Peter’s Hospital Diary

Where did the last week go? I suppose it is a sign that life is getting back to normal, and perhaps a little more mundane, that the frequency of the posts is decreasing slightly! On the health front, the only remarkable event was my trip to Guy’s for my bone density scan, which took all of 40 minutes, including waiting time, and half of that time was filling in a questionnaire. Still, it gave me time to have a browse round Waterstones before heading back home to do some more of my coursework – the deadline for the first piece is Sunday 25th. It is about two thirds complete in terms of words, although most of the research is done. Technically, it isn’t that difficult, far harder is compiling and citing the list of references to support the text!

My parents visited for a couple of days at the end of the week, and Olivia has been over a couple times. Vicki has some photos for me, I’ll post them when I get them!

On the Leukaemia Care side, I spent a day with Neil and Suzanne (fellow trainers) yesterday, tying up some loose ends for some modules on the training courses we deliver. This was after getting up early to put Felicity on the train for London, where she is working this week, at the Chelsea Flower Show. I did a little more coursework last night!

On the technical side, the availability of the blog has been a bit variable this week. Apart from the power cut on Monday, I have been having problems with the home LAN (Local area network). It is relatively complex, with a high speed core running at 1000Mb/s, and an outer core running at 100Mb/s. There seemed to be a problem with one of the 1000Mb/S switches, that was locking up and blocking all network access, including that to the internet access router. I think it was overheating, so I moved it to a cooler position – forgetting that the sun would shine on it during the day – and it locked up again for most of yesterday! It now has a sun shade!

I am at home today – I have another appointment at Guy’s this afternoon – at the dermatology clinic, and I think it is decision time over the Extra Corporeal Photophereses! The aches haven’t got any better, so if it is chronic GvHd, it isn’t getting better on its own. It might not be getting worse, but if it flares up every time my immune system is triggered into fighting an infection, like the HIb, then my physical condition is likely to deteriorate. So it is probably better to act now rather than later. There is no ‘right’ decision, because whatever I do, I will never know what would have happened if I had made the other one – so whatever I do decide, it has to be made on the basis of as much information that I can find -and then stick with it!

And now – back to the coursework!

So… Onwards and upwards!