On Dreams and Aviation

I was reading an article yesterday on Engadget on the extraordinary planes that have come out of Lockheed-Martin’s Skunkworks at Area 51. The thing about the USAF is that you think you know all the kit they have and then they lift the covers a little and reveal even more amazing UFO like objects. For instance there’s the SR-71 Blackbird, a seriously speedy spy plane designed to fly higher and faster than Soviet SAM batteries. Now I read that there was the Oxcart too which must have come between the U2 and the Blackbird. It's the B2 Stealth bomber which I think has an amazing beauty. Yes it's a lethal weapon, a remarkable, hidden, fast nuclear bomber with a humongous range. It's a testament to its capabilities that it's intended to stay in service until 2058. It's probably a testament to its cost too. The B-52, that lumbering Cold War and Vietnam War era very heavy bomber has now seen active service for 50 years with more to come, but looking at it is like looking at a Galaxy heavy lift craft compared to Concorde, which incidentally had its maiden flight 40 years ago yesterday.

                                                      SR-71 Blackbird

The B2 then is the bee’s knees. The B1b is pretty cool too but I'm unclear as to how stealthy it is. I do know that British army had one on call when they had (nominal) control of Basra. It's stealth or lack therof would have been a moot point during the occupation.

                                                             B2

I dreamt I was in a B2 last night. That’s not strictly true. I dreamt that I was in a next generation Airbus mostly made of glass with forward facing 4K tv screens. While we were flying the pilot decided to show us the nosecone camera view of a B2 on a daytime conventional bombing raid. We started high above the clouds, swooped through a column of rising grey smoke from the impact of a bomb ahead and then lined up for our pass. I could feel the change in altitude, the g force effect of dropping as if going over a humpback bridge, which is incidentally what it is like to become weightless in space. Space sickness is a thing and astronauts throw up a lot. The quality of the screen was such that though the image looked real as I was up close I could see the pixels. As we finally lined up my father said he felt faint.

                                            Terrifying in a thunderstorm

At this point I should say that I have very vivid dreams. They are in colour with Dolby surround and on occasion I can control them, which makes them lucid. I have recurring dream landscapes that I return to from time to time. I call them dreamscapes as they only exist in my mind. My dreams are sometimes prescient, I've had déjà vu from dreams more times than I can remember. In the real world I can sometimes feel bad energy… Since my father died I've communicated with him many times whilst dreaming. True, some of the conversations we had were conversations I wanted to have, but some were not. Sometimes we just get in his car and go out and do things. He does tend to pop up nowadays at important moments in my life, as a steadying hand. I was very close to him, and I once shared a dream with him. It was a hot summer’s day and I thought a sleep in the shade on the lawn would be a good idea. He thought so too and so we both lay on our backs next to each other and dozed off. I was 31 I think. We both woke at the same moment, both dreaming that the phone was ringing. But it wasn't. We were outside, out of earshot of the phone. There was a connection between us which has continued now that he's no longer around in a physical form.

Yesterday something very good happened in my life, and it was reflected in the exuberance of my dreaming. I had a restless night but in the quiet hours of dawn I managed two solid hours of brilliant REM sleep. It was all quickfire. I lost my wallet in India but it was found covered in curry on the floor. I was then in a familiar dreamscape loosely based on the Underground. This is a warm earthy dimly lit but unthreatening Underground where the walls, tunnels and vaults are made of reddish brown Victorian bricks. It probably looks a bit like London’s sewer system. There are trains down there (District line) but there are cubby  holes in the tunnels to stand in when they go past. I was there to see my friend Lucy’s underground garden. Next I was walking through Tokyo with Betsey saying how wonderful a new presence in my life is and Betsey was agreeing. And finally I was on this future plane and my father felt ill. I had to ask the stewardess if there was a doctor on board. Then my alarm went off. 

Of the many reasons that I like dreaming about my father one of the most significant is that I feel whole again. Life feels right, as it was in the beginning so to speak. I'm very fortunate to be able to experience his life and love in this manner. It's one of the reasons I now have no fear of death for there is, for me, an afterlife unconnected to organised religion.

