Chirps is in a No Pro-state!

                                                                      Image courtesy Landor associates      

I thought it fitting that I should give the readership an update on the Chirps Vincent prostate debacle which was highlighted in the 'Chirps is in a right pro-state' post.

Well, to cut a short story considerably shorter it turned out that my dearly beloved prostate, which had served me very well up until this point and was considered a fine member of my bodily parts and other appendages collection, was deemed to be in a state of somewhat disrepair which required action be taken to rectify this situation as a matter of urgency!.............or did it?

Now that last remark was not designed to be glib or confuse anyone who may be wondering quite naturally, 'well did it or not' but things can seem a little fuzzy when your sat across from a urologist who calmly states that unfortunately some of the biopsies recovered from your prostate contained cancerous cells!

I blinked a couple of times before exhaling and merely said 'Rrrrrright' as if this was in some way a quite expected thing for the doctor to say to me and I was totally fine with it! This though only disguised the fact that my mind was whirring and 'right' was the only word that would come! Fortunately the physician continued explaining that my 'gleason' score was 7 (3-4). This indicated that the cancer was not overly aggressive in nature, though some cells may grow moderately quickly over time, it may be that the slow growth may not give me any symptoms or shorten my life at all if left alone. So you see, possibly no urgent treatment needed at all.

The surgeon gave me three options to consider with regard to what happened next.

The first of these was something called 'Active surveillance' which is basically doing nothing other than monitoring the situation with further regular Psa tests and further imaging if indicated.

The second option was treatment of the cancer which could involve radiotherapy with hormone therapy or the third option which was a removal of the prostate by means of a radical prostatectomy with keyhole surgery using what was referred to as the 'da Vinci' robot which hopefully would be a 'cure' for want of a better word.

Unusually for me I ruled out the first option straight away. The reason being that I am one of life's eternal worriers and I would be totally consumed by thoughts of the cancer growing while I sat at home waiting for my next Psa test!

I gave some thought to option 2 but decided in the end to plump for surgery. I was emboldened by the fact that the surgeon would be using a robot named after one of the great old Italian ancestors of mine, Leonardo da Vincey, a useful painter & decorator whose girlfriend Lisa, was a real moaner apparently.....

Well two months on and the surgeon has confirmed that the cancer appears to have been totally in the prostate itself with 'clear margins' to the edge of the gland and as such I am free of cancer! Woohoo!!! Sadly though I am not clear of urine leakage, one of the known side effects of the surgery and may not be totally continent for some time yet!

Having said that, of course I'm happy with the results so far and looking forward to the spring and summer when I can be out and about much more, confident that I wont be leaving a trail of a slightly damp, claggy odour for the neighbourhood dogs to follow!

I bet you all wanted to know that last bit didn't you?.......

Later gators!

 

Elon prefers growing shares to vegetables!

Elon Musk has recently stated his view that work could become optional over the next ten to twenty years due to the development of tech, including AI and robotics etc. In other words if a human does not fancy doing some heavy lifting to earn his pay packet then the advances in technical automation and the odd robot or two will do the job for him while he downs some tasty beers down the pub! 

He likened the situation to be like growing vegetables in your garden. You don't have to do that he states, you could just go to your local store and buy them but some people enjoy the challenge and the sense of purpose of growing their own. He predicts a future where money is less relevant or even totally irrelevant which seems a tad ironic coming so soon after Tesla shareholders approved his potential 1 trillion dollar ten year pay award subject to the company achieving set goals. Nevertheless I was not surprised big numbers were involved in Elon's pay award as he is probably the foremost accomplished business person in the world today but i must admit I did not realise just how big a trillion actually is! Even spread over ten years the numbers are mind boggling. 

Now it has to be acknowledged that i'm not great at maths, that is while I can cope with basic stuff on a day to day basis like how much i'm spending in the supermarket buying vegetables or more likely the pub buying other things essential for life, I cannot with any degree of truth claim to be anything more than average in the bean counting world.

So bearing that in mind you can perhaps understand why when I initially heard about the deal I merely shrugged my shoulders and pulled the old bemused boy gets lost in the number fog look I pulled often in maths classes at school. Then a lady with the number prowess of Rachel Riley pointed out that 1 trillion dollars equates to an average of a 100 billion dollars a year or over 8 billion a month which if you assume he does a five day week equates to about 400 million dollars a day! 

Now of course, it's not just what he does that is being rewarded, it's having the gravitas and worldwide appeal of the Musk name and his contacts, both business and political which are immeasurable and work 24/7 and therefore the sums need to reflect this.

OK then, lets take a more pragmatic view, lets say he works 24/7 receiving no downtime whatsoever but fails to hit some of the targets that make up the contract. Lets say he only actually receives salary, shares and gratuities amounting to a mere half of the trillion. So 500 billion dollars over the ten year period.

So if he works every single day for the ten year period this equates to 3,650 days at roughly 137 million dollars a day!....... I'll say that again, 137 million dollars a day! That my friends is not too shabby a gig for half pay! 5.7 million dollars every hour of every day. 8 hours of sleep means he has accrued over 45 million dollars before finishing cleaning his teeth in the morning, which obviously is a necessity in readiness to smile insanely at all the other vegetable growers at the community gardens and why wouldn't he?  don't forget this is only half of his potential earnings!!!

I don't think i'll see him at the allotments anytime soon do you?