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 [...]