                                                      Happy sunrise

And what of the dreams? I had curry for dinner hence the wallet marinated in a curry sauce. I found myself in a dreamscape because I was relaxed and explorative. I dreamt of my father because he brings great comfort and love to me. 

And the flying? That’s a classic. Flying dreams for me denote supreme overwhelming happiness. 

I woke with my arms above my head as a happy baby sleeps.

Some Words on Grief

Rather than write a great big missive about what grief is and its effects I'm just going to list some thoughts. Listing this is easier than writing a big post as too much reflection on this is very saddening.

Its not much fun and continues not to be much fun.

I went to a wedding with my mother on Saturday, which was the first time we'd been to a summer event like this without my father. When I saw the groom and his father embrace before the service I had a pang of envy.

I was crushingly depressed on Sunday evening when I got back to London, and on Monday I lay in bed all afternoon staring blankly at the wall.

Grief has this effect. One moment you're fine and then it smashes into you and I become completely incapacitated. It is like depression lasts for a day or two rather than weeks/months on end.

I had a funny thought. I may be getting better (ish) but my father never will. He remained in that awful place we were all in October. He never recovered. Its obvious but such has been the effect on me that I have to rebuild emotional responses to it all.

Every now and again he'll flash into my mind and it stops me from what I was doing.

At the wedding I suddenly thought about him on his bed once he'd died. That's not right but these are memories that have to be processed. I can't pretend it didn't happen. Its quite peculiar really. There you are doing something and then the worst thing you've ever seen is there for a split second. It completely throws you. Him dying wasn't the worst part of it. I mean, it was bad but there had been worse moments when he had been ill.

Yesterday was a year ago to the day when I was told that he would probably die within four months. I only know that because it was the same day that Felippe Massa headbutted a shock absorber at 160mph.

Home is painfully quiet.

I find it difficult to discuss certain aspects with my mother as I know it will upset her. 

I haven't cried since October. Strange really. I think aspects of his final decline were so horrendous that I had expended all that emotion by the time we got to the funeral.

Two things I thought after he had died:

1) I'm glad I don't have to watch my father die again
2) What a terrible shame that everyone's father dies

Things I don't do now:

1) Watch anything to do with hospitals.
2) Go into hospitals

The thing that I hold on to and refuse to subject to any thought regarding its existence:

The afterlife

The thing I definitely believe in

Ghosts

Things I'm even more ambivalent about than before:


God

Books I’ve Read

At the end of 2008 I decided to start keeping a list of books that I had read in the past month. I read a lot but I tend to forget when I last read a book. This means that every now again I reread a book too soon after finishing it last time. And the really annoying thing about this is that because its longer ago since you started the book as opposed to finishing it you can get halfway through a book and suddenly remember what’s going to happen, or, everything starts to feel a little familiar in a déjà vu on the tip of my tongue kind of way. This happened recently with Paul Auster’s Leviathan, which I was about to read for the 4^th time but stopped after 30 pages.

I tend to buy a lot of books, and I and my family have thousands of the things so every now and again I impose a moratorium on book buying. I’ve only bought 2 of the 14 books I’ve read this year, an idea of the backlog I face. Its in the region of 30 books right now. I’ll never read them all. I spent a year trying to listen to all the music on my ipod, and I could listen at work, and it was impossible. The result: tinnitus in my right ear. At least books don’t damage me.

So here’s my list.

