Peter’s Hospital Diary

I should have been getting ready to catch the train up to London for my two days of ECP. However I had a ‘phone call from the day centre yesterday afternoon to say that one of the machines had developed a fault, and wouldn’t be repaired in time for me to get my treatement. The centre is pretty heavily booked, but it now runs seven days a week, so I am having the first session on Friday afternoon, staying up overnight (as usual), and having the second session on Saturday morning. It really works better for me as it saves a journey to and from Corsham, although it is a pity to lose a Saturday at home. Still, can’t be helped.

The only thing missing is my laptop! I left it at home on Sunday night as I was expecting to be travelling back yesterday, so this is being written from work.

Still, the sun is shining, so on that note – Onwards and Upwards!

Tags: ECP

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I was sitting happily at my desk yesterday afternoon, when the ‘phone rang… “Hello, this is St Thomas’s Dermatology Day Centre – did you know you had an appointment for ECP this afternoon?”. It appears that my dates of 29th and 30th were at variance with their booking system! (I take the blame). After some discussion, we have re-scheduled it for the only blank spot they had, whioch is next Tuesday and Wednesday, and that nearly didn’t happen because of lack of accomodation. Slightly embarrassing!

Funny too, because in the last few days, I have noticed my shoulders getting stiff, and one or two minor skin signs that I was due a treatment session.

Tomorrow is the Wedding Fair – the fourth year Felicity has organised the event – which promises to be bigger and better than the previous ones – and if the fine weather continues (Iceland permitting) it should be a good day.

So as I have things to get ready for it, I had better finish here – Onwards and Upwards!

Tags: ECP

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The end of last week turned busier than I expected, with another job drawing to a close. This is a home networking and fileserver set up, which is almost complete apart from commissioning the file server which I started at the weekend. I did need to do a little more hardware design change to make the data stored on it more resilient (the addition of a second hard drive in a RAID 1 configuration – for anyone interested 🙂 ) but it is all working, so apart from a little more system configuration it is almost complete.

The weather was lovely though, and the lawn has had its first mowing. The lemon tree is still indoors, and was looking a bit sick with scale, but that has been treated, and apart from a bit of branch die back in one or two places, is looking much happier.

This weekend is the Wedding Fair again, although I have another little urgent job at home – to fix the hot water system to one of the bathrooms. There is a sticky motorised valve that I have released in the past. It isn’t a problem when the heating is on as the tank is warmed by backflow from the heating loop, but now the days are getting warmer and the heating is on less, I need to sort it out. I have a replacement valve, but I need to make a small ‘tweak’ to the pipework to fit it.

I have my next round of ECP at the end of April (it seems a long time since the last round) and a check up in May, but I’m feeling well, the cold has almost gone, so…. Onwards and Upwards!

Tags: Tech stuff

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Well, the Wednesday of Easter week, and I am taking a few days holiday, and after the poor weather last week, things are looking up so far – yesterday was warm, today slightly less so. However the first blossom has appeared on the trees, so perhaps it really is spring!

The good news is that my contract has been renewed, so I will be in gainful employment for a few more months. What will happen after that is anyones guess (as always) but I am pleased!

We had a quiet weekend, until Sunday when al lthe family gathered round for Sunday dinner apart from Rachael who was working) and I am using this week to catch up with the end of financial year paperwork, and a bit of pottering about!

Onwards and upwards!

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Although looking at the sleet falling earlier it is hard to imagine it! But the clocks going forward at the weekend is always welcome!

So another busyish ten days. I enjoyed my Birthday last week, with a trip over for dinner with my sister and her family (thank you Anne!). After that, on Friday, I went up to see my parents where I was joined by Felicity and had a bit of present opening before we set off for the wedding of the daughter of Tom, one of my University flatmates.

We had booked a B&B up the Dales (near Burnsall) in Lower Wharfedale, an area I had frequented in student days. However the passage of time meant that while I recognised various places as mental snapshots, I found it hard to remember the geographical relationship of them to each other!. No matter, I had my trusty Satnav – but unfrtunately that relies on the correct post code to be entered so we ended up (initially) in Skipton.

To cut a long story short, we discovered that there were two villages with the same name, and we went to the wrong one, 17 miles up Wharfedale before we discovered our mistake (with the post code) !7 miles back and we discovered we had been within 3 miles of our destination. Still, spectacular countryside – a pity it was dark!

But next morning as we threw back the curtains in the converted barn that formed part of the B&B – wow – what a view! The wedding itself was lovely, but although the weather was dry and sunny, there was a very cold wind; but despite that, we had a lovely day.

We stayed over on Saturday night, and left on Sunday morning after a great weekend, and after writing a note to ourselves “must go back”. All seemed far more familiar in daylight, although the tourist side seemed far more developed that it was when I was a student.

Other news is that my contract, which finished today, has been renewed, so I shall be in gainful employment for a few more months. I am off home tomorrow, and taking a bit of holiday, but all in all, Onwards and Upwards!

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Just realised that it is two weeks since the last post – and I suppose that is an indication that there is nothing much to report, either healthwise, or anything else!

On the health front, the coldy cough has lingered, but the improvement in the weather seems to be seeing it off – not before time! It is something I will mention at the next check up in May.

On the ‘other’ front, things have ticked on pretty much as normal. My parents came down for the weekend, and although I was out for some of the time (another little job) we went out for a meal on Saturday evening. Next weekend we are away for a wedding, and then we are into Easter. I am still waiting to hear that the contract extension has been approved – I am reasonably confident (and I have kept the flat on for at least another month) but I think I might have a little break over Easter week.

