Free

I'm free. I have no scheduled appointments at hospital for many weeks ahead. 😃 Today I met with my consultant who does not need to see me again until October, after my Stem Cell transplantation has taken place. That leaves only my scheduled stem cell harvesting in late August and the transplantation in early October.  [...]

Umbilical

It's just about a week now until the family leave Mwanza. I'm looking forward to seeing them back in the UK - it's over three months since I bid my wife and daughter farewell on that twilit Kenyan Easter Monday Morning. Yet at the same time as I am excited to see them - there [...]

Brother

It's nice to be able to connect with family and today my brother and sister-in-law are up in Lincoln. A good chance to touch base. After a trip to to Go Outdoors to pick up a cycling jacket we had a chance to have a Costa Coffee and a chin wag.  No iced drink following [...]

Overbooked

The practice of overbooking flights and the consequences for those affected i.e. us

A Strange Father’s Day

For the first time in living memory I am a Father alone on Father's Day. I know it's a commercial thing (unlike Mothering Sunday) but even so it has amplified the absence of family. My own Father died in 2006 of Motor Nueron Disease a rapidly developing disease which took him from an active man [...]

Just In Case

We left Tanzania on the 2nd April, for a family holiday in Kenya. I would not return again.  When I eventually returned to the UK for treatment on the 18th April I came with a small bag of holiday clothes totally unsuited for the British Spring. I was able to add a small number of [...]

Doldrums

It would be fair to say that life is becoming routine. Six weeks after my return to England and three weeks after I was released from hospital there is a new equilibrium.  Life has changed do much in the past month and as the tornado disperses I am now finding myself in a calmer place [...]

Twenty Two Years

Today is our twenty second wedding anniversary. We are spending it over 4000 miles apart. The toughest part for both of us has been the trans-continental split in the family. We have been apart for over almost six weeks and will be for almost two months more. The challenge of the Myeloma and its treatments [...]

Normalcy

This weekend has been a normal weekend in that it has been a weekend of doing normal things.  You might well wonder what is normal when you have spent much of the past three years, as I have in Tanzania? Actually not that different to the UK. it's been a normal weekend inasmuch as it [...]

Wired to the World

I am stuck in a side ward a room no bigger than 5m by 3m at it's biggest. The outbreak of vomiting virus means that I have not been out of the room for almost 5 days. It would be very easy to go 'stir crazy' in here. In fact since Maunday Thursday (April 13th) [...]

Robbery

I was stuck in ACH and desperate to talk with Anita - she knew I had gone there to look at a potential DVT but no more. Yet for over 20 hours we did not communicate. Thoughts ran wild! She was over 4000 miles away. Had there been a car crash, was she or my [...]

Journeys

A day in Nairobi and I needed to get out and do something. For one I had no 'winter clothes' with me. One long sleeved top, no long trousers, two pairs of socks. I had packed for a short holiday on the equator, plenty of shorts, t-shirts, swimming trunks, a pair of sandals and fortuitously [...]

Departures

The bills were racking up. I had been in Aga Khan for  two days and had had a number of tests but the Insurance were adamant that this was a chronic condition and that as such there was a limit on the amount thy would cover. As this is a matter of (possibly legal) conjecture [...]