World War Z	Max Brooks	The Zombie war - Very silly but gripping nonetheless - Fiction	2008
High-Rise	JG Ballard	Dated but curious take on tribalism	2008
Glamorama	Bret Easton Ellis	Gripping thriller. Very black comedy but a favourite	2008
Flood	Richard Doyle	Completely stupid disaster novel	2008
Underground London	Stephen Smith	Historical journey through London	2008
Fierce People	Dick Wittenburn	1980s New Yorker Coming of age	2008
Moondust	Andrew Smith	What was it like to be on the Moon?	2008
Doomsday Men	PD Smith	History of the atom bomb and all things radioactive.	2009
Brave New World	Aldous Huxley	Nightmarish to us, but is it really that bad?	2009
Brighton Rock	Graham Greene	The seamy side of 1930s Brighton	2009
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas	John Boyne	An 8 year old's view of the Final Solution	2009
The Welsh Girl	Peter Ho Davies	German POWs in Wales during WW2	2009
Far North	Marcel Theroux	Post-apocalyptic view of Canada	2009
A Rumor of War	Phil Caputo	Personal account of Vietnam War	2009
The Naked and the Dead	Norman Mailer	Fictionalised personal account of the Pacific War	2009
The Day of the Triffids	John Wyndham	Plants take over the world	2009
The Chrysalids	John Wyndham	Post-apocalptic view of mutation and religion	2009
The Kraken Awakes	John Wyndham	Sea-borne monsters from Mars rule the world	2009
Neutral Buoyancy	Tim Ecott	All about Scuba diving	2009
Beyond the Blue Horizon	Alexander Frater	Flying the  to the Far East along the old Imperial Airways Route	2009
A Hoxton Childhood	A.S. Jasper	A personal account of poverty from 1900-30	2009
In Cold Blood	Truman Capote	Account of homicide in 1950s Kansas	2009
Atomised	Michel Houllebecque	French lech and his hateful life	2009
The Wasp Factory	Iain Banks	Mentalist at work on Scottish island	2010
D-Day: The Battle for Normandy	Anthony Beevor		2010
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali	Gil Courtemanche	Romantic novel in Heart of Darkness setting preceding genocide	2010
Regeneration	Pat Barker	Based on psychiatric notes on Siegfried Sassoon in 1917	2010
Every Man For Himself	Beryl Bainbridge	Fictional take on 1st class passengers on Titanic	2010
Alone in Berlin	Hans Falada	Life under the Nazis in 1942 Berlin	2010
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo	Steig Larsson	Overlong whodunnit	2010
London at War	Philip Zeigler	Suprisingly uninteresting - skim read most of it	2010
Run Silent Run Deep	Edward Beach	WW2 submarine warfare in the Pacific. Cracking stuff.	2010
Bad Science	Ben Goldacre	Dismissing scientific 'facts' as reported by newspapers. More a dipper than a full read.	2010
Imperial Ambitions	Noam Chomsky	Outdated critiques of 21st C US Foreign Policy.	2010
Empire of the Sun	JG Ballard	Thinly fictionalised account of internment in Shanghai. Very good book.	2010
The Reader	Bernhard Schlink	Post-war love in Germany in a time of hidden histories. Superb.	2010
Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea	Barbara Demick	Fascinating account of life stories of North Koreans	2010
The Forgotten Soldier	Guy Sajer	Brilliant German first person view of the Eastern Front	2010

Mr Keen McKeen

My attention span is almost nil right now, so getting anything down on paper is a serious trial. Honestly, I get about two hundred words in and then end up going and doing something else instead. I've got a job interview tomorrow and I'm going to find it a bit of a challenge and I need to be all smiley and keen. Problem is that I've never felt less smiley than I am now, and since I being made redundant by one part of Imperial I mustn't display by anger and bitterness to them either. Above all I need to display a keenness which is lacking right now since I haven't had a holiday since April, and in that time period I've been made redundant, moved house, had my brother's wedding, and cared for my father during his terminal illness, had his funeral and am now grieving for him.

I am exhausted on every level.

I mustn't show this. I must be Mr Keen McKeen from Keenshire. I must be the keenest interviewee they've ever had. They contacted me, not me them, so that's good news. I just hope the competition is rubbish as I'd rather not leave Imperial as it's a great place to work.

It seems flippant to put this as a status update on facebook... but I'm:

in pieces
in shock
can't believe it
drawing on an inner strength I didn't know I had
terribly sorry
lost
everywhere and nowhere
exhausted
facing up to what follows life

In short, the road we're on is nearing its end, and my greatest concern is that there is no suffering.

I'm missing him already.

Addendum to yesterday's post

1) I started writing this for a Macmillan Cancer forum but realised that it was best placed on my blog. Those on the forum are well aware of the issues that GBM raises and entails, right down to the acronym itself.

2) Temezedol is a oral (pill) chemotherapy drug. It is relatively new and is used at the same time as radiotherapy. It is 20% more effective when used in conjunction with radiotherapy rather than being taken seperately.

