My Story - Part 3: Family

Reading over Part 2, I realised that I have only briefly mentioned my family. Right, I have 3 brothers and a sister. The order from the eldest, Iain, Malcolm, Shelagh & Duncan. Shelagh being in the middle was kind of the glue for Duncan & me to Iain & Malcolm, as they were so much older than us. The other thing is that Iain went to boarding school & Malcolm, as soon as he left school, went into the Merchant Navy. This made Malcolm a kind of mystical person who traveled to exotic places and brought back strange presents. We also had a world map on the wall where we charted his travels.

My Story - Part 2: Life in Sunderland

Best place to start is the beginning. I was born in 1952 in Sunderland, NE England. My dad was a very proud Scot from Leith and mum from Gateshead. This is where I was born and spent the first 11 years. http://www.mc-gregor.org.uk/gallery_sunderland.html.

I don't want to go too deeply into my hirschsprung's because that has been dealt with elsewhere, http://www.mc-gregor.org.uk/history.html & http://www.hirschsprungs.info/stories/Gerry.php. I was the youngest of 5 but Martin was born about 18 months later but he did not live long. Mum told me that the doctor said that as I was so poorly it was either him or me. That made me more special to mum and more spoilt. I was diagnosed at 9 months and then spent most of my time from then until 5 in hospital in Newcastle. 

My Story - Part 1: Why am I writing this.

I am sat here in Caithness trying to fill the day before I go into hospital for a colonoscopy. That is on Thursday but tomorrow I go in to be cleaned out, what a lovely day that is going to be. I am not bothered about the actual scope. I have had too many of those, I know they are not painful, just worried about what they may find.

I am having it because about a month a go I went into hospital one Sunday evening with severe pains in my bowel. They then found I had pneumonia but that is a side issue. I was transferred to Inverness where I was going to be operated on for the bowel pain, even with pneumonia. The CT Scan had found something hanging off my bowel,  but the pain died down and so decided to leave it. A few days after coming out of hospital I was feeling worse and so I had another CT Scan. They thought they discovered a polyp in my lung and on re-examining my other scan they thought I they found one in my bowel. That could of been from my previous operations for Hirschsprung's. To find out what that is read www.hirschsprungs.info and to find out about my life with it http://www.mc-gregor.org.uk/history.html . The Hirschsprung's website is for the group that I run. It is for parents, adults & teenagers and we have around 900 members worldwide.