It was a fantastic week at Weymouth this week, but that can wait until my next blog. While we were all having a great time, there’s loads of people who’s life feels like its falling apart, and for everyone at Weymouth speed week it was brought home with the news that David Tuttlebee had his fears conformed mid way through the week. He’s got Cancer for a second time.

David had already been planning a windsurfing cancer charity day to celebrate three years of being clear. His plan was to sail form sunrise to sunset of his home beach at Hayling Island in May. With months of treatment ahead of him he’s not likely to be able to sail all day but wants to continue with the day.

Would like to have been organised enough to do this sort of thing myself, but if David can’t do the whole day I can. Having been through the experience myself I know its easier to have a project to keep you occupied, and not only will it help him, but will allow me to say thanks for all the help and support I had when I went through my treatment.

I’ve talked with David loads of times in the past, what it’s like and what helps when you go thought cancer. I was lucky that my experience was a shared one; being in the mags I had so much support from others who had gone through it before. It seemed strange to get emails and phone calls from people I didn’t know, but the insight they gave me just prepared me for what was to come.

Being positive is the best medicine you can get, and while you feel like crap, just telling everyone you feel good really helps. Just imagine how many times a day you get asked how you feel, if you were to answer honestly it would just drag you down by the end of the day, but some how you start with a lie, “I’m feeling ok” and if you keep saying it enough you end up believing it.

It was seven years ago for me, but I have shared my experience with others to help them make sense of it all. I have another friend who is going though it at the moment, if he needs to talk to some one, give me a verbal bashing, or just hang on the phone and say nothing, I’m happy to take that call.

I had that call this week, and if it helps anyone I don’t know I’d like to share it with you. We all fear the unknown, but it’s the irrational that scared me the most, just when you think you’ve got it all under control it hits you like a wave.

I went in to it all cocky, I was to big a man and didn’t believe anything could touch me, but it’s the simplest of things that tip the balance. At the time I was working with F2 and I should have been at a marketing meeting in Austria but with my immune system down I couldn’t fly, but they’d got a conference phone so I could join in from home.

All I went shopping for was a headset, but it gave me the biggest fright of my life. Got it from a super store, you how it is these days, you can’t just take it from the shelf, it's got to come form the store room with more paper work than the thing is actually worth. It wasn’t hard just annoying, but though I didn’t know at the time had triggered something in side me.

Driving home it went off like a gun, I don’t have the words that could describe it, but it was like being out of breath and not knowing how to take the next. I don’t remember the drive, all I knew was I had to find my mum. Outside her house I knew no one was there so she had to be at my brothers, but I felt too scared to go to his incase someone else was there.

Fortunately when I called his number Mum answered the phone, but I couldn’t even speak, not sure if it was a pathetic whimper or a mum’s intuition but it was mum voice “David is that you”, still I couldn’t answer, “are you at my home”, “stay there I’m coming”. I still can’t put any logic on it, but just getting a hug from my mum took it all away and normality returned.

Things don’t always go the way you expect, it frightened me to have no control, but it was something I’d have to get used too. After my treatment was over it happened less and less, but its still there waiting to surprise me from time to time.

Sorry if I'm going on a bit, and if it doesn’t make much sense to you, to be honest it wasn’t for you, but for those who are sitting there just nodding the heads. But if you have a friend in the same situation, be a listening ear, and if they go off at you for absoultly nothing, they didn’t mean it, just forgive them.

Those who know the feeling or need an ear, you can always get in contact, but one thing I found a song that helped me out, not sure the words were right, it could just been the moment when it came on the radio, but I played R.E.M’s Everybody Hurts ever time I got pissed off. It worked for me and I'm sure David will have his ow thing to help him through, but when he gets his website up and runing I hope you'll join me in supporting him.