So, the next step for the doctors is to get a brain scan done, this is book for the end of September 2012, Off I go to the hospital they scan my brain and send me home, about 30 minutes later I am just about to exit the A14 when the phone rings, I answer, 'Hello this is Addenbrookes hospital, can you please come back to see one of our neurologist, bring someone with you', so now I am a little worried, 'When do you want me to come back' I ask? 'Now' says the voice at the end of the phone, 'OK' i say and turn the car around and head back to the hospital.
I arrive and I am immediately ushered into a consulting room with a young Dr, about 10 years old, well he looked that age, he asks where my companion is? I tell him I live alone and my son is at work so get to the point. 'You have a very large tumour at the front of your brain on the right side, it's attached to your frontal lobe, but It also seems to have eaten through the skull at the top on the nose and next to the right eye. 'We have booked you in for surgery tomorrow morning at 7am to remove said tumour' at this point I am very cool, I take a tissue from my pocket and wipe my nose, I had a runny nose for about 6 months and my GP had said it was Rhinitis, take these pills etc, etc, The neurologist then tells me that I do not have a runny nose and that in fact the clear yellow liquid seeping from my nose is BRAIN FLUID, remaining cool I say 'Well at least thats going to get sorted in the morning'? 'Yes' he replies 'However, there are risks in that you may loose the sight in your right eye and you may loose your sense of smell' 'The good news' he continues 'Is that it's almost 99% guaranteed to be benign' 'That's at least something positive' I say, he smiles and tells me that he is in good hands as the best brain surgeon in the country is at the hospital and he will be removing the tumour.
Long story short, they remove a tumour the size and shape a large Duck Egg, superglue a piece of skull from the side of my head over the hole above my nose staple me together, done job. I wake up to fins a cut from my left temple to my right temple full of staples and a strange look to my forehead, I latter find out that they cut an access hole in the forehead to get the the tumour its a big chunk of skull I could have put my fist through it without touching the edges. Anyway, job done, then comes the bad news, the tumour has nothing to do with my left arm and me problems, so I will have to have more tests to see if they can sort it out?
The sage continues as I write this, I am waiting for a scan on my neck, shoulder and back now, we shall see, however I am not holding my breath for a solution. Remember I mentioned in the las post about the way people reacted to this event, well the one that really sticks out is the manager of one of the colleges I was due to teach in that term, I phoned her to let her know what had happened and that I had been advised to takes a few weeks rest from work, her reaction was just well rude and inconsiderate to say the least, her response was that it was inconvenient, could I not have postponed the operation until half term? I was unreliable (I have not missed a days teaching in 8 years)? and that she would see that the rest of the counties colleges know that I am responsible for her having to cancel a course? WTF, I remain calm, cool and polite, 'Fuck Off you old hag' I say and hang up. Al the other colleges of which I was booked to teach, 6 in all, were very sympathetic and wished me well. However they all found replacements for me and it took me nearly 2 years to get back to work with them all again, except for 1. 3 and 1/2 years later I get an email from the hag, she has been on my website and seen a course she wants to run? I am the only person in the county with a course ready to go, can I do it on a Saturday in 3 weeks time? I am so tempted to either ignore the email or reply in the same polite manor I did after the operation, but after some consideration I accept the booking.
3 weeks later I have met the Hag and I am welcoming students to the course, this is a six hour booking so plenty of time to do what we need to, the course runs like so, I explain what we are going to do using a white board and a PowerPoint presentation, everyone one is excited, (I should at this point explain the I am teaching Web Design with twist that means you have a fully functioning web site in a day), 3 ours in we break for a 30 minute lunch.
