Dale’s Personal Blog

Last Friday, 22nd Jan 2010, was a bit of a milestone. After a year of surgery involving three major operations to cure me of Ulcerative Colitis and put me back together again, I was signed off by the surgeon as being officially fixed.

Apparently, I am doing better than average in terms of function, which is a big relief as these procedures are never certain to work. The main thing is that normal life has resumed, and I am already starting to get reasonably fit again through weight training and cycling. At some point soon, I’ll get back onto the squash court, which will be the first time in over two years.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank a few people.

Firstly, there’s my surgeon Nick Beck, a pretty cool guy who apart from being good with the old knife, made the various decisions that needed to be made a lot easier than they could have been. His clear and straight talking style was just what I needed. There’s then the rest of the team at Southampton General Hospital who looked after me so well, particularly those on Ward E7, who I had the ‘pleasure’ of staying with on three occasions.

I would also like to thank my personal trainer, Mike Simms, who worked with me in the gym to get me into the best shape possible for each operation, and then coached me through the recovery each time. I am sure paying attention to physical preparation helped everything go more smoothly, and I was really glad to have the benefit of his knowledge, experience and creativity in coming up with routines to work around my limitations as my various wounds were healing up.

On the work front, I really have to thank Jon Collins, who took over from me as Managing Director of Freeform Dynamics when I became too ill to run the company. There was always a plan to put him into that position, but it happened a bit quicker than anticipated with little or no opportunity to hand over the reins properly, and he rose to the challenge under very difficult circumstances extremely well. I am also grateful to the other guys at work, all of which, in one way or another, had to step in and cover for me. Martin Atherton, for example, made sure a lot of the research and analysis I was involved in got pulled together properly and published or presented effectively to the outside world.

Finally, though, thanks to Helen, my wife, and my two kids Jack and Laura. They had to live with me during the whole thing and put up with not only the impact of the illness, but also the side effects of the various drugs I was on before the decision was made to go down the surgery route. And Helen really deserves a medal for all her support as she had to deal with the fallout both at home and at work; as Operations Director for Freeform Dynamics, she was also providing support to Jon as the new MD.

Anyway, line drawn, and time to look to the future. I have to say that I have never felt better, and I’m raring to get stuck into 2010.

I’m back!

Quick update on the medical front. I said in my last post that I was hoping to get the third and final operation associated with my GI re-engineering project out of the way in December. Well, after a little bit of nudging of the NHS appointments system, I actually ended up going in for surgery on Nov 30th.

The good news is that it all went well and the early signs are pretty good for a successful outcome. The timing was not bad either as the up and coming holiday period will give me a little extra recovery time.

So, here’s looking forward to better Christmas than last year (during which I was very ill), and hopefully the prospect of being properly back in action in January.

Just taking a break and tuning into PMQs live from the House of Commons. I have to say I really cannot see how this is helping us run the country better. David Cameron is using selective facts and misinformation to take cheap shots at Brown, just like a child would when trying to get their sibling in trouble with their parents.

The real sad thing about it is that many of us have issues with some of the way the government is handling things, so it should not be that hard to challenge the Prime Minister based on reasoned analysis and argument. Yet Cameron would rather make stuff up and twist things around to drive trivial point scoring than engage on substance.

The truth is that Brown’s performance may leave a lot to be desired, but he is actually having a go at coming up with solutions to some pretty mega problems, and a quite a bit of what he has done has been alright. The only conclusion I can draw is that Cameron either lacks the confidence or insight to have a sensible discussion around such substantial areas that are typically not black and white and require grown-up judgement calls.

It reminds me of those people we come across in the workplace who are continually moaning about the way senior management is running the company, but don’t come up with any informed and balanced alternative options. You know damn well that if they were plonked into the shoes of an exec they are criticising, they wouldn’t even know where to start. Life really ain’t that easy when the buck stops with you on the big stuff.

