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

Last Wednesday Susan and I took a trip to Wake Forest Baptist Hospital to check in with their cancer experts.  It was more or less good news all round though I was glad Susan took the time off work to drive me there - I was nearly asleep on the way back.  It's also absolutely essential to have her around as her ability to remember detail is far better than mine.  So if any of the following makes no sense, it's my fault, not the hospital's. The next step in my treatment is to have another month-long cycle of chemotherapy (or two), followed by a stem cell transplant.  If you've been paying attention you'll know that I don't need a donor but thank you to the people who have offered to be donors.  They take my own blood, remove a bunch of stem cells - they'd like 10 million but must have at least 2 million - and then put the blood back into me.  I get to stay in hospital for about a week to keep me away from sick people (odd logic) and so that I'm cl...

Got to school bright and early ready for a full day at my desk (even though the skinflints pay me less than half pay).  Opened up the laptop and stared blankly at the logon screen - I had no bloody idea what my password was.  After a few abortive attempts at old passwords, random pokes at the keyboard and so on, Windows finally locked me out - "see your system administrator".  OK - I needed the exercise so up the hill I trudged to pound on the only locked door on the campus.  They couldn't get it open so they were clearly having as good a day as I was. So I went to the head coach's office and phoned them.  "Leave it to us - we'll change your password to blahblah and you log on with that and then change it to something you have never used before.  OK - back to my room and logged in with blahblah and changed it to something I may remember.  Needless to say, while all this was going on I remembered my old password but Windows wouldn't let me use that aga...

As we live not far from where Nina Simone lived, why not pinch one of her song titles for a post?  It suddenly struck me on Thursday afternoon how bloody great I felt - not tired, not dopey but ready for anything.  So I did stuff - sanded some window frames, went for a walk, played the guitar, wrote a bit of my song for Synesthesia.  Then I had some leftover curry and felt bloody awful again but it was great while it lasted (I had more of the same leftover curry for lunch on Saturday and felt fine after it).  Still, it is good to see that some of my numbers are moving in the right direction and I'm focusing on that.  My hip finally stopped hurting, more or less, so I trotted out yesterday to ref a couple of fairly gentle soccer games.  By halfway through the first half of the second game my hip had once again decided this was a bloody silly pastime so I was pretty glad that the teams weren't the most mobile in the world.  As autumn is now here (it's g...

On Saturday morning I went to Mission Hospital for an MRI.  Handled in their usual efficient manner, I was kept hanging around for no more than 2 or 3 minutes in my entire hour and a half there.  Starting off by changing into scrubs and making sure I'd taken off all my metal bits and pieces (they let me keep my wedding ring on as it's largely gold), I was given a pair of earplugs which rendered me almost completely deaf.  I was then given instructions on what to do and what not to do - fortunately I have had an MRI before and am a pretty good lip reader so no problems there. It was then time to be threaded into the tube of the MRI.  It's pretty small and I'm sure a lot of folks around here wouldn't fit.  You can't sit up once you're in there and I simply had to ignore my itchy foot until the itch went away.  Despite the noise (which started out sounding like a high speed didgeridoo and went through a remarkable repertoire of chunks, clicks, bangs and whirr...

OK - this is getting past a sodding joke.  I've had a week and a bit off chemo during which I have become less dopey, more alert, slightly more intelligent and as deaf as ever.  The one thing that hasn't improved is the pain in my legs  (and my typing but that's two things).  I reffed three under-12 soccer games yesterday and couldn't keep up with the kids.  Fortunately they didn't run that much so I was able to move around "tactically" - of course I can judge that offside from the halfway line (just like most of the parents do).  And by the third game I had arrived at my braindead place where I can't remember which team is playing which way which is made worse when they decide to pass backwards, making me think that their own backs are offside.  Still, I got yelled at only once by a coach so that's not too bad.  In my own defence, it was a minor foul for which I was going to award a free kick but had to wait to see if the non-offending team gaine...