It's mid-October and the outdoor strawberry troughs are still producing good fruits, plenty of new flowers and sufficient runners for even more plants next year.
At the first warning of frost I'll transfer them into the greenhouse, so we may still be cropping them in November:
The greenhouse-based chillies are doing well too, only a handful is yet to turn red:
More ferritin woes...
After losing the first referral form asking for a series of venesections to be started within 2 weeks of 22nd September, LRI raised a replacement on October 4th. On the 7th of October the nice nurse where they do the blood-letting (Ward 1 LGH) called me and we had a chat about it. She thought that I had raised Hb and needed it reducing, I had to tell her that my Hb was fine and that I need the ferritin (FT) reducing without reducing the Hb to a level where I would become anaemic. She asked me what my FT level was and was mildly taken aback when I told her "1675". She said that the info wasn't clear regarding the frequency and number of treatments - I remember the consultant writing "6 weekly"* on the original and told him at the time that I thought it was a tad vague. Clearly the info on the replacement referral form also leaves a lot to be desired.
That first session took place today, so it was late.
According to LGH each bleed should reduce the ferritin by 30-50 × 10-6 g/L, that's for the Haemochromatosis patients that they usually deal with, they hardly ever have patients with acquired iron overload due to chemo and multiple Hb transfusions. 30-50 × 10-6 g/L isn't much compared to 1675 × 10-6 g/L, so at that rate it'll take plenty of venesections to get things fixed.
LRI want to space them out because a higher frequency means risking anaemia which would not be a good thing. Venesections remove ~9% of the Hb, and Hb levels don't recover naturally at much more than, in my case, ~10 g/L per week.
So, LRI are referring me to LGH for a series of venesections to get the FT down to ~500, a level which they consider to be OK and at which they would stop. To reduce it all the way down to the top-limit of 200 would take many more venesections. Now, depending on * below, 6 bleeds could take 6 or 36 weeks, and, say, 20 bleeds could take 20 or 120 weeks, which is probably longer than I have left! Some authorities (at LGH) insist that it should be brought down to 50 and then be controlled between 50 and 200... good luck with that 🙂
Anyway, we're one down, several more to go. LGH are hedging their bets and have made another appointment for me next week, the day after my next out-patient consultation at LRI.
* As predicted, the "6 weekly" thing was interpreted in different ways. LGH, where they do the procedure, interpreted it as once a week for 6 weeks, the Haematology Nurse Specialist at LRI thinks that the consultant intended it to mean once every 6 weeks. I find it totally bizarre, it's no way to specify a course of treatment.
This post was edited on 21st October 2016 and again on 15th January 2017 - the nice chart has been removed because it was based on incorrect information (thanks for the duff info, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust!).
Take a few offcuts, a few screws and a bit of eco fence-paint.
Add a few hours of sawing, clattering and pulling splinters from fingers.
Result? Hedgehog house:
Needs an IR camera. And a hedgehog.
I got out for some much-needed exercise in the sunshine and fresh air today. A few miles of tow-path walking along the canal near where I lived when I was a kid (from 4 to about 30), mainly to revisit one of the few unspoiled stretches where I used to go fishing, where the banks aren't steel-clad and the trees haven't been felled.
I took a few pics which I will post soon but for now here's a clickable taster:
Ashby Canal between bridges 28 and 29
No, it's not another strange hobby. No Mustelids have been deployed or harmed in the production of this post.
According to the consultant at yesterday's out-patient consultation, my key bloods are now well into the "normal" range:
However, he said that my ferritin level is "a little high". He also said that it's a common thing that they often see in people who are in remission from AML, it's a consequence of them messing with my bloods so much during the treatment.
So, this raises two questions...
1: If it is common and if it was expected, why has this not been explained to me at all during the previous nine months?
2: How is a level of 1675 × 10-6 g/L classed as "a little high" when the "normal" range is 15-200 × 10-6 g/L (or 50-200 × 10-6 g/L depending on which lab is doing the tests)?
To get some sort of visual perspective, here's a graph of all of my ferritin readings currently available to me:
Feel free to do a trend analysis on that 
Anyway, the accepted wisdom is to reduce the ferritin level simply by bleeding me at regular intervals, I'm currently waiting for a series of appointments to attend a different hospital to spill my hard-won red stuff into a waste-bucket.
I might just get me a real ferret instead. From what I've experienced it will be just as efficient at drawing blood, it won't cost the NHS a penny, and it will have a much lower carbon-footprint than driving a diesel-powered tin box to Leicester and back several times during the coming months.