My big fear at the moment is that Cameron will win the next election for all the wrong reasons. He will enter power with no coherent plan, then start making things up as he goes along, and undo some things that are actually working well simply because he criticised them for points scoring reasons when in opposition and can’t be seen to back-track.

This really is a sad time in British politics.

With this poor state of affairs, it doesn’t surprise me that the BNP is capturing attention. And on that specific note, for those who think that common sense and reasonable values mean the appearance of this right wing extremist party on BBC Question Time will just lead to it being shown up as loony, I urge them to look to the US. Just tune into Fox News or listen to some of local radio station phone in shows on the internet, and you’ll see how totally mad extremist views that would not stand up to five minutes of cross examination from a normal intelligent human being have the ability to gain traction by appealing to hang-ups and prejudices, and exploiting peoples’ tendency to selectively listen.

Rant over. Back to work.

Quick update on the medical front – the surgery went well, but this last interim phase of the whole process is proving to be a bit of a challenge from a lifestyle perspective.

For anyone else out there looking forward to three step J-Pouch surgery, beware that the experience between operations 1 and 2, which for me and others I know has been a relative breeze, can lull you into a false sense of security. I really didn’t imagine that the period between the second and last operations would be so disruptive.

Living with a pretty big part of your digestive system either gone forever or temporarily disconnected (while the clever bits of re-engineering properly heal), makes keeping things together from a nutrition and fluid/electrolyte balance point of view quite ‘interesting’ (and I mean that very much in the Chinese sense of the word). I am suffering the odd ‘crash’ (that feels like a very bad hangover) as a result of this from time to time, and things are not helped by some tactical issues with the ‘equipment’, which is proving quite constraining from a travel perspective. Indeed, I wasn’t able to make it to a conference I was supposed to be attending in Vienna this week, and with that in mind, I am seriously considering ducking out of two more up and coming international work trips.

But enough of the moaning – I am back on the bike and in the gym, so getting some good exercise again. And apart from the abovementioned crashes, the brain is firing on cylinders, so I can function OK with regard to most aspects of my job and generally get on with the personal side of life.

I don’t have a date for the third and final operation yet, but saw the surgeon the other day and the request has gone in to the good old NHS appointments system to get it scheduled. The last procedure is not exactly trivial, but certainly not the major surgery the first two operations represented, so I am hoping they can sneak me onto the slab in early December, which would give me a decent chance of recovery before Christmas.

The finishing line is in sight!

Well, it’s in the diary – on September 9th, I will be heading into Southampton General Hospital again for the next phase of my GI Reengineering Project. This operation is going to be pretty much the same scale as the last one (i.e. big – 3-4 hours on the slab!), but the difference is that I am now weaned off all of those nasty steroids, so should hopefully be back in action relatively quickly from a work perspective – at least in terms of desk based activity.

For those that are interested in the gory details, it’s all about J-Pouch surgery, and if you a brave enough to follow that link, you’ll see why I refer to the whole exercise as re-engineering.

I must say that having been through the last operation, I am feeling pretty relaxed about the whole thing, apart from, perhaps, the date – I hope 9.9.9 is not some kind of omen

What’s interesting about my job as an IT industry analyst is that I can get under the skin of topics and issues, gather information from original sources, and have time to think about how it all hangs together. This allows me to see through a lot of the biased media coverage and advocacy of particular viewpoints, and form reasonably informed and objective opinions.

When it comes to politics and macro economics, however, I just don’t have the time or the means to do that, so I am, to a large degree, dependent on the press for input. In order to avoid becoming a victim of media bias too easily, I make a point of watching, listening to or reading multiple versions of the same story. It’s fascinating, for example, comparing the extreme right wing evangelical take on an event from Fox News, with the analysis provided on the BBC or various other European news channels. Being able to tune into local radio phone-in shows over the internet now is also handy when trying to figure out how extreme views are propagated and reinforced, and some of that stuff can be quite frightening.

Against this background, I have found it fascinating to see how the Barack Obama has caused confusion amongst the right wing media. It is difficult when faced with true leadership qualities backed up with open receptive reasoning to use the usual undermining tricks. Maybe Mr Obama is simply a master of deception, but I get the impression that there is real conviction to do the right thing (at least what he believes is the right thing), and that inspires people.

