31/08/22 Results from blood tests #41

Good news! Paraproteins still undetectable, free light chains all ok, and that gamma glutamyl transferase is firmly back in the normal range where it belongs. Potassium a little bit low again so back on the bananas.. Nothing else to cause concern as far as I can tell - mot important of all is that remission continues!.

30/08/22 Bloods and boules

It's a week since the last bloods were taken at Springfield, so as usual I've sent an email to the cancer nurses to remind them to send me the results. That should give me something myeloma-related to write about next time. The rest of this post is probably of interest to other petanque players only (I know there are at least two among the readership, curiously located at opposite points on the earth's surface.)

Played a very enjoyable doubles game at Epping yesterday morning. The opposition got off to a good stat with five points from the first end. Difficult to come back from that, and they built up a 10 - 2 lead before we started a recovery and squared it at 12 - 12. The final end came down to my last ball and the opposition's last ball. I made a good throw, pointing right up next to the coche and taking the lead. The opposition had no choice but to shoot, and he hit my "on" ball perfectly. It flew off five or six feet to the right, and that could so easily have given them the point. But instead the coche just followed my ball, stopping six inches away and giving us 13 - 12. Two good balls to finish a very tight match, and it could have gone either way. Just luck that my team came out on top.

28/08/22 Hare

 Breakfast at The Hare yesterday (Full English) followed by a walk in Tower Gardens:

Ate nothing else all day apart from half a can of soup (with some grated cheese added) and a leftover crust off the last loaf.

26/08/22 Thunderstorm

Last night brought the long-awaited thunderstorm, and a LOT of rain. 

Result: a leak in what we rather grandly call the boiler room. Actually, rather more of an alcove. Looks to have been just the sheer quantity of rain getting into the flue rather than a leak in the flat roof where the flue goes through.

24/08/22 (2) Harlow

Very hot again, very humid and sticky. Went to Harlow Town Park for a walk/scoot. The strange thing about this park is that every tine we go, the cafe is somewhere different. Or the route we carefully memorised last time no longer works. Yet again we went wrong, so we ended up in the pub (The Greyhound) for lunch instead. Excellent scampi & chips with garden peas - it seems to be making a bit of a comeback - and very strange cappuccinos. Stopped for Rossi ice-creams on the way home - more than welcome in the heat.

24/08/22 No news...

 It's a very quiet time for bloggable material. Nothing new again...

21/08/22 Ongar

 Still nothing new about my myeloma. No news is good news, as they say.

Played at Ongar this morning and again did it without my frame and the attached boules bag, although I did get a bit tired towards the end. In the first game an Anglo-French alliance of me and Joel won comfortably against an all-English team, in the second game we swapped all the pairs around and my team lost a close game. Tomorrow, Epping. Tuesday, another blood test...

18/08/22 Birchanger

Progress on the boules piste. Played just the one longish game (we won 13 - 9, I think) but did it all free-standing without problems. I used the frame only to get from car to piste and back again. Veery pleased about that.

17/08/22 (2) Proper rain

 At last, some real rain accompanied by thunder:

It only lasted for half an hour or so - enough to get one of the cats (Blue) thoroughly soaked, but there should be more on the way.

Regular 3-monthly B12 injection this morning, and the ankle oedema is coming back despite the new pills. Maybe it's the heat. Or the new cool.

17/08/22 Cooler

The heatwave has finally broken. much cooler yesterday and some decent rain although not enough to make much impression.

Played at Tower in the evening - won one, lost one.

As for myeloma, nothing new except, maybe just possibly... for a week now I've been getting pain in the front of my left thigh. It feels like a strained muscle, but it isn't getting any better. I'm getting to the point of thinking maybe I should mention it to the cancer nurses at Springfield, just in case. I don't want it to turn out to be a new lesion in my femur or anything like that.

15/04/22 Sun

 No escape from the sun at Epping Petanque:

Played two, won one, lost one. Still using the frame for support when standing, but doing more and more without it now.

Our plumber arrived in the afternoon to fit the new macerator. Something of a relief to have the upstairs WC back in action, even though I have to wait till tomorrow afternoon for the mastic to set properly before I risk sitting on it...

A little rain this evening, but nothing remotely like the downpours some other parts of the country have been getting.

14/08/22 Shade

 Some welcome relief from the sun at Ongar this morning:

Played one game (won 13-8) then quit as too hot - about 33C. Spent most of the rest of the day crashed out with the heat. Might be some rain overnight...

Finally made it to the end of The Big Bang Theory" last night. Final episode was really quite moving - a lot invested in those characters in all that time.

13/08/22 Suffolk

 Another very hot couple of days with temperatures well above 30. At least it was a little cooler on the Suffolk coast yesterday.

The plan to take both walker (for Saxmundham church and High Street and scooter (for Aldeburgh) was less than successful. It's possible but less than practical and it would have been simpler just to have hoisted the scooter in and out another time or two with a less cluttered boot. Also, now I've fitted it with an alarm, I'm more prepared to park it and go off for a walk with a stick or two than I was before.

