enjoy our countryside and our heritage by quietly floating along the river. My journey today was made possible because the local canoe club negotiate with land owners to allow this annual fund raising event to take place.

It was wonderful to be able to put all the bits of river together. Some of it I have kayaked before, much of the rest I have seen on walks, or on visits to the Castle or Charlcote Park. Some of it was new to me altogether—I discovered a bridge I didn’t know existed. Highlights of the day include seeing the 16th century Charlcotte House emerging from behind the trees, and shooting my first weir. And I didn’t fall in! Check out Sophie’s photos of the day.

So why is it called the Doggy Paddle? Because the event raises money for the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association. Guide Dogs are a charity I’m very happy to support because I have seen what a difference they can make to someone’s life. When he was about 8 (I’m sure my mum will phone and correct me about that) my brother was diagnosed with Retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that causes tunnel vision, night blindness and eventually blindness.

Now in his forties, he still has some sight but it is extremely limited. A few years ago he decided to apply for a guide dog. The GDBA eventually matched him with a beautiful black Labrador named Yarran. It’s hard to describe what a difference Yarran has made to my brother’s quality of life. Loosing your sight takes away basic freedoms which we all take for granted. Walking down the road becomes a daunting ordeal. A guide dog can never give someone their sight back, but it can restore some of those freedoms. It brings independence, it brings the ability to get around, to go to the pub on a Friday evening or go for a walk on Sunday afternoon. Guide dogs make a huge difference to people with limited sight in a very basic way.

Training and looking after a guide dog costs around £50,000 through its life. The GDBA is funded entirely by charitable donations so fund raising events like the Doggy Paddle are vital to them. If you’d like to help them continue to provide this amazing, life changing service I’m still collecting sponsorship for my day’s adventure—just click the button below…

Yes, we’ve been mushing again. This time I managed to avoid getting ill as soon as I got home, which means I don’t have the time for a repeat of the Gone Mushing blog which chronicled our trip two years ago. There are plenty of photos to browse through though, and such an adventure needs a few words at least.

I’m in love with the Arctic winter, its harsh beauty, its quiet, its challenge. And I doubt there can be a better way to experience the wildness of the North than by gliding across the snow hauled by a team of enthusiastic dogs. After that first trip in 2008 I knew I had to return.

This trip was very different, but every bit as magical. We couldn’t get in at the place we went to before, so ended up going to Finn-Jann. Unlike Harriniva, Finn-Jann is a tiny, family run kennels catering for only one or two groups at a time. It’s a very friendly place offering fantastic hospitality, and a great sauna and outside hot tub. We spent two nights out at wilderness cabins, but the rest of the time was based at Finn-Jann. One of the consequences of this (rather than the five nights out trip we did before) was that I felt I didn’t get to see such a change in the landscape as we covered ground.

There were advantages too, though. Our guide, Jussi, was able to adjust the dog teams as we became more confident. One day when we were only out for the afternoon an extra dog was added to each team—youngsters yet to learn the secret of going all day, but giving their all for a few hours. We really moved that day! We took teams of six dogs out on our final day too, but with the extra dog being a more experienced dog with the stamina for an all day run.

The sledding was altogether more challenging. The trails are used less anyway, which did mean that Jussi had to go ahead in a snow mobile to open them. And added to that the beginning of the week was remarkably mild and snowing heavily. The going on the soft snow was very hard, and there’s a nasty twist to heavy snow…

Last time, I wrote about Wobbly Wednesday, saying

In any long process there always seems to be a point in the middle where things go wrong. And for some reason it always seems to happen on a Wednesday

Well true to form, Wednesday did not go according to plan. We’d spent the night out at a lakeside wilderness cabin, and the day’s sledding began by heading out across the frozen lake. It wasn’t long before we hit a patch where there was a lot of water on top of the ice, between the ice and the snow. Quite reasonably really, huskies are not that keen on getting their feet wet. There was a bit of hesitation, a bit of progress, and then as my two lead dogs decided to turn round and run back into the team, complete chaos; a tangled mess of lines and a lot of very cold water. For a while I managed to keep my feet on top of snow, but inevitably as I and the young woman on work experience helping Jussi out thrashed around trying to bring some order to the chaos we both discovered that calf height water proof boots are no defence against knee deep freezing water. I had discovered something I have in common with huskies—I’m not keen on getting my feet wet either.