Closer to home, I can’t think of less inspiring bunch than those at the forefront of British politics at the moment. Brown has pretty much blown it in terms of credibility now, both through his actions and the way he handles himself from a PR perspective. I can therefore appreciate why many are calling for his resignation, but the problem is, those surrounding him are equally uninspiring. And looking to the opposition isn’t much help. David Cameron’s behaviour appears to me to be both divisive and incongruous, largely based on making ad hoc stands on issues that are considered to have significant PR mileage. More fundamentally, he just doesn’t come across as a genuine leader that I would trust – which is pretty much how I felt about Blair.

So where is the leadership going to come from in UK politics as we look forward? Perhaps it just appears worse than it is because Obama has raised the bar. As a pragmatist with no real leanings towards the left or the right in loyalty terms, I’ll fall in behind anyone who articulates a balanced and coherent view of the world, even if I disagree with some of the specifics. I just don’t see anyone I am even remotely comfortable with at the moment.

I know I am probably going against the tide, but I like to keep my online personal and professional activity as separate as possible. So many blogs and twitter feeds mix the two up, which I personally find really unhelpful. Indeed, I have unsubscribed from or unfollowed the output of a number of otherwise interesting people, simply because what they have to say professionally is diluted by a lot of personal trivia. I then noticed that comments I had placed on other people’s blogs in a professional capacity via WordPress had a link to this (my personal blog) automatically associated with my name, which is quite inappropriate. Not sure where this is being picked up from, but have created a jump off WordPress blog with simply a list of links, which I have then told WordPress is my primary blog. Have also pointed my ‘webpage’ link in my profile to the Freeform Dynamics home page. We’ll have to see if this workaround does the trick, and which URL gets picked up as I contribute additional comments via WordPress.

In the meantime, it highlights the interesting question of how best to manage your online presence when different content you generate is aimed at different audiences. This is not a privacy question, more one of keeping things focused and relevant.

Many of my friends, family and colleagues are aware of my living with a condition known as ‘ulcerative colitis’ for a while now. This is a disease which many believe to be ‘autoimmune’ in nature, which basically means the immune system decides to attack a part of your own body, in this case, the large intestine (otherwise known as the colon or bowel). The end result is inflammation within the digestive system, which causes a range of debilitating symptoms that I’ll come onto in a minute.

For many, this is probably too much information already, and apologies to those who find talk of such things uncomfortable. However, it is precisely because conditions such as this are often awkward to discuss in the normal course of things that I wanted to provide some insight for those that know I have been struggling somewhat with daily life since last summer, but are not sure exactly why.

There is a wealth of information and gory detail available on the Web for those who are interested in the medical and technical aspects of ulcerative colitis, and I’ll leave you to do your own searches if you want to drill into the specifics. More pertinent, however, is the effect the disease, which is genetic in origin, has on the lives of the estimated 35-100 people in every 100,000 that suffer from it.

Firstly, there is the effect of the condition itself, which when it ‘flares up’, can severely restrict the degree to which the sufferer can get around. This is no small part down to the need for frequent visits to the loo – in my case up to 20 times a day during a bad period. To illustrate the impact of this, imagine planning a business day out around the availability and proximity of public conveniences. On one of my routine trips into London, for example, I would need to make sure I got a seat near the loo on the two hour train journey, had change in my pocket so I could quickly get into the gents toilet at Waterloo station when I arrived, then plot my course to the meeting based on facilities available along the way (typically in hotels) that I knew I could nip into as necessary.

And during the meeting itself, there is the problem of feeling rotten, partly because the condition puts the body as a whole out of whack, but also due to lack of sleep as a result of having to get up so often in the night. The added distraction of knowing the ‘urge to go’ could (and often does) hit at any time doesn’t help. There’s then the complication of knowing that eating anything will just make things worse, meaning it’s necessary to politely decline invitations to lunch or a quick drink before heading back to avoid difficult situations.

