Sunny sunday afternoon

I am surprised that the weather has been so good over the last three days, its seems like fate is conspiring to bring beautiful winter sunny days to combat my tendency to be depressed by the relapse news. Last night I decided that clean living could wait for a few days and polished off a bottle of wine in the course of the evening - which had the desired effect of knocking me out for the count and I slept solidly from 10pm until 7 this morning when the cat wanted out. Even with all that sleep I managed to creep back under the duvet and fell into one of those half awake half asleep comfortable naps, Lee calls this "hotting" as you are warm and cosy and have no special things to do or no work to go to, anyway whatever it is called it worked for me as I got up at nearly lunchtime feeling really relaxed and quite happy with the day.

In the meantime Lee had got up to look after the kids and they have gone off to Jim and Sarah's, when talking to Lee on the phone Sarah had asked how my check up went only to be met by tears from the other end of the phone as the question released some of the pent up emotion in Lee, she is feeling a bit better now and distracting herself by watching "The West Wing" under a blanket on the couch. I decided to get the MG out this afternoon and went for a little run just to keep the engine lubricated and to fill up with petrol, the weather forecast is for rain over the next two days before I may be on the way to the USA so this was the last chance for a while to get the car out and cleaned.

Google have taken over blog spot so I have had to transfer this blog over to their system (you should not notice any difference) and set up an account with them. You can see how some of these mega companies really do get everyone into their net, it seems this is not a good thing but I doubt if any country government is really capable of splitting up these monopolies. That would get me on to the need for a global government and we would be here for hours so we will not go down that rabbit hole.

Anyway my next job is to rewrite the short update section of the blog, delete cured add in relapse sort of thing, compose a note to my colleagues in work to let them know of the problem to see if anyone wants to help cover parts or all of my job, and then get into serious research on the stem cell treatment. I did discover a blog from a young man who had the treatment and survived so far for many years cancer free (http://www.davesite.com/hodgkins/mobil.shtml), he describes his feelings during the extreme chemo in the following words.

But I felt awful, and I was alive. I just had to find a way to kill the time.
I was scared, with all the antibiotics I was on. Then I realized, as long as I maintain homeostasis -- I'm not going anywhere. So I made a checklist in my head...

Am I breathing
Is my heart beating
Do I feel any real pain, or do I just feel like shit
Am I capable of telling someone I feel like shit

If those are true, I am alive. And I'm fighting.
And I knew I was going to make it.

So these kind of thoughts capture both the hope that I have (seems like a lot of folks are all right after the treatment) and the fear that I have (seems like this is going to to be really ugly on the way, which is weird as I feel 100 percent fine, and yet am going to have to subject myself to this horrible path even though I do not feel unwell at all). So I guess this is a small illustration of what I am thinking on the downside, however most of the time you just have to get on with the normal things of life. Monday I will go to work as usual, try to get my presentations and reports prepared for the meetings over the next week and chase up the hospital on the date for my scan. If I am very lucky (don't laugh I know, I know that's a stupid turn of phrase) then they may find the cancer in just in the one lymph node and direct radiotherapy may be a possibility, that would be my only way to avoid the ugly path. Lets keep the fingers crossed for that for now but I am preparing my head for the stem cell treatment as that is the most probable way forward.

Anyhow that's enough for today, I hope you all are enjoying the nice weather if you are in the UK or finishing up a happy thanksgiving if you are in the USA, soak it up and appreciate it because bad things can happen in life!

Cheers

Gerry