Welcome shade in the Garden of Remembrance:

Lunch at the Wentworth in Aldeburgh:

Expecting it would be easy to eat with my bad left hand, I ordered coq au vin with rice, expecting a mound of rice and lots of chicken pieces on the plate. Instead I got a whole chicken quarter in a little pot with a pepper and mushroom sauce and a tightly packed little dish of wild rice. Very difficult to eat without creating rather more mess than I like!

A walk along the front:

And finally to Snape for tea behind the concert hall and a visit to the fascinating Early Music Shop which has recently moved there from Yorkshire:

10/08/22 (2) Hot again

 Another blisteringly hot day, with more to come...

Went out this morning to post an Amazon return and fill the car up before Friday's planned Suffolk coast expedition. Expensive business these days! Spent most of the rest of the day avoiding the heat; nothing else to report.

10/08/22 Birthday

Today is my myeloma's third birthday. Not the actual date of diagnosis, but the day we knew beyond reasonable doubt that I'd got it. Not so very many years ago, before modern treatments began, I'd have been dead by now. Instead I'm hoping for more time in remission, and when that ends there are plenty more line of treatment to try as well as new gene therapies coming along all the time. Looking forward to a good few more years of reasonable health before it finally gets me, or something else gets in first.

09/08/22 (2) Plumbing

Not the day I expected. The macerator behind the WC in the upstairs shower room came to the end of its working life with a total failure that left rather a lot of foul water in places where it shouldn't be. I'll spare readers the details. Not pleasant, and a long difficult clean-up. Many thanks to Sue for her part in that

Our emergency plumber came round mid-afternoon, and yes we need a new macerator. That'll be sometime next week, meaning I have to go downstairs every time...  Before that, we went to Oaklands  Park for lunch (sausage rolls, forgivable under the circumstances). Grass extremely dry, parched, and brown. As bad as I've ever seen, remembering back to 2018, 1967, and even (just) 1956.

Planning our annual trip to the Suffolk coast on Friday, wondered whether it would be possible to fit both the scooter and Walter the Walker into the car at the same time. The answer is yes, just, if you take all Walter's wheels off.

09/08/22 Consultation

Face-to-face with haematologist Dr.Ch, who has just retired from his NHS work after forty years. Glad to say he's continuing his private practice. Nothing much to discuss as my numbers continue to be good (and no concerns over that slightly high GGT figure). So we continue in full remission and with no treatment for another month...

07/08/22 WJF

Went to the Writtle Jazz Festival - first live music since the same thing last year! Took the scooter and no problems getting it in and out of the car by myself, so another step forward for independence.

Hot. Not ridiculous heatwave hot, but more than hot enough.

05/07/22 (2) Progress

My hearing aids being four years old, I took them, along with their charger, in today to be sent off for new batteries and service. They gave me a loan pair (exactly the same make and model) to use while mine are away. This is the new charger that comes with them: 

This monstrosity is about three times the size of my original one, and takes up rather too much desktop space.

I think it's called progress.

05/07/22 40th

I've just had my 40th set of blood test results since this all began. Paraproteins still undetectable (that's after no treatment at all since mid-January) and after two of my Free Light Chain numbers were outside normal range last month, now they're all comfortably normal again. Moral: if the movements are only small, probably no need for concern. Just wait for the next set of results.

The one strange thing this time is in the liver results - the enzyme gamma glutamyl transferase, which is usually in normal range, has jumped a bit high. Raised GGT is an indicator of a number of things, including drinking too much. Well, I used to consume a fair amount of red wine in the evenings and my GGT stayed normal apart from a couple of months when it went up a little (but never for even two months in a row) - but I haven't touched a drop since mid-January when I came out of Broomfield Hospital's Stroke Unit with the comment that my brain scan showed 100% normal. Maybe so, but I completely lost all desire for alcohol in any form, and it hasn't (yet) come back.

So the raised GGT must mean something else, if it isn't just a blip. I've been taking close to daily maximum Paracetamol as part of the recovery from neck surgery in May, and I'm wondering if that may be a factor. Something to talk about in my face-to-face with my haematologist on Monday... (slightly edited version of a post on the facebook Myeloma Support UK group)

03/07/22 Hose reel

A week or two ago one of our hose reels (we have several, it's a long garden) expired after many years of faithful service. So I went to Amazon and ordered a new one

;

No "some assembly required" warning! In fact a lot assembly required, some of it very fiddly and needing at least two people / four hands. As usual these days, very inadequate instructions with low-contrast indecipherable photographs.

Next - a hosepipe ban...

My new Blue Badge has arrived. That's me sorted until 2025.

01/08/22 Autumn leaves

Boules at Ongar yesterday, piste covered in autumn leaves off the trees already. Didn't play well, lost two games out of two and only got one or two scoring balls all morning. Much better at Epping this morning - won two games out of three. Nothing else to report.