The time has finally come for me to invest in a new laptop. Oooooh my days.
See it's been five years (more or less) since the purchase of my current machine, and the battered macbook that has affectionately become known as 'Old Whitey' can truly take no more. I almost feel sorry for the poor old bastard as he trundles along, moaning like a capsized whale as I load up a puny word document, as if the world's gone full circle and it's the end of days. The thing can't even operate without being hooked up to a power socket. It's one dynamic trait as a laptop ripped away, like a violent circumcision. The shame of it all.
Oh it's ever so dramatic. BUT THAT'S LIFE OLD WHITEY. You came in, did your duty, made me look like the pretentious prick with my skinny jeans and thick rimmed glasses and Macintosh laptop. Ooh la la. And I'll always love you for it, but it's time to go. You've turned into the one thing that has gone and made you obsolete. Rubbish.
Being the mac fan boy, I'm looking into a macbook pro, of course. Mightily expensive though, but those good folks at DLA have for some reason decided that I deserve crunk loads of money so what the hey? Providing I can swindle it tax free, I think I'll go for the 15-inch, 2.0 GHz quad-core i7, 4GB 1333MHz 5400 RPM Intel... OH BALLS TO THAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT ALL THAT MEANS. IT'LL BE BITCHIN' THOUGH.
I think I'll even take up photo editing, seeing as one of the main selling points in reviews is 'look how many photos I can edit! Wow!' And seriously, how the hell can a laptop be 'aerodynamic'? What does that even mean? Does it fly? For the money I'll be paying it better do.
This has all been a welcome distraction from feeling a bit rough lately though. Vincristine is so evil. In fact, if I ever get a dog I think I'll call it vincristine. Keep your enemies close and all that. The pain it's caused to my muscles, bones and organs has been unprecedented, yet all they can say at the hospital is 'man up', because it's the only option I have. I hate the stuff. Oh well, it's not like I have to have shots of it for the next two and a half years or anything HAHA. Oh wait...
I do.
This weekend I'm going to watch Thor I think. You know what the most exciting thing about the cinema is? ICE BLASTS. And when you mix the two colours so it's blue AND red? Magical.
Much love,
Ryan.
Wednesday 27 April 2011
Wednesday 20 April 2011
Miracle hair growth needed!
This weather's been absolute top drawer. I love a bit of sunshine, I do. Hot sunshine, light breeze, cool evenings, no humidity. Perfect. However, the twist in the tale comes with my unfortunate hair situation, in that a) it's growing back so slow I'll actually develop chest hair before I have anything to work with on top, b) it's growing back much lighter than before, blonde in some places and c) there's not a lot of it really. So in the line of blazing sunshine this basically makes me look completely bald, and coupling this with my general sullen disposition, it makes me the most obvious cancer patient ever. So if anyone has any crazy hair growth solutions that might not be COMPLETELY legal, then drop me a comment down below and I'll consider all suggestions.
It's been a good week so far. Treatment is done with and all I have to drop in for next week is a blood test, so I'm trying to come up with ideas of things to pass my time with. Exercise is practically out the window, my blood count is still a bit too low for all that intense nonsense and I'm still left knackered after taking on a set of stairs. Perhaps a hobby of sorts? Get back into music? Try and master the yo-yo? Go clay pigeon shooting? Again, hit me up with some suggestions so I can actually do something productive with my time!
Times like this I really wish we had a garden. Though this village properly stinks of manure today, so perhaps it's not such a bad thing. I'm starting to get majorly envious in regards to everyone but ME already enjoying some tasty looking BBQs this year whilst I'm settling for cheese sandwiches and jacket potatoes. Again, the drawbacks of not having a garden. Need to draw up a pros and cons list really.
That'll do for now. I just noticed I went a bit mental on the caps key on my last blog. THAT'S BECAUSE THE CAPS KEY IS AWESOME. Right.
Much love,
Ryan.
It's been a good week so far. Treatment is done with and all I have to drop in for next week is a blood test, so I'm trying to come up with ideas of things to pass my time with. Exercise is practically out the window, my blood count is still a bit too low for all that intense nonsense and I'm still left knackered after taking on a set of stairs. Perhaps a hobby of sorts? Get back into music? Try and master the yo-yo? Go clay pigeon shooting? Again, hit me up with some suggestions so I can actually do something productive with my time!
Times like this I really wish we had a garden. Though this village properly stinks of manure today, so perhaps it's not such a bad thing. I'm starting to get majorly envious in regards to everyone but ME already enjoying some tasty looking BBQs this year whilst I'm settling for cheese sandwiches and jacket potatoes. Again, the drawbacks of not having a garden. Need to draw up a pros and cons list really.
That'll do for now. I just noticed I went a bit mental on the caps key on my last blog. THAT'S BECAUSE THE CAPS KEY IS AWESOME. Right.
Much love,
Ryan.
Monday 18 April 2011
I'm back off the wagon!
That's right, without so much as a whimper I'm back on the hard stuff again. Get it in me man, I live for these cell killing, mood tampering, fatigue inducing drugs they call CHEMOTHERAPY. "Did you enjoy your lumbar puncture?" How about I puncture your lumbar you sick FREAK.
It's been a month to the day when I had that last dose of cytarabine and left Sheffield never to return there for treatment. Since then things have been a little awkward, you might say, culminating in today's events when we FINALLY got underway with the third phase of my treatment at my new home, the Radcliffe hospital in Oxford. Well, technically it's the Churchill, but they have so many damn 'centres of excellence' or whatever the hell that means that I can't distinguish between any of the individual wings of this clusterfuck of a network, so for now we'll just stick with the Radcliffe yeah? And as you can probably tell my first impressions of the place haven't been too glowing.
