Archive for October 2018
What the fox going on in the garden?
It may well be the back-end of October but the garden still thinks that it's late summer.
The tomatoes are still putting out flowers and fruit:
And the raspberries aren't finished yet:
And there's this critter which has set off our CCTV cam a few times recently:
We're still waiting for the hedgehogs to put in an appearance.
Pick the bones out of that!
Chalk up another one:
7th August: 4th
8th August: 1st (Charity Quiz)
14th August: 3rd
21st August: 2nd
28th August: 1st
4th September: 2nd
11th September: 1st
18th September: 1st
2nd October: 2nd
9th October: 1st
16th October: 2nd (as a Bogillator)
23rd October: 1st
Nick, you're so MoneySuperMarket... 🙂
Gardiani latrina vicit
Who needs Halloween?
Possibly the spookiest evening of my life - it turns out that Claire, my partner in our makeshift team and a member of one of the teams that we've been vying with on an almost weekly basis for a couple of years, was one of the visitors who chatted with me in the TV room during my first days at LRI way back in December 2015. Her Father-in-Law was in the same ward at the same time. If the Quiz Mistress hadn't thrown us together, we'd never have known. What are the chances?
We've got a lot to talk about next week - there wasn't enough time this evening.
Anyway, seeing as you asked... Second.
- 7th August: 4th
- 8th August: 1st (Charity Quiz)
- 14th August: 3rd
- 21st August: 2nd
- 28th August: 1st
- 4th September: 2nd
- 11th September: 1st
- 18th September: 1st
- 25th September: Quiz cancelled
- 2nd October: 2nd
- 9th October: 1st
- 16th October: 2nd (as a Bogillator)
No picture this week. I can sense your relief from here!
One Up Three Down
I went in for yet another blood-test and consultation today. They say that there's still no sign of the AML returning but the blood-counts don't look good. Platelets, WCC and neutrophils have all dropped again - that's four consecutive drops - and they're all now well below their normal ranges. Inexplicably, my serum ferritin level has risen from 165 × 10-6 g/L to 423 × 10-6 g/L which puts it way above where it should be.
The first evidence of reduced counts was picked up and comprehensively ignored way back in JUNE when, after LRI had advised me to see my GP about my "late effects", my GP arranged a full blood test. That test was conducted in Week 26 at a Warwickshire hospital which sent the results back to the GP and to nobody else. My GP's stand-in eventually phoned me in August to discuss my lipids results and not much else, but nobody there forwarded any results to LRI. As far as I knew, everything else was fine. And LRI were told nothing.
But ELEVEN WEEKS LATER an LRI test showed a counts drop and that set me to wondering what else was in those June results. Last week I raided my GP's surgery to get a copy of the June test results and when I read them I was gob-smacked - the report clearly showed significant drops and out-of-limit results for key haematology indicators. Earlier this week I sent LRI a full copy of the results... FIFTEEN WEEKS LATE.
So now it's looking like Myelodysplasia will be my early Christmas present this year.
I'm slated to have another blood test and consultation four weeks from today, and if they find that the count drops have continued they'll probably do another Bone Marrow Aspiration with Trephine, and if the results of that look dodgy we'll be looking at a PBSCT. Looking at the rate that the counts (especially the neutrophil counts) are dropping, I think that four weeks will be cutting it a bit fine.
It’s getting silly now
Don't ask me how it happened, I wasn't paying attention:
- 7th August: 4th
- 8th August: 1st (Charity Quiz)
- 14th August: 3rd
- 21st August: 2nd
- 28th August: 1st
- 4th September: 2nd
- 11th September: 1st
- 18th September: 1st
- 25th September: Quiz cancelled
- 2nd October: 2nd
- 9th October: 1st
Next week should be interesting - due to prior commitments, our team will be down to one member and so will our rival team. Cathy Quiz-Mistress (Winner of Britain's Got Empty Prosecco Bottles) says that we leftovers should join forces. It's looking quite likely that, for one night only, The Bog Wardens and The Vacillators could well be merged as... The Bogillators! It could be a strange evening.
That's the good news.
The bad news for you lot is that they've gone back to their policy of taking pics of the winners:
Gardiani latrina vicit