3) I work in medical research which means that I have university access to a wide range of peer reviewed science journals. I find that learning about these conditions help me to understand this condition. Once can google anything but peer reviewed science journals are the most trustworthy sources.

4) I found 3 great articles in The Lancet Oncology which were very informative regarding a new form of chemo only approved for use by the FDA in the US in May 2009. This was the good news.

5) These journals tend to make for grim reading.

6) I haven't and I'm not going to tell my immediate family the statistics for GMB. It would serve no purpose. This is the best portal to put this stuff down.

Things at the moment

The story: my father, who is only 69, was diagnosed with a grade 4 Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) brain tumour at the beginning of July. He had a seizure whilst driving on the A4 in London but had the presence of mind to stop the car before fainting. 2 miles up the road and he would have been on the motorway doing 80 mph rather than 40mph so for that fortune I have to be thankful. His tumour is inoperable as it is in the grey matter, very deep and behind the right eye.

He had a biopsy at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead in mid-July which was traumatic for us all, diagnosis was confirmed, and today he had his final dose of radiotherapy having undergone a 6 week course of radio. He managed 5 weeks of Temedol before his quality of life was reduced to there being no quality. For 5 weeks he was an out patient at the Royal Marsden in London, but has been in for the last 10 days.

He has suffered from severe nausea and vomiting to the point that he couldn't keep anything down. He would then be hospitalised, as a result we've had four ambulances and my mother and I have driven him in twice in the early morning. We are fortunate that we only live 15 minutes from the Marsden, and very lucky that he continued to pay health insurance all his life, but saved it for the 'big things' that might come along. The Marsden had a serious fire a few years ago so beds can be hard to come by.

The last 6 weeks have been nothing short of diabolical. As many others here have commented, GBM is so cruel as it reduces sufferers to shadows of their former selves, seemingly rather rapidly. My father has lost his independence - no car - and now seems to be losing part of his mind. I kid myself that this is down to the radio and chemo but the professor (consultant) rang last Friday to say that the confusion he is suffering could be brain damage. He didn't say what the likely cause could be. I know that a side effect of morphine is confusion but then having a raygun fired into your head for 6 weeks can't be too healthy either!

The side-effects of the medication are taking their toll. Dexamethasone may be the wonder drug for reducing brain inflammation but it is destroying his muscle mass. I may be a bit off here but it is my understanding that catabolic steroids are the opposite to anabolic steroids. Still, they are one of the most important pills, those and the anti falling out of bed pills (the anti fitting ones). He's also on Cyclizine, morphine sulphate, a stomach lining protecting one, 2 blood pressure ones, and more paracetemol than you can shake a stick at.

His condition has deteriorated in the last 10 days since he has been an in patient which has presented us with a catch 22. He is physically weakening and now needs, and frankly struggles, to walk with a stick where before he was wobbly but at least he could get about. His short-term memory has completely gone too which means that the time and date have no meaning to him. He is unable to use his email and is so easily muddled. This is one of the worst aspects as he has gone from being perceptive and intelligent to being unable to carry out any work at all. Yet he still trys to work and this leads him to being frustrated and cross, which he never was before, and then he's easily distracted. In the hospital there are no distractions but at home there are so many distractions in particular paperwork such as tying up his business interests because, let's face it, the survival rate for GBM G4 is basically nil. How one can do all this when one struggles to put a password into the PC rather beats me.

I'm trying to be philosophical about it all. There's no one to blame nor anything he could have done differently as we know that no one knows the causal factors for brain tumours. I don't believe that it's God's will, or cruel fate, or bad luck or any other human emotional response. I don't even know if being fair or not comes into it. It is sadly just one of those things.

I now realise that he's not going to make 80 which was my expected target age, and I'm not entirely convinced that he'll make the UK male average life expectancy. He's had a very good life. The tragedy is that my mother will be denied her husband and our family will suffer this great loss. He is also being denied this retirement that he had just set up.

I have hope that his current symptoms of confusion are as a result of the radio and treatment and not due to the tumour or brain damage as was suggested as a possibility by the consultant. I also know that he is receiving world class care and that nothing more can be done. It still seems unreal, and caring for him these last few months has been so very stressful that I can't really remember him before all this. I will one day, just not right now.

