After all the effort put into spelling "community phlebotomist" correctly, the rest appears to have gone to pot:
Monday 3rd December, 2018
Wednesday 28th November, 2018
Innovation
We're working on installing a liquid propulsion system.
It's not helping us to win the quiz, but it's making being wiped out in the final round easier to bear:
Monday 26th November, 2018
In denial
The characters and incidents portrayed are entirely fictional.
Yup, that's what's displayed in the end credits of Amazon's "The Man in the High Castle". Three seasons in and we've seen plenty of "entirely fictional" characters in this excellent series.
But what about Adolf Hitler? And Eva Braun? And Heinrich Himmler? And J. Edgar Hoover? And Reinhard Heydrich? And George Lincoln Rockwell? And Shunroku Hata? And Joseph Goebbels? And Josef Mengele?
Entirely fictional? I think not.
Sunday 25th November, 2018
Upside
Of course, there are unforeseen benefits to be had from all of these visits to the hospital. For starters it's a good opportunity to spot more piss-poor parkers selfishly space-hogging in the LRI multi-storey car-park. It took a lot of effort to resist the temptation to wield the black marker-pen, it would have been so easy to change the reg-plate's "TVT" to "TWAT":
Thursday 22nd November, 2018
Perplexed
Another blood-test and consultation today. The results were a bit of a mixed bag... platelets, WCC and neutrophils have all risen a tad but remain well below bottom-limit. Hb has dropped again and is now slightly below bottom-limit. They didn't give me a result for serum ferritin but from the way I feel I suspect that it has risen again. The nerdy counts charts have been updated.
The consultants aren't sure what's going on. The previous three times I was there I've been told that it might be t-MDS (therapy-associated myelodysplastic syndrome), then that t-MDS had been diagnosed, then that I have t-MDS. Now I'm told that I have neither t-MDS nor relapsing AML. In short, they know what it isn't, but they don't know what it is.
I was told that I am now over their two-year hurdle so it's likely I'll make five. I beg to differ - I feel like I'm stuck with one leg either side and my nuts squashed against the woodwork.
I may ask for a second opinion from someone who claims to know about what's known and what's not:
We're in "watch & wait" territory. Another blood-test three weeks hence, then a blood-test and consultation three weeks after that.
If there's one lesson to be learned, it's this:
When I get concerned about a result that's much worse than the trend, I'm told that it's a blip because it's out-of-context...
But when they triumphantly announce a result that's ever-so-slightly better than the trend, I'm told that it's a sign of recovery even though it's out-of-context.
Sunday 18th November, 2018
Observing Report 11th-18th November 2018 (Leonid meteors)
Not the best Leonid shower I've ever seen... 665 pics... only one meteor caught on camera.
Click the pic to see a bigger (but not necessarily better) version.
