Peter’s Hospital Diary

Yes, only two days since the last post on Saturday! I had a quiet Saturday, and finally managed to get the webserver graphical interface working, which was rewarding. I still want to complete the upgrade, but that can wait for a while until I finish the current piece of coursework. I had quite a good session with that on Sunday, with quite a bit of experimenting, so I hope I can start getting the notes together for the write up. The problem is that I need a ‘clean’ computer (one where the software is added in a controlled fashion) and an internet connection; while I do have a connection in the flat (via the mobile phone network) that poses its own difficulties, so I am really limited to working on it at home. The other highlights of the weekend were visits by Vicki and Olivia – whose speech has developed tremendously in the last week, and she is now forming simple sentences!

I travelled up to London this morning for the first ECP session this afternoon – which was uneventful. Tomorrow I have the second session and my check up in haemotology.

Also on the medical front, would you please keep fingers crossed for Simon, who is also going into hospital this week for a bit of additional treatment – we will be thinking about you, Simon.

So – and especially for Simon – Onwards and Upwards!

Tags: ECP

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A very sociable week starting with a leaving ‘do’ for someone at work on Thursday when we descended on a Chinese restaurant in Chippenham. An excellent evening, but the highlight of the week was a reunion dinner on Friday (last night) for those of is in a year group at the Royal Naval Engineering College – more years ago than I care to remember! I have seen some of the people there in the intervening years, but it is the first time that I have been to a gathering of so many, since I left the college. It was a splendid evening with much reminiscing and catching up. The really amazing thing is that very few of us had significantly changed in appearance, and even those who I had lost touch with were pretty much instantly recognisable!

It was a late night/early morning, so I have been doing a little recuperating today, However I have managed to fix the little snag on te webserver. It seems to have been running OK, but I have now got the graphical software (Gnome) pretty much back as it was, and once that is sorted I will look again at upgrading it.

Monday and Tuesday will see me up at St Thomas’s again for the next course of ECP, followed by my (slghtly extended) two monthly check up.

Onwardfs and upwards!

Tags: Social

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More updates – this time on the server – and not all sweetness and light!

To recap, the new server has been running Linux, to be precise, Fedora 10. The Fedora Project has just released a new version, Fedora 11, and it is possible to update that on the fly. However, with 1374 of the 1,420 files updated, the system froze, and when I restarted it, the same thing happened, so I now have a hybrid system – some old, some new. Interestingly it isn’t stopping it from running any of the server applications, but I can only log into it remotely, or via a command line interface, the graphical side just will not run.

It seems that there is a problem at the Fedora servers too, so I am a bit stumped – I suspect I may have to reload the software at some point. However as it is all working for the time being, it isn’t too urgent.

To cap it all, last night the main incoming switch tripped – luckily the freezers were still cold, but all the batteries in the uninterpretable power supplies had flattened themselves – I thought the house was quiet when I woke up!

However back on the home front, I had a 3C weekend: cleaning, cooking and coursework! Felicity came home this evening after two weeks away, so yesterday I was doing coursework, today some cleaning and tonight some cooking so she had a meal on her return. In the process I evicted a few alien life forms from the fridge – for those Torchwood addicts, I’m not sure if the 456 were hiding in there…

Tomorrow I have a meeting in Portsmouth, so I shall be returning to Corsham after that!

Onwards and Upwards!

Tags: Computing, Tech stuff

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Another fairly busy week. I was home alone again at the weekend, with Felicity off at Henley, and then on to Hampton Court for the flower show. I arrived home to find the max/min thermometer in the conservatory registering 67C (!), candle wax over the table and floor under some sad looking flat candles, and some decidedly sick looking plants (a rubber plant and a clivia) togrether with a very unhappy looking cyclamen in the kitchen. Fortunately the greenhouse and baskets had received some attention (TLC is probably over-stating it). However over the weekend, I cleaned up the wax, possibly saved the plants and did one or other bits of tidying up.

Rachael came home from Magalufe on Sunday afternoon, while I was doing a full back-up of the new webserver – not helped by the tape drive overheating and one or two other problems. However I got it all done and returned to Corsham on Sunday evening!