I decide to pull up the software we are using and enter some of the exercises I have planed, the computer tells me I do not have the required permissions to run the software? I try again, same thing, at this point excited students are returning from lunch, I let them settle in front of the computers and explain I just need to check something out, I go off to find the Hag. She tells me I am obviously putting in the wrong login details, and comes to the classroom to show mw how to do it. She tries, same response that I got, 30 minutes later she is still trying, my students are now getting a little restless, they have paid a lot of money for the course and they have only received talk of it, another 15 minutes pass and I am now fed up, I ask her to ring IT, I can't she replies they don't work at weekends, at this point she addresses the students and offers them a full refund and she will run the courses again free of charge in a couple of weeks, everyone is now happy and they leave, she tells me that she will contact me when IT have sorted the problem with a new date for the course.
A couple of days later I send an invoice by email, about an hour later I get a call from the Hag, ' I am not paying you as you did not finish the course' 'What' I say? 'We had to give the students a refund so we don't have the budget to pay you' 'Not my problem' I say, she then tells me it's my fault as I should have checked the computers???? WTF is she on about, my fault?? I calmly say not to worry book the class again and we can talk about it the, 'OK' she says and hangs up.
2 weeks later I get and email with a new date for the course, I accept but don't turn up, 'she phones me and asks where I am, it's gone 10am and I should be teaching the Web Design course'?, I simply reply 'Due to a lack of budget I do not have the petrol to get to the college because I had not been paid by a client, so therefore get on your broom stick you old hag and don't call me again'. I hang up, I smile to myself, but I do feel sorry for the students who are a casualty of bloody mindedness from me. I start to get emails from those who had booked the course saying that it was my fault the first lesson did not run and that I had let the college down and them by not turning up, I waited for a few days until I had received all the students complaints, I replied explaining the sequence of events and why I had not turned up, it was obvious that the Hag had no intention of paying me.
SO a couple of weeks later I booked a room at another college and invited all the students to attend the course with me on a personal level at no cost, out of 12 10 turned up, completed the course and were very happy and understood why I did what I did, so good result.
A few weeks later I heard from another college manager that she had been talking to the Hag and she was calling me all sorts of names, fortunately for me the manager and I have been working together for 8 years, in fact I have written courses just for her as a unique selling point, she told the Hag basically to Fuck Off.
So the moral of the tale, if there is one, is this, DO NOT FUCK with the Grumpy Old man because he will bite you in the arse at some point. Sermon over, have a good weekend.
I arrive and I am immediately ushered into a consulting room with a young Dr, about 10 years old, well he looked that age, he asks where my companion is? I tell him I live alone and my son is at work so get to the point. 'You have a very large tumour at the front of your brain on the right side, it's attached to your frontal lobe, but It also seems to have eaten through the skull at the top on the nose and next to the right eye. 'We have booked you in for surgery tomorrow morning at 7am to remove said tumour' at this point I am very cool, I take a tissue from my pocket and wipe my nose, I had a runny nose for about 6 months and my GP had said it was Rhinitis, take these pills etc, etc, The neurologist then tells me that I do not have a runny nose and that in fact the clear yellow liquid seeping from my nose is BRAIN FLUID, remaining cool I say 'Well at least thats going to get sorted in the morning'? 'Yes' he replies 'However, there are risks in that you may loose the sight in your right eye and you may loose your sense of smell' 'The good news' he continues 'Is that it's almost 99% guaranteed to be benign' 'That's at least something positive' I say, he smiles and tells me that he is in good hands as the best brain surgeon in the country is at the hospital and he will be removing the tumour.
Long story short, they remove a tumour the size and shape a large Duck Egg, superglue a piece of skull from the side of my head over the hole above my nose staple me together, done job. I wake up to fins a cut from my left temple to my right temple full of staples and a strange look to my forehead, I latter find out that they cut an access hole in the forehead to get the the tumour its a big chunk of skull I could have put my fist through it without touching the edges. Anyway, job done, then comes the bad news, the tumour has nothing to do with my left arm and me problems, so I will have to have more tests to see if they can sort it out?