As you can imagine, there comes a point when it’s not worth the hassle of going out, so you end up doing as much as possible over the phone and via web conferencing, which at least I had the choice of, given the work I do.

The good news is that many afflicted with ulcerative colitis only suffer flare-ups periodically and can get on with their lives as normal in between times. The condition can also often be tamed through the smart use of medication – steroids to get flare ups under control, and other drugs to reduce the likelihood of them occurring in the first place.

The bad news for some (including me), however, is that continuous high doses of treatment can be necessary, and this, in turn, can lead to side effects that are at least as unpleasant and disruptive as the condition itself. In my case, the impact of the medication ranged from nausea and sickness that would often take me out for whole days a time, to more continuous effects such as loss of concentration, mood swings, vision impairment, etc, that just hampered my life in general. With extended use of steroids in particular, there is then the worry of longer term bone damage. The term ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’ felt very apt for a while.

Which brings me on to my gastro-intestinal reengineering project.

As it turns out, the offending part of the body, your colon, is something you can actually live without, so removing it generally equates to a cure for ulcerative colitis. In February 2009, when the medical team looking after me at Southampton General Hospital noted that none of the preventative drugs I had tried were working and even high doses of steroid treatment were not bringing my latest flare-up under control, the surgical option came into pretty sharp focus. The choice was to ramp up the steroids even further, and if stability could be achieved, try some of the more evil and toxic preventative medication (with no guarantee of success), or call time and go for the chop. The medics made it very clear what they recommended, to the point where, based on my then current condition, they were willing to accelerate the process and admit me to hospital as an emergency case.

And so the reengineering project began with a operation known as a ‘colectomy’, which took place on Feb 28th, 2009 with 24hrs notice – a little over two weeks ago at the time of writing. As a result, I no longer have a large intestine and my plumbing has been rearranged to temporarily redirect waste products to a sneaky little bag arrangement that I wear on my side. Inconvenient though this is, it is a small price to pay to get my life back, which, even this soon after the surgery, I am already starting to do.

I refer to the exercise as a project, however, because another couple of operations are involved in the overall reengineering process. The first involves some sophisticated surgery which repurposes a segment of the small intestine into a structure that replaces the large intestine from a mechanical perspective. This is likely to take place towards the end of this year when my system has recovered fully from the effects of the drugs – necessarily to avoid complications. Once the new structure is fully healed and robust, the final operation is used to connect everything back up, and assuming it all goes to plan, my digestive system will once again function pretty much like everyone else’s.

So, while it all sounds very involved, and it will probably be a year or so before all of the work is complete, the big difference with the course I am on now is that I once again have an element of predictability and control. I am hoping to be properly back at work over the next month or so without all of the previous constraints and distractions. More importantly, I can get back to leading a normal life in general from a personal and family perspective. Having largely missed last Summer and the Christmas holiday period due to illness, this is something I am very much looking forward to.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who have been so understanding over the past 6-8 months in particular, with a special thanks to my wife Helen who has supported me throughout, and Jon Collins and the team at Freeform Dynamics who have covered for me and made sure our business has continued to run smoothly.

Writing has been one of my passions for many years, and as an IT industry analyst, I am lucky enough to be able to pursue this interest and get paid for it. From time to time, however, there things I get the urge to write about that have nothing to do with my work, and it is primarily for this reason that I have created this blog.

A secondary motive is to provide a mechanism for broadcasting occasional updates to friends, family, colleagues and business acquaintances on stuff that is going on with me that they may find relevant or interesting. While I am not at all into the ‘open declarative living’ phenomenon encouraged by social media sites such Facebook, MySpace, etc, and indeed worry for many who throw privacy to the wind though these, there are occasions when it is useful to publish personal information in an easily accessible manner.

For the avoidance of doubt, however, I am a big user of social media for professional purposes, so if you are into IT, feel free to check me out on LinkedIn, Twitter and via my other blog, Open Reasoning.