So really things are continuing “Onwards and Upwards”! 🙂

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My hope that Friday’s ECP would be equally uneventful was not entirely fulfilled! The kits come in two versions, one, the 125 ml kit takes 125 ml of blood , centrifuges it, stores the lymphocytes and returns the centrifuged blood back. This happens over 6 cycles. The large kit takes 250ml of blood, does the same, but takes only 3 cycles. The end result is that 750ml of blood is processed, but the large kit is slightly faster.

The machines are prepped in advance (they take about 25 minutes to set up, and I generally have a small kit. However on Friday, the machine had been set up with a large one. Not a problem, had that before… but on Friday morning my blood pressure was slightly lower than normal (it always is a bit low anyway).

This caused great consternation, with frequent blood pressure checks, a saline infusion (to increase BP) which meant the saline bag emptied during the procedure, and constant checking to see if I felt OK (I did!). So it was all a bit of a faff, and took a bit longer than expected. However I can’t fault the nursing staff, who were only being careful!

The entrance to St Thomas’s has been re-vamped, with quite a good shopping/food area – including an M “This is not just (hospital) food” & S Simply food outlet. Unfortunately the staff wouldn’t let me nip down (while the lymphocytes were being irradiated with UV light) but the wife of another patient very kindly went and got my BLT for me! The entrance does look very good – I hope the same effort is going into re-furbishing the treatment areas and wards!

After the session finished, I nipped over to Waterloo to get the train down to Bournemouth where I was met by the rest of the family. A browse round Christchurch (lovely town) and then a meal in a restaurant on Bournemouth sea front (near Boscombe Pier).

The rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful, apart from a vist by an old school friend, Ian, and his wife, Carolyn. Good to see you both!

So – onwards and upwards!

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I’m writing this from my little room in Gassiot House, the hostel for patients staying for consecutive days of treatment – and it is a bit warmer than I have known it in the past! So this afternoon was the first of the two sessions of the ECP – and as usual, it passed uneventfully. The second session is tomorrow morning, so I hope that will go uneventfully too.

My cold seems to be getting better, and I don’t feel quite as breathless as I did. I still have a bit of a cough, but nowhere near as bad as it was.

I had a good week last week, with the final push to complete the coursework. Once I had got into the correct mindset’ it seemed to flow well – and the program (or – to be strictly accurate – script) ran as I hoped it would and did what was required of it. The weekend was spent writing up the reports on the design, and it was submitted electronically on Sunday, with the hard copy in the post on Monday!

So with spring round the corner, and the clocks going forward in two weeks, very much a case of “Onwards and Upwards”!

Tags: Computing, ECP

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Things have been a bit calmer at work, just as well as I have still been fighting off the bad cold and cough that I seem to have had for most of February! That now seems to be improving, I’m not so breathless, the runny nose is better, and while the cough is still irritating, that isn’t as bad either – although I did have to resort to a well known branded cough medicine!

I have also made some good progress on the last lot of coursework. Pressures on time meant I couldn’t devote much time to it in January, but I finally managed to put some time aside in February, after applying for an extension, and once I had adjusted to the syntax and idiosyncracies of the Python scripting language, I was able to make some good progress – just a case of getting into the the right frame of mind. So the program (or to be accurate, script) is complete and does what it is expected to do, so there is just the design detail and description to finish and I can submit it.

I have some more ECP next week (seems ages since the last session) and it is hard to believe that February is almost over. The lighter mornings and evenings are very welcome, and in just over three weeks the clocks go forward to Summer time – so all we need then is some warm weather!

Onwards and Upwards!

Tags: Tech stuff

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I was just looking at the blog and realised it is ten days since I last posted!

The cold seemed to stay stable for the rest of that week, and at the weekend, I went up with University friend Faith to Harrogate, where we stayed with Dina (Faith’s flatmate) and had dinner with the other girls from her flat (Barbara and Barbara, and their other halves, John and Rod. A really good evening, fantastic food (thank you Dina and Chris) and once again I was struck by how fortunate I am to have such enduring and deep friendships. I was reflecting on that in the sense that we went off to University to get a degree and to ‘grow up’ a bit – no-one really explained that it would be a time when such long-lasting friendships would be formed. We talked about it and we all hoped that our children will be as fortunate in their University experience.

On Sunday we went over to visit Jane (and dental student from those far off days, who is suffering from a bit of ill-health. Another group of remembered faces, reminiscences and relaxing company – and a superb tea prepared by Jane’s husband, Paul. Faith and I drove back late Sunday evening, feeling decidedly stuffed, and then I went back to Corsham!

I was at Shrivenham last Monday for a ‘project day’ when we were discussing the final year project for the MSc. I am still undecided about a project so I might defer for a year while I think about it. It also partially depends on my contract – it expires in March, and if it isn’t renewed I will have more spare time, if it is, then I think the dissertation might be difficult to fit in. Then it was back to Chippenham where I met a crowd from the office for a Chinese.

The rest of the week was busy. A silly o’clock start on Tuesday for a day trip up to the wilds of Lincolnshire – not much fun as we had sleet and then sun glare off the roads on the way back, with roadworks throwing up muddy spray.

Wednesday was in office, as was Thursday morning, but then it was another trip down to Feltham for more meetings. I arrived back in time to nip out for a curry with another group from work! I think I might have slightly overdone things though as the cold seemed to come back and I felt quite rough on Friday morning.

But the weekend was good. I cooked on Saturday evening (pre-valentines day!), and after a couple of days relaxing, I felt better for my return trip. So I hope that the cold is on its way out!

I have been having problems with e mail. My e mail provider for my main e mail name has had a few short sharp ‘phone calls from me. It still isn’t resolved, caused by their installation of a ‘new, improved’ server which I think is severely mis-configured.. I’m still reviewing my options – self hosting is one of them, but I need to investigate spam filtering first.

So on that note… Onwards and upwards! 🙂

Tags: Computing, Social

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