OH WHERE TO BEGIN. I might like to throw in an apology at this point for not posting in nearly a month but for all of you this is free so WHY SHOULD I? But in seriousness, the last few weeks have been a right bloody struggle and I'm trying not to go on a massive spiel so I don't completely undermine my last blog entry. I did make a chronological list earlier of what to say, crudely handwritten on the back of a tescos receipt, but that's somehow disappeared in the vortex of my own wallet so I'm gonna have to rely on my anything-but-flawless memory for this one. Here goes.
First, my induction goes absolutely tits up and I end up spending nearly two weeks in hospital for reasons that could have been easily avoided. Am I bitter? Gosh no, don't be silly. But what kind of place takes your blood, discovers the Hb is meandering around 6.9 and elects not to tell you? This follows with me nearly collapsing at home, having to rush in, being kept in overnight for a bag or two of blood, then picking up two infections of the bacterial and fungal variety and being remanded as hospital bound indefinitely. LAME.
To be fair, my family and Ellise did a great job in keeping my spirits up, and the nurses were rather sound (the more jaunty the character the better the nurse, I tend to find). And two weeks is nothing compared to say, I don't know, five weeks. But it properly puts a damper on the attitude, you know?
I get released at last and the following week I go in for my bone marrow (which actually turned out to be a SURPRISE bone marrow I was in no way prepared for, leaving me slightly disturbed mentally). Horrific pain aside, this goes rather smoothly. That is until the registrar hits us with a bit of a bombshell that my treatment is being changed, from what is called Regimen B to Regimen C, a much more savage and stronger course of treatment that might as well be described as intensive. The main issue with this was that they couldn't explain to us WHY they had decided to do this; the trials nurse had trotted off home by this point and my consultant was off in clinics so couldn't go through any of it with me. Cue a weekend of me and the family shitting it a bit until TODAY we find out we're going BACK to Regimen B because there was a BIT of a COCK UP with the communication between doctors. No big deal really, happens all the time. Made the heart skip a beat or two though! At least we get a happy ending... for now.
So there it is. A rather difficult period that I believe has come to an end. From here I'm hoping to properly regroup and get back to roughing up Luke if he things he's gonna be bringing the ruckus. I promise I'll update on a more regular basis, though I'll have to find more things to write about as it'll be kinda quiet on the chemo front. My own actual life? God forbid.
Now I'm off to watch the Game of Thrones pilot episode. I'm a bit wet for fantasy drama. Sometimes I think to myself that the LOTR trilogy is better than Star Wars. Then I promptly punch myself in the balls for even entertaining such an idea.
Big love.
Ryan.
It's been a month to the day when I had that last dose of cytarabine and left Sheffield never to return there for treatment. Since then things have been a little awkward, you might say, culminating in today's events when we FINALLY got underway with the third phase of my treatment at my new home, the Radcliffe hospital in Oxford. Well, technically it's the Churchill, but they have so many damn 'centres of excellence' or whatever the hell that means that I can't distinguish between any of the individual wings of this clusterfuck of a network, so for now we'll just stick with the Radcliffe yeah? And as you can probably tell my first impressions of the place haven't been too glowing.
OH WHERE TO BEGIN. I might like to throw in an apology at this point for not posting in nearly a month but for all of you this is free so WHY SHOULD I? But in seriousness, the last few weeks have been a right bloody struggle and I'm trying not to go on a massive spiel so I don't completely undermine my last blog entry. I did make a chronological list earlier of what to say, crudely handwritten on the back of a tescos receipt, but that's somehow disappeared in the vortex of my own wallet so I'm gonna have to rely on my anything-but-flawless memory for this one. Here goes.
First, my induction goes absolutely tits up and I end up spending nearly two weeks in hospital for reasons that could have been easily avoided. Am I bitter? Gosh no, don't be silly. But what kind of place takes your blood, discovers the Hb is meandering around 6.9 and elects not to tell you? This follows with me nearly collapsing at home, having to rush in, being kept in overnight for a bag or two of blood, then picking up two infections of the bacterial and fungal variety and being remanded as hospital bound indefinitely. LAME.
To be fair, my family and Ellise did a great job in keeping my spirits up, and the nurses were rather sound (the more jaunty the character the better the nurse, I tend to find). And two weeks is nothing compared to say, I don't know, five weeks. But it properly puts a damper on the attitude, you know?
I get released at last and the following week I go in for my bone marrow (which actually turned out to be a SURPRISE bone marrow I was in no way prepared for, leaving me slightly disturbed mentally). Horrific pain aside, this goes rather smoothly. That is until the registrar hits us with a bit of a bombshell that my treatment is being changed, from what is called Regimen B to Regimen C, a much more savage and stronger course of treatment that might as well be described as intensive. The main issue with this was that they couldn't explain to us WHY they had decided to do this; the trials nurse had trotted off home by this point and my consultant was off in clinics so couldn't go through any of it with me. Cue a weekend of me and the family shitting it a bit until TODAY we find out we're going BACK to Regimen B because there was a BIT of a COCK UP with the communication between doctors. No big deal really, happens all the time. Made the heart skip a beat or two though! At least we get a happy ending... for now.
So there it is. A rather difficult period that I believe has come to an end. From here I'm hoping to properly regroup and get back to roughing up Luke if he things he's gonna be bringing the ruckus. I promise I'll update on a more regular basis, though I'll have to find more things to write about as it'll be kinda quiet on the chemo front. My own actual life? God forbid.
Now I'm off to watch the Game of Thrones pilot episode. I'm a bit wet for fantasy drama. Sometimes I think to myself that the LOTR trilogy is better than Star Wars. Then I promptly punch myself in the balls for even entertaining such an idea.
Big love.
Ryan.
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