Cardboard Spaceship

Signing Off from the Spaceship

Well, the end of the Attack of Lumps was sadly not the end.  I now have recurrent diffuse B-Cell Lymphoma, and that's going to be a bitch to treat. 

I will get another four rounds of very heavy chemo, then they will basically do a bone marrow transplant with my own cells.

I am more likely to live than not, but it is going to be rather draining, and so after six jolly years of warbling nonsense in this blog, I am signing off. 

Thanks for being a reader, and I hope that I managed to make a few people smile. 

 

Turkey Holiday

We went to the Mediterranean for a holiday, at the Club Med Palmiye, which was brilliant.  Club Med is not cheap, but you go there and there is huge range of activity, and goings on, which you basically get as part of the package, and all food drink, etc. is also in the agreement, so you can really just relax.  We also had several friends that go there for the Geneva school holidays, so we had other people to play with.  In fact, judging by the travel schedule on the notice board, most of Geneva seemed to have the same idea.

Here is a picture of the Spaceship crew.  (Wim the Most Intelligent Member of the Crew went for a nice autumn break with his friend Patch, who is one of our neighbours.)

The location was lovely, and the weather good.

The Smallest Space Cadet of them All did his PADI Open Water certificate.

Here seen looking at the local fauna - tickely, apparently.

And here after finishing the diving.

I couldn't dive, but we did manage some snorkelling.

As you can see, I have hair and eyebrows again, and I am starting to feel much more like myself, and the holiday certainly helped. 

I am now back to work, at least slowly to begin with, and so the holiday was an excellent close the history of the Attack of Lumps. 

Turkey, and it's not even Christmas...

Just been chilling here in the Spaceship, getting better, and relaxing. 

Reading Neal Stephenson's Readme.  Everything he does is a kind of bonkers stream of consciousness, but I do like his stuff. 

Tomorrow we go to Turkey for a week of much needed family holiday before we all go back to work and try and finish off a bloody busy, and somewhat surprising, 2011.

See you on the other side of a bit of sea and sand.  Enjoy.

End of the Attack of Lumps

Went into see the Head of Lumps in the cantonal hospital, and he gave me the official "all-clear," so that's the end of that episode.  I still have to do follow up scans and so on as a matter of routine, but it should be recuperation and rehabilitation from now on.  I will start back with SAP in my day job for the beginning of November, so that will be life starting to turn back to normal. 

A lot of people seem to go through life changing epiphanies when this happens to them, I just feel tired and a bit weak, as I lost a lot of weight, not all of which was unsightly fat, sadly, but also quite a lot of muscle, so lots of long country walks for me, and also some physio as well, I would imagine. 

Also, I will not spend my days slumped in front of Minecraft, as I start to feel more energetic.  Minecraft is bloody addictive though.  Diggy Hole, Diggy Diggy Hole!

Mrs Spaceship Hits the Half Century

This weekend we celebrated here in the Spaceship, as Mrs Spaceship hit the half century.  As I have always graciously said of this event, "I can't believe it's me bird who's 50, and not her mum."  A feeling that my spouse shares, as she cannot believe herself that she is not 25 anymore.

So, all the local ladies got together and had a lunch, and then we had a few friends round for a drink, and went out to a very good local restaurant, after having some champagne in the garden.  With the unseasonal weather, we forgot it would get dark earlier, and so we ended up drinking it in the dark around our brazier thingy that we bought earlier this year. 

Great fun, and I think that Mrs Spaceship enjoyed herself as much as possible under the circumstances.

Burning Man

Hello Spaceshippers, back again.  Whence has I been?  In the local hospital, having my first, and hopefully only, major side effect of the treatment of the Attack of Lumps.

Now, remember, Chemotherapy is where a group of skilled and experienced oncologists fill you full of very toxic chemicals with the aim of killing the cancer somewhat before they kill you.   The degree of "somewhat" can be variable in terms of the type of cancer, how far it has got, and what kind of shape the rest of you is in.