On the down side, I discovered that someone in the (large, open plan, air conditioned) office has been diagnosed with swine flue. It seems it was about 2 weeks ago, so we are waiting to see who (if anyone) will be the next to succumb. (Note to self, must ring Guy’s for guidance!)

However all seems well so far, I was out at meetings yesterday, the sun is (pretty much) shining, so…

Onwards and upwards!

Tags: Tech stuff

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Where is the time going? Half way through the year already and it doesn’t seem 5 minutes since I was gingerly driving up snow covered roads on the way to work, and now we are swltering in the heat!

Must be the heat confusing me as the next ECP isn’t for another 2 weeks because the six weekly regime has started. I’m really not looking forward to London in this heat – if the heat wave continues.

Last weekend was busy – crossing the border into Wales for my brother-in-law’s ordination at Newport Cathedral, then back to Corsham on Sunday afternoon. I shall be back homefor the weekend, although Felicity is away at the Henley regatta, so I must start the next lot of coursework!

On another note, I expect you, like me, get a few e mails with subject lines containing “Urgent – please pass this on to all your friends immediately” or similar lines in the subject line. The e mail then goes on to describe something that “happened to friend” or “has been verified by Microsft/some-company/some police force” and so on.

These e mails are almost invariably hoaxes, so before forwarding them on, it is worth taking 30 seconds or so to enter the subject line as a Google search. This will usually bring up several web sites that will verify (or otherwise) the authenticity of these e mails – so far I have never seen a genuine one! They are just another variation of the old chain letters that used to circulate by post.

Onwards and upwards!

Tags: Computing

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Life has ticked on – after the weekend away, I returned to Corsham for another week at work before going home for the weekend. That was uneventful, I did a little tinkering with the new web server (a different power supply) it is now using about 35 Watts – the previous power supply was taking 40, and the old web server was taking about 110W, so I have achieved a 2/3 reduction. Apart from that I did a bit of pottering in the wilderness that is the back garden. Actually not quite true as with some hired help, the wilderness has been beaten back into submission and it is looking quite good!

After the weekend at home I drove back to Corsham for another week. This weekend I am off to Wales for an ordination! (Not mine 🙂 )

I am aware that the frequency of the posts has dropped off, but perhaps that is an indication that life is pretty much back to normal – it certainly feels good!

My next check-up isn’t for another week, and that coincides with the next session of the now six weekly ECP!

Onwards and Upwards!

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I can’t believe that we are half way through June already! The last ten days have been busy, with three days at work after the ECP, and then down to Devon for a wedding – Vicki and Olivia being bridesmaids for one of Vicki’s university friends. Vicki and Tom combined that with a holiday and booked a cottage for a week and we stayed there with them overnight.

The wedding itself was in Ottery St Mary, about 15 miles away, and the reception venue was the old Bishops’ Palace – with parts of it dating back to the 10th century.The village we stayed in was delightful. We had the church bells on Sunday morning, followed by a quick stroll across the road to the village pub for lunch, then we sat in the garden lazing away the afternoon! An excellent weekend.

Sunday was also Katie’s Birthday – Happy Birthday Katie!

Onwards and Upwards!

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Well, the last posting may have been overdue, but I was certainly under-due for my ECP appointment.

It all got a little strange when I turned up at the accommodation yesterday, and found that no room had been booked. But it was when I arrived on the ward to be greeted with “Nice to see you, what are you doing here?” that I started to get concerned! It turned out that my appointment (which I had had to move from last Monday, had been set for next Monday! Fortunately there was a spare machine and I had the treatment anyway.

However, it didn’t all run smoothly as this morning there was a problem with the machine I was connected to, and after a bit of messing about, I was put on another one, so the process was delayed by an hour!

I had expected this to be the last session, but it seems not! As it is a while since I last saw the consultant dermatologist, I had an appointment made on conclusion of yesterday’s treatment. As I have had such a good response, I am having some more sessions, at six week intervals with a review in 4 months, which will be after another three sessions.

