Will you still love me to-marrow - John Mycroft and Multiple Myeloma

I mentioned my dud leg at my chemo session on Tuesday and the world went into Grey's Anatomy mode (which doesn't mean I hopped into a storage cupboard to have it off with a pretty nurse).  Instead, they sent me across the road to the ultrasound place where a pretty young lady ran an electronic thingy all over my legs while I thought of Donald Trump speeches, John Arlott commentaries and kangaroo courts with my boss to avoid embarrassing myself.  The ultrasounds showed no blood clots (which is what everyone was looking for) so that was a relief.  A week down the track and both legs still hurt despite my being as lazy as possible and slapping ice on.  I reffed a couple of soccer games yesterday in the hope of loosening something up and was rewarded with a nasty ripping feeling in my right buttock. I've taken some pictures showing my chemo pipes for anyone who's interested but Microsoft in their infinite wisdom have decided not to support SD card readers in Windows 10 ...

Well that weekend can probably be most accurately described as "interesting".  I spent it slowly falling apart.  It all started on Friday morning when I woke up with my lower right leg aching, a bit like cramp though it wasn't cramped.  As Ruth at Cancer Care always asks me if I'm hurting anywhere, I figured it may not be a good sign so I gave them a ring.  They weren't at all worried so I slapped an ice pack on it which helped more than a little.  It wasn't any better Saturday morning (notice that it didn't hurt enough to keep me awake) so, as I had a couple of soccer games to ref, I plastered it with Deep Heat (or CVS's cheapo imitation) and trotted off to ref. One of the teams didn't turn up for the first game so, as there were 13 people there (refs, players, coach) we decided on a quick game of 6 a side with me reffing.  All went well until I decided to play the last 10 minutes at which point both legs decided I should act my sodding age.  Fo...

Over the last few months I have looked longingly at my guitar (a La Patrie Concert CW) and at my shaky hands and thought "Maybe tomorrow," or strummed it a bit. Today I plucked it from its case determined to give it a bit of serious exercise. First I learned that tremelo is not an option - it's amazing how many incorrect combinations of 3 fingers your right hand can produce when all it has to do is pick 3-2-1 repeatedly.  Then on to some old favourites and not so favourites.  One advantage of not playing something for a while is that you forget that there are certain bits you can't play and, before you've realised it, you've reached such a bit and played it with no problem so you go back and play it again and again and grin like an idiot.  One such was the opening of Carnival - could never get from the harmonics to the chords convincingly and today it just happened without thinking about it.  Fortunately there was nobody within earshot to hear me play it...

Following the trip to Wake Forest, my meds got bumped majorly.  Instead of a Cytoxan pill, 10 steroids and a shot in the belly every Tuesday, I am now getting a Revlimid every day, 10 steroids on Tuesday and an IV drip on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  Because Revlimid is a derivative of Thalidomide, I am not allowed to have unprotected sex with fertile women so there goes that hobby.  (The risk of doing it, other than getting belted by Susan, has never been proven.) What better way to test the safety of your meds than buggering off out of wi-fi range to England for a week.  It turned out that more of England is out of wi-fi range than anticipated - for example, my wi-fi gave up somewhere between the free connection at Starbucks on Exeter St Davids station and the free wi-fi on the train on platform 5 and didn't kick in again until I reached Heathrow 2 days later (via an overnight in Paddington the train wasn't that late). I took the Revlimid & steroids with me but ...