I'll end now because I've gone nearly a thousand words. I work in medical research and though I'm not medically minded myself I have friend who is a doctor at Great Ormond St and another who is an oncologist. I know the ramifications of GBM as do they and it helps to discuss it with them.

As a family will shall get through this, after all people die all the time. My brother is getting married this Saturday and that is going to be emotional and deeply shocking for my father's friends to see his state. However it will still be a celebration of life and the future.

Change afoot and no policies

Michael Portillo was talking this morning of a scorched earth policy in the House of Commons. Not in the literal sense, more rather in the removal of the bad eggs who have been, let's say, lacking in moral fibre. A shake-up of rules is needed apparently, an end to party politics, transparency. That's great but personally my views on politicians have been scorched. I really couldn't care less what they have to say anymore. In some ways it feels like there's been a general election and in the euphoria that follows when the country is leaderless, parliament has been dissolved, the polling stations are closed but the count isn't in, one feels happiness that the last shower have gone and slight trepidation of the next lot. All magnified by caffeine as you're surruptiously staying up all night to watch it (nobody readily admits to doing this). What I'm driving at is that there is a point in an election when the new lot might or might not be in and the old lot might or might not be out. There's change afoot and no policies.

Which is akin to what we have now. Like most others I would imagine, when the Telegraph's MP expenses bonanza kicked off I was pretty angry with it all. Not just the shameless hands in the till, but the childish 'it wasn't me it's the system wot done it' excuse that somehow absolves anyone from blame. The greed, the sheer avarice of it all, the tax-dodging, the denial, and in some cases the bare faced fraud and that helpless feeling that they just 'don't get it'. Maybe MPs were never this arrogant or maybe MPs think they deserve respect rather than earning it, maybe this was a reason for what happened. But I'm completely mystified as to how this can happen and why it is that only one head has rolled, that of the Speaker yesterday. As has been stated time and again, any normal person would be fired from their job for abusing an employer's expense system. Yet for all the tough talking by the party leaders this hasn't happened. Caught with your hands in the till? Surely a summary dismissal is in order, and not just from the shadow cabinet but from Parliament. Perhaps, constitutionally this can only happen through deselection. That may be the mechanism for removal.

With this blowtorch of public derision searing through Parliament there are no new policy announcements, no select committee reports, indeed its as if not only the government has imploded, which is not unprecedented, but the whole system of government. Sure, they can say this and that but who actually believes them? More so, who actually cares? I've always disliked Gordon Brown, moving from optimism (could be better than Blair/return to the grey man of politics like Major) to pity (the Election that never was highlighted his indecision and I pitied him for that). He is the most disliked PM ever and Labour has its lowest polling ever. It has got to the point that I don't care for anything that comes out of his mouth. His demolition of the UK economy is absolute, as his inability to take responsibility not only for his errors but also any decisions that need to be made. At least Tony Blair had personality even if he was the epitome of spin. Brown is a divisive, indecisive, sulky, bully who has reached the top of the pile and is completely out of his depth. I don't like the man.

But here lies my concern. Parliament has been eviscerated, Gordon Brown is dead man walking, there's no prospect of Labour rising out of the ashes and there's a whole year until the next General Election. That would be fine were it not for the fact that these people are meant to be in charge and presiding over lifting this country out of this recession. Alistair Darling's pronouncements on the economy's recovery by Christmas suggest that he has either completely lost the plot or that bunker mentality really has set in and that he really believes that.

So here we are then. We're stuck with this useless government presiding over a broken Parliament and a ruined economy and we're going to waste a whole year while Gordon refuses to do the decent thing and call an election. It really is a sorry state of affairs.

And what could be done to improve matters? Obviously a change of government, but I'd like to see Proportional Representation, the format of the Chamber reconfigured to a semi-circle as opposed to two benches, the removal of all pomp and ceremony as these traditions seemed to have extended all the way to the antiquated work practices, primaries to choose local MPs, in short a complete revision of how Parliament is conducted. If it is ever going to happen it seems that now is the time.