I was delighted to see fellow transplant patient Mark on the dermatology day unit. He has had a tough time with GvHd after his second transplant, and at the moment is on steroids to damp down his immune system, along with immuno-suppressants. Not a good state of affairs, so he is having a course of ECP as a less aggressive (and more effective) alternative. We had a long chat about the treatment – it has certainly been very beneficial for me – so I hope all goes as well for him.

Finally… I have always been interested in finding out about the various risks that have been likely to affect me, and one has been the CMV infection. One of the requirememts for my blood transfusions is that it should be CMV negative. CMV (or Cytomegalovirus) is a relatively common infection, that usually only causes problems in people that have impaired immune systems. I found an article about it in Monday’s Daily Telegraph, and with a bit of Googling, found this article which I have also added as a link.

While on the subject of common infections, another is the Epstein-Barr Virus, associated with glandular fever and possibly linked to some lymphomas. There is more information here. Although I am CMV negative, I am EBV positive, along with the majority of the population!

End of cytology discussion… Off to Chippenham this evening!

Onwards and upwards! (and I’ve just noticed – this is the 400th post!)

Tags: ECP, GvHd

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An update is long overdue, but first, as it has been quite a while since I posted a picture of Olivia, here is one taken a couple of weeks ago. She is very much a little girl, now aged 21/2 years old, and very mobile, very determined and quite able to make herself understood, with a vocabulary that is increasing daily!

I have had a busy two weeks since I last posted, finishing off some coursework for the last University module I completed, and last week, back at Cranfield for another module, with an exam at the end of it. I have also had some results from last year’s work, and while one result from coursework was disappointing, I had made up for it in the exam, so I passed it, and I think I have enough credits for the PgCert, so I am now working towards the PgDip.

Last week’s course was quite intensive, but the exam seemed to go well, and I should get some results in about six weeks. I am now waiting for the coursework!

I have also been doing some computer stuff at home, and I have built a new server for the blog, one that will use less power and be a bit quieter. I moved the webserver onto it this morning, and it all seems to be working well! The pictures show the internals as I was building it, the main feature being nodedicated processor cooling fan, and only one small case fan that just switches on when required. The other picture shows the two disc drives (2.5″) in a RAID 1 configuration, which also consume less power.

Healthwise things have been a bit mixed. While I have been feeling well, and putting on a bit more weight, I have had an occurrence of the sore mouth, coinciding with a meal out with some very tasty chilli nachos about 3 weeks ago. I have been taking some medication that I have used before, and it is much better, but yesterday I had a letter from Guy’s confirming what I had thought, that I had a slight infection, and suggesting some other treatment to clear it up properly.

And there is another milestone tomorrow when I go up to St Thomas’s for the last planned session of ECP. It has certainly made a big difference to my health, and the GvHd seems to be under control. However if it does flare up again, there is always the option to have another course of the treatment.

So really on all fronts, it is ‘Onwards and Upwards’!

Tags: Computing, Olivia, Tech stuff

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Not so much today, but it is ten years ago today that I first had an inkling that things were not quite right – little did I know then that life would never be quite the same again!

I was in America on a business trip, and when the business activities had finished, I stayed on to take a holiday, joined by my family. We were staying with friends in North Carolina and I developed a rash and itchy palms. Eventually I went to the local health centre and had one of the most comprehensive check ups ever – including blood tests and x-rays. The eventual diagnosis was that I had an enlarged spleen, indicative of several things, including (in passing) leukaemia. Whatever it was, I was advised to get it investigated, but I went away with a prescription for anti-biotics. (I wonder if he thought I had Lyme’s disease)

On the basis that rare things are rare, I took the anti-biotics, paid the bill (so glad I had medical insurance for the holiday!) and returned to the UK three weeks later and (because I was based in London at the time) I ended up at St Thomas’s for investigation and an eventual diagnosis of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma – two years later re-diagnosed as mantle cell lymphoma.

And here, 10 years, two self donated transplants and one unrelated donor transplants later, I am! A journey not without its moments of suspense and drama! – And here thanks to the advances in medical science and the team at Guy’s and St Thomas’s, and also Southampton General Hospital! (And I did ring up that Doctor in the US to thank him!)

So to all those and those who have supported me over the years, a very big THANK YOU!

Onwards and upwards!

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