Cancer 17
If I am a little less positive than usual today it is because my prognosis is not good. The surgeons removed the original tumour from the bowel. It had grown a fair bit, but beforehand they found a second tumour outside the bowel attached to the peritoneum. It was about 12cm x 12cm. At the time of the CT scan there was a ‘swelling’.They abandoned the robot surgeon and went for the big chop. Also, there are a largish number of nodules on the surface of the peritoneum which could not be removed.
While we do not yet know the details because we need the results of the biopsy I will be going into palliative care. I understand that people can be in palliative care for long time, but given the aggressive nature of the tumour that was removed I am not optimistic that this will be the case here. I think, but with no real evidence, and apologies for being dramatic, but I believe that I have had my last birthday. I may be wrong, I hope I am wrong, but we shall see.
The plans in my head, discussed a little with Sue, may not come to fruition. I have several ideas for holidays; a French holiday with the kids, driving around the Baltic Sea, driving along the Danube, or visiting the Former Yugoslavia for the first time since around 2000.
I also have plans for several books. I am trying to finish my latest, Applied Narrative Psychology (Cambridge University Press). There is one more edit before I send it to the publisher. If I don’t hsve time Sue has promised to work with them to get it pubilshed and CUP have agreed in principle. I have further ideas, some partially written. There is Bond of Blood, a 100,000 word novel about families split during the Civil War around Wingfield Manor. I have around 30-40,000 words of a (hopefully) humorous and tragic novel about work in a modern university. There are about 15,000 words of a novel about the Battle of Ashbourne, part of war where the UK has been invaded.
There are a couple of history books. The first is about the social history of Wingfield Manor, discussing not only the key events such as the sieges in the Civil War, but the people, from Immanuel Halton, a mentor of our first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, to Colonel Danby, Commander of the royaist forces in the second siege in 1644, who was shot in the face by a deserter as he tried to sneak out of the manor dressed as a woman.
Finally, there is a book, jointly authored with Sue, about Sebastien le Prestre, Marshal Vauban, engineer of a series of sometimes massive, sometimes small, forts for Louis XIV in France. They ringed the country, providing an effective interlocking system in vulnerable areas, such as facing north towards Belgium, east to mainly Germany and Italy, south to Spain, and then at key strategic points along the Atlantic Ocean, The English Channel and The Mediterranean Sea. There are several hundred of these forts, some newly built, others reconstructed to Vauban’s designs. There are clear patterns of building, from covered walkways to bastions. Vauban had an ideal fort, starshaped with the ideal being Neuf Brisach, but usually made the best of natural features, hills, mountains, rivers or the sea.
Vauban was unusual as he was both beseiger and beseiged at some of these forts (not at the same time!).
Seiges are analogous to cancer. The body is the castle and the cancer is beseiging the castle. I do hope that my body has the strength of Besancon, built on a large hill in the east, with a fortified town at the bottom (where interned British women were held by the Germans from 1940, and I bought Sue’s watch un 2015), or La Rochelle in the west, that held out against the English army of the Duke of Buckingham in the 1620s. That is a story of the weak leadership of Charles 1st, which brings us full circle to the Civil War mentioned earlier,
What is Sue’s role in this book, as it is difficult to see her wanting to write a book about war? She is the illustrator. Her style is ideal for showing the main elements of these forts, and I would love to see this as our final (or preferably not final) big project. It also allows us to see France for what it is to us, castles to me and food for Sue; different interests working in unison, as a true partnership.
Dr Nigel Hunt 
This is not the news we’d hoped for – so sorry, Nigel.
At last (these words hang heavily today), you’re planning to write some books I’d actually choose to read.
Let us indeed hope that your fortress-like stature stands firm and repels the marauding horde – England must hold!
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