My "somewhat" quotient was quite big I thought, but as I finished the 8th chemo, and waited at the end of the week of nasty smelling everything, and started to wait for it to get better, I suddenly started to feel worse.  Burning tongue, listless, bleh. 

Took some iron treatments, tried resting, just felt worse, so eventually Mrs Spaceship and I went to see the grown ups at the hospital,  whereupon I duly diagnosed as having 39 C of fever, (our thermometer at home claimed I was at 36.8 C, so not so reliable) and was duly given gorillacillin and shoved into a bed on the top of the hospital.  Likely cause, pneumonia or some other related chest infection.

Funny thing was, 39 C should make you sweat like a bucket, or me at least, and have fever symptoms and so on, but I had none of that, I just lay there like one of those stones you use to cook meat in a Mongolian Barbecue.

Five days of that, and a lot of drips, anti-biotics, and so on, and I appear to have shaken it off.   (Very good care team in the hospital, lots of careful follow through.)

Well, It was not unexpected that a battered immune system might get a surprise, but it's nice to be home again.   Hope that was the "somewhat" gap for this illness.

Renovation Time in the Spaceship

I finished my chemo for the Attack of Lumps on Friday, and took the last of the follow up drugs this morning, so now, I am officially in convalescence mode.  I was surprised to be told that I should not expect to go to work much before November, as I will need to recuperate more than I had expected.  I've never been even really trivially ill before, so I really have no handle on what this takes to recover from.  I am a bit anaemic, white blood cell count okay, and so on.  I have lost a lot of muscle though, and I am being encouraged to do physio to get that coming back on.  In reality, I suppose it remains the old saw - time will heal.

In addition, as scheduled a long time ago, we are having the main kitchen in the house completelöy replaced, and that started this morning, with the wrecking crew turning up, and as we speak they are bashing amazingly fast and effective holes in the house, taking out the old rather oddly laid out kitchen, and getting ready for the new one.  It has drven the entire crew up into my studio office upstairs, which fortunately for us, still had a functional kitchen, so we are able to eat and drink still.   It's all a bit bonkers though.

Lumpdate III - Good News

Well, I went to see Head of Lumps at the local hospital today, having done a CT PET Scan last week, and apparently there is no remaining trace of the erstwhile Attack of Lumps. 

Obviously this is good news.

I still have to do a couple more chemo, more or less as a belt and braces, but the prognosis is now very positive. 

Still absorbing that bit of news.

In a nice counterpoint, I got a card in the post this morning signed by a number of SAP UK friends, colleagues and associates, so that was very nice, all wishing me well, which is timely.  (Thanks everyone, much appreciated.)

 

Lumpdate Again

As regular reader(s) will know, I am in treatment for what I think of as being the "Attack of Lumps," aka B-Cell Lymphoma, and I pleased to say that progress continues to be good.

I had my sixth chemo last Friday, and it may be the last, depending on the results of a scan that I did yesterday, and what the Professor of Lumps, the highly able Professor Dietrich, reckons needs done. 

It would be good if it were, because I am starting to get some cumulative effects now from the treatment, most of which is to do with taste and other sensations, but the one that actually has some effect is one of the chemicals makes my hands and feet a bit numb, which means I am having a smashing time in the house, and have broken more glassware than a bull in a Venetian chandelier factory. 

I also dropped my recently acquired Kindle a metre and a half onto a tile floor, which was fatal to the poor machine.  Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Having said that, when I think about what I know other people went through with chemo, I am clear that I have had really very minor problems, and am grateful for that. 

Swiss National Day

Well, been just taking it easy this time around in the Spaceship, but one event of note was the 1st of August, which is Swiss National Day, and incidentally also my birthday.  (Guaranteed party!)

The treat this year was that the Smallest Space Cadet Of Them All, my son, was asked to read the equivalent of the Swiss declaration of independence, dating back from 1291, as part of the speechifying before the bonfire, and rather good fireworks, this year here in Jussy. 

No photos, as I recorded it on video, but certainly one of my fond memories for this and any other year.