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

It doesn't feel like 60 days since I was being pumped full of my own stem cells in Wake Forest but here we are on day +60, another milestone.  Being a Sunday, I didn't get to go to a hospital to have an arm emptied - that's tomorrow and I only have to make the trip to Mission in Asheville rather than schlepp all the way to Wake Forest.  That comes on day +100, round about mid-April.  I don't know if I will be back at work by then or not - apparently flu and gastric problems abound and the school doesn't have a "100% vaccination" requirement so I suspect they're going to tell me not to go back tomorrow. Physically, I am doing great.  My walks are up to a couple of miles now and neither hills nor stairs are knocking the wind out of me, at least for the first 20 meters / 30 stairs or so.  Probably head for Lake Lure tomorrow for a couple of flat miles.  I'll resist renting a canoe.  I've just quit an online course on using the Raspberry Pi with t...

Intrepid explorer at Base Camp 1 What more appropriate quote to commemorate the ascent by yours truly and my trusty sherpa, Sam, to the lofty heights of Biltmore House.  Parking closer to the trail leading up to its south face, we made it to Base Camp 1 before pausing for water.  We agreed that we should have used oxygen but it was too late to change that now.  We headed up the goat track on the left in the picture, marveling at both the view and the temperature which, unusually for the time of year, was above freezing.  By about 40 degrees. At the higher altitudes, something has been done to the fences and you now approach the summit on the western side of the fence rather than the east.  There is no need to negotiate the knuckle-eating gate, either which will be handy next time I attack the path by bike. We made sure to touch the wall of the house (I wonder if they know there is a major crack in it) and utter Sir Edmund's famous words.  Sher...

A million years ago I had to read a book called "The Ascent of Everest" by John Hunt, the long-mostly-forgotten leader of the expedition to climb Everest.  I must say I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than "The Catcher in the Rye".  It was written long before climbing Everest became a case of slipping on your Gortex undies, grabbing a couple of titanium oxygen bottles and off you go.  And so it was when I parked by the lower lake at Biltmore House yesterday, ready to plan my assault on the Everest that leads up to the house, maybe 300 feet above me.  I've done this climb - OK, hike - many times: sometimes on foot and more frequently by bike.  But right now, walking a mile and a bit on the flat is bloody hard work.  So this was more an expedition planning trip than the full monty. Kudos to the folks at Biltmore for upgrading the path - there was one real nasty bit where the path was about 6" wide and much higher on one side than on the other so if you rode ...

Now that I have washed most of the chemo out of my system, I'm feeling great.  Not looking all that good, having had the misfortune to lose most but not all of my hair and all my beard with the exception of the moustache (and even that is slowly falling out). The picture on the right is from my application for the vacant job as national security advisor.   I've got into the habit of walking every day and am managing a mile and a bit without any distress though my legs stiffen up as the day goes on.  It'll be  a while before I'm reffing again (please spare me a constant stream of under-8 games) but I have been asked to mentor some of the younger refs.  I mentioned to a ref team on Sunday that they had failed to weight one of the goals as required and they duly ignored me so that worked well. Sleep without endless trots to the bathroom has finally returned and I am catching up with various jobs around the house that I am allowed to do.  (Nothing involving ...

I really must stop using song titles for my posts but this one's appropriate.  "Get exercise," they said and so, being the kind of person who listens to doctors even if I don't always follow their instructions, I have been walking every day, either in the open (for preference) or on the treadmill.  I made the mistake yesterday of using the treadmill barefoot which presented me with two bloody great blisters.  So today I thought I would do some energetic odd jobs around the house and skip the walk.  On with the gloves and mask, cart the shop-vac up from the basement and get rid of the dead leaves and other crud from the garage.  Followed by much hand-washing. On with new gloves and time to clean the bathrooms.  Much trotting up and down stairs for squirty bottles and bits of rag.  Off with the gloves, wash the hands and time for lunch, after I've put the shop-vac back in the basement. So, instead of 15 minutes on the treadmill or walking round JBL, I'...

It's a beautiful day here in Asheville - 60 degrees and barely a puff of wind.  We obviously haven't paid our bill for winter.  Even the large chunk of ice from our icemaker that I threw outside on Sunday has finally melted.  Susan went back to work today having looked after me without mollycoddling over the last month.  It being such a nice day and with very little that really needs to be done, I headed to Biltmore for a stroll through the gardens. I parked at the bottom of the hill by the conservatory and went and had a nostalgic mooch through the pongas (pathetic little specimens compared with what we had in Titirangi).  Then on up the hill to the house, about half a mile by rather circuitous route.  I can't have seen ore than a dozen people other than Biltmore gardeners the whole way.  Moral - good time to visit Biltmore is 10 a.m. on a warm winter Wednesday.  I stopped to admire the view from the terrace (translation - to gasp for breath) an...