The sage continues as I write this, I am waiting for a scan on my neck, shoulder and back now, we shall see, however I am not holding my breath for a solution. Remember I mentioned in the las post about the way people reacted to this event, well the one that really sticks out is the manager of one of the colleges I was due to teach in that term, I phoned her to let her know what had happened and that I had been advised to takes a few weeks rest from work, her reaction was just well rude and inconsiderate to say the least, her response was that it was inconvenient, could I not have postponed the operation until half term? I was unreliable (I have not missed a days teaching in 8 years)? and that she would see that the rest of the counties colleges know that I am responsible for her having to cancel a course? WTF, I remain calm, cool and polite, 'Fuck Off you old hag' I say and hang up. Al the other colleges of which I was booked to teach, 6 in all, were very sympathetic and wished me well. However they all found replacements for me and it took me nearly 2 years to get back to work with them all again, except for 1. 3 and 1/2 years later I get an email from the hag, she has been on my website and seen a course she wants to run? I am the only person in the county with a course ready to go, can I do it on a Saturday in 3 weeks time? I am so tempted to either ignore the email or reply in the same polite manor I did after the operation, but after some consideration I accept the booking.
3 weeks later I have met the Hag and I am welcoming students to the course, this is a six hour booking so plenty of time to do what we need to, the course runs like so, I explain what we are going to do using a white board and a PowerPoint presentation, everyone one is excited, (I should at this point explain the I am teaching Web Design with twist that means you have a fully functioning web site in a day), 3 ours in we break for a 30 minute lunch.
I decide to pull up the software we are using and enter some of the exercises I have planed, the computer tells me I do not have the required permissions to run the software? I try again, same thing, at this point excited students are returning from lunch, I let them settle in front of the computers and explain I just need to check something out, I go off to find the Hag. She tells me I am obviously putting in the wrong login details, and comes to the classroom to show mw how to do it. She tries, same response that I got, 30 minutes later she is still trying, my students are now getting a little restless, they have paid a lot of money for the course and they have only received talk of it, another 15 minutes pass and I am now fed up, I ask her to ring IT, I can't she replies they don't work at weekends, at this point she addresses the students and offers them a full refund and she will run the courses again free of charge in a couple of weeks, everyone is now happy and they leave, she tells me that she will contact me when IT have sorted the problem with a new date for the course.
A couple of days later I send an invoice by email, about an hour later I get a call from the Hag, ' I am not paying you as you did not finish the course' 'What' I say? 'We had to give the students a refund so we don't have the budget to pay you' 'Not my problem' I say, she then tells me it's my fault as I should have checked the computers???? WTF is she on about, my fault?? I calmly say not to worry book the class again and we can talk about it the, 'OK' she says and hangs up.
2 weeks later I get and email with a new date for the course, I accept but don't turn up, 'she phones me and asks where I am, it's gone 10am and I should be teaching the Web Design course'?, I simply reply 'Due to a lack of budget I do not have the petrol to get to the college because I had not been paid by a client, so therefore get on your broom stick you old hag and don't call me again'. I hang up, I smile to myself, but I do feel sorry for the students who are a casualty of bloody mindedness from me. I start to get emails from those who had booked the course saying that it was my fault the first lesson did not run and that I had let the college down and them by not turning up, I waited for a few days until I had received all the students complaints, I replied explaining the sequence of events and why I had not turned up, it was obvious that the Hag had no intention of paying me.
SO a couple of weeks later I booked a room at another college and invited all the students to attend the course with me on a personal level at no cost, out of 12 10 turned up, completed the course and were very happy and understood why I did what I did, so good result.
A few weeks later I heard from another college manager that she had been talking to the Hag and she was calling me all sorts of names, fortunately for me the manager and I have been working together for 8 years, in fact I have written courses just for her as a unique selling point, she told the Hag basically to Fuck Off.
So the moral of the tale, if there is one, is this, DO NOT FUCK with the Grumpy Old man because he will bite you in the arse at some point. Sermon over, have a good weekend.
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