Even when we’d sorted the lines out and managed to get moving again, the going was really tough. The snow was very soft and several times crossing the lake Jussi’s snowmobile got stuck. The first few kilometres of that Wednesday took two hours; we were way behind schedule. It was a relief to get off the lake and change my soaking socks. Even more so to get to a kota for lunch and dry my boot liners by the fire.

In case you’re wondering what this has to do with heavy snow, the snow is the reason there was water on the lake. The weight of a fresh fall of snow pushes the ice down into the water below and the water comes up any way it can—often through holes made by fishermen.

All in all, although it was milder and the landscape perhaps not as wild, this year’s trip was certainly not short of challenge. I feel I built more of a relationship with my dogs and that we really did work together as a team and look after each other. Gliding through an Arctic forest on a sled is an experience that is hard to describe—you really should give it a try.

Links

• Photos: photos of this years trip
• Gone mushing: the diary or our 2008 trip
• Finn-Jann: the husky farm
• Wilderness Adventure: the company we booked through

The landscape the film creates is extraordinary and stunning and the special effects just awesome. It was well worth the effort of going into Birmingham to see it on a really big screen. But beyond the beautiful computer generated imagery, is it a good film?

It’s certainly high-earning. Part of that is the hype around the CGI and being in 3D. It also appeals to many tastes. It’s sci-fi, it’s got guns and soldiers, it’s got an environmental message and it’s even got a bit of a love story.

It has been suggested that Avatar is just a rehash of Dances with Wolves. It’s a fair comparison, but not necessarily a criticism. Plenty of great stories are rehashes of older stories; there’s nothing wrong with that. And Dances with Wolves was a great story. But somehow, for me Avatar lacked the emotional power of Dances with Wolves.

I should love it. I should love the portrayal of a people so in touch with their world. I should love the fact that a message about environmental destruction, about the plight of indigenous people facing corporate profit seeking is reaching a mass market. The problem is, I don’t think it is.

Sure, most of my friends were touched or inspired by it. But most of my friends are environmentalists, pagans or pantheists. When I talk to colleagues at work and others that don’t fit that mould, I get the impression that the point has not really come across.

Dances with Wolves is not, I think, a true story. But it is a believable story. It could be true. It is set in a historical context that we recognise and know about. But when you take that story and set it on a planet so far away it takes six years to get there, inhabited by 3 metre tall blue people who ride dragons, you ask the audience to suspend belief. It is no longer a story about real people, it is pure fantasy, and it is viewed as pure fantasy. Add to that the fact that some of the humans are pretty unbelievable. Parker and the Colonel have no redeeming features whatsoever. Surely nobody is really quite that despicable? In a film which is at the forefront of 3D cinematography these two at least are very much 2D characters. So what we have is a film that doesn’t invite us to think that there could be an element of truth in the story. We suspend belief, and treat it as nothing but fantasy. And an important message is missed—the message that this is really happening. Right here, back on earth. Indigenous people are loosing their homes, their lands, their way of life, at the hands of corporate profit mongers. Loggers, oil companies, mining and quarrying corporations. It’s all real. It’s all hardly noticed. And sadly, many who see Avatar don’t seem to take this away with them.

Pandora is a wonderful creation, and a fantastic vehicle for showing off what can be done with computer generated imagery. But setting the story on Pandora has reduced its power. It’s reduced it to just a story. You should go and see Avatar, on the biggest  screen you can find, because it is a stunning spectacle. I’m afraid it’s not going to change the world though. But just in case it does make you want to find out more about the plight of indigenous people a bit closer to home, you could start by checking out Survival International.

Mind you, I still want to ride dragons.

Well just occasionally a thought pops into my head that doesn’t fit into the other blogs. Perhaps something I need to make a note of, something that others might be interested too. Like yesterday I made marmalade to a recipe I’ve developed over the years and have written on several scraps of paper. And that, really, is what inspired yet another blog. So the first, well second after this, post will probably be a recipe for marmalade.