And on this morning, bright though it be.....

I've been bloody sick again over the last week or so. Just a viral bug but enough to floor me. It's a bit of a reminder that, due to my suppressed immune system, I'm still open to the dangers of opportunistic infections. If I get another one of the really dangerous ones I could be in real trouble again.

At times like this I do wonder about what will happen if the worst happens. Morbid I know but I'm not so arrogant as to think that I'm actually invincible even though I do often joke about it. I've thought often about this sort of thing over the decade or so that I've been sick and I know I have to leave a list of instructions for the family so they can let all the people I know in all the many places I've lived what has happened. I've even thought about leaving certain people letters. This was an idea that was blown out the water last night when I watched the film PS I love you and I realised that it is in fact a tremendously lame idea.

For one thing I'm fairly sure that all the people I would want to leave a letter to are the exact people that I wouldn't want need to bother doing so, for they would already know how I feel about them. It's also just a horribly self indulgent act and anyway I'm not really sure I could come up with something salient enough to say from beyond the grave.

I'd best just get on with not needing to bother.

Lewis no more, Skye no more

A couple of things have put me in mind of my last month or so living in Aberdeen today. The first is the fantastic story of a chemistry undergraduate who tried to set up a crystal meth lab in his flat in the Hillhead Halls of Residence. I don't remember that being part of the curriculum when I was a postgrad up. there. The danger of explosions from such makeshift labs is massive but I have to say any explosion damage would probably only make minimal differences to the Halls there. I only had to endure them for the last month of my time there but that was plenty experience for me.

I came to stay there because the intended plan of moving in with my girlfriend while I wrote up my thesis and looked for a job was somewhat upended by our breaking up and me needing a short term place to live. I needed to move out of the place I had been in but was only hanging around another month or so to finish the experimental work of my PhD so I really only needed somewhere to put my head at night but it was still a terribly bleak place to spend any time. I would move back home to do the write up and then think about employment. I wasn't sad to leave Aberdeen, which surprised me. I realised the only reason I had planned to stay there was because Katherine hadn't yet finished her studies but as soon as we had split there was not a single thing that I could think of that would make me wish to stay. It's not a friendly place, a fact which had really been brought to the forefront of my mind by the few months earlier that year that I had spent in Belfast. The difference in those two cities has to be seen to be believed. One of the first new friends I made in Belfast was actually from Aberdeen and his having stayed there for a decade already just confirmed what I felt about the relative merits of the two cities.

The second thing that reminds me of that time is a program about the Western Isles of Scotland. My very last week living in Aberdeen I actually spent mostly away from it doing a tour of the Western Isles with my supervisor Rich going round all the schools on the islands doing a chemistry show called the flashes & bangs show. It's sponsored by all sorts but is essentially run by the Royal Society of Chemistry and as Rich and I were both involved heavily with the committee for the North of Scotland branch we got ourselves nominated as the people to go and do it. It was exactly the sort of pick me up I was in need of thanks to the aforementioned break up.

We started off down in Castlebay on Barra and slowly snaked our way up the islands doing a dozen or so shows for kids of all ages and occupying ourselves of an evening in local restaurants and hostelries. I've rarely eaten so well as I accustomed myself with the abundance of seafood that we in Scotland usually send off to our much more appreciative European cousins. It was a real tonic to the soul and left me in brilliant form as I prepared myself to leave the granite city.

I learned a lot that week away. I confirmed that I was actually happiest when I was teaching, something I had learned to some extent through demonstrating in undergraduate labs and helping out as a tutor in the summer school access courses. It would take me another wee while before I would actually act on that knowledge right enough but it was really brewing.

I kept a journal that week and I gave it to the lecturer who usually did the shows on my return. He told me it was a brilliant piece of writing that told him my real talent lay in doing that over science research. Should I ever find myself without anything to say in this here portal I'll hunt it out and put it on here.

Telephone exchanges click while there's nobody there

So the lovely people at the transplant unit at the Freeman in Newcastle just called to confirm that I am on their list to be seen at their satellite clinic in February at Gartnavel but that appointment details will be sent out by Gartnavel themselves. I was beginning to get worried I had been lost in the system somewhere as I hadn't heard from them since early October but it seems lots has been going on behind the scenes with all sorts of letters going back and forth between the respiratory docs and the haematology / leukaemia docs and the transplant team.

I'll wait a week or two and if no appointment comes through the post I'll get on to the respiratory team at Gartnavel to see what's happened.

I got really annoyed back in October because it felt like February was ages away but the months seem to be passing ever quicker. I think that's been aided by a slightly improved mental state. It's not that I was particularly dense but I was struggling to concentrate on anything for a good wee while there so getting to a state where I can read, and more importantly enjoy, a book without having to re-read whole pages and chapters is fantastic.

I think that's been aided by the number of visitors I've had as well, as having people round just keeps my mind more active.

To that end I've booked tickets for a few of us to go and see a Science show called Uncaged Monkeys in April. It's done by loads of people whose books and columns I read or whose TV shows I've loved. Should be ace, in a really nerdy way.

Somebody's going to emergency, somebody's going to jail

Due to my situation I find myself going to the cinema a much rarer experience than it used to be. All those other, different people are just too much of a risk for my immune system to cope with. So, on those odd occasions that I do go I try to pick the showing that will involve the least interaction with the public.

That's not bothering me as much as I thought it might though. You see I've found that boxsets of TV series (not seasons) are the most incredible way to pass the many, many hours of time I have on my own. Even back when I was first diagnosed with leukaemia I was quite the devotee of ER and it always gave me a little bit of excitement when they would occasionally have to go through something that I was going through. Somehow it being on a TV show made it a big deal.

All through my recuperation post bone marrow transplant I worked my way through the entire series of Northern Exposure and it was then also that I got hooked on a new show called 24. I can watch Northern Exposure over and over and it never loses any of its charm, while 24 was entirely devoid of charm but full of testosterone instead but no less enjoyable for that.

It was at this time also that my best friend gave me the boxset of the first series of The West Wing and I was hooked. This show made TV different for me. It was as exquisitely produced as any movie and the acting was fantastic. As well as those things though it just demanded your attention with a humour that is rare to find as it just expects you to keep up. I've watched it all through about four times now and it is still the most amazing show I have seen. That first boxset has been posted to friends all around the country in the hope that they would get as much out of it as I did.

I can't begin to list all the shows that I have loved, although pretty much anything made by HBO is worth a watch, but the ones that have affected me the most are House and Brothers & Sisters. Now the first one of those is fairly self explanatory, as it's just an extension of what I said earlier about ER although with an episode of House you're much more likely to hear about something I've encountered than the GSW's so prevalent in ER. Brothers & Sisters I'm going to have to explain I think.

I know it's saccharine sweet bollocks but there's part of me that identifies with the family dynamic on show. The 5 grown up kids in the family operate in ways that are just so familiar to me that it can actually ache. This was never more acutely obvious than when one of the characters developed leukaemia and needed a bone marrow transplant and they needed to find a match. Of course my family doesn't have any kids hidden away who come in at the last minute to save the day but that detracts somewhat from the point. It was wonderfully researched and beautifully acted out all the way through the transplant. In particular the scenes where she loses her hair could well have been lifted from my own life.

My only point of complaint is that considering how well done the whole storyline was handled it seems strange to me that it was so swiftly swept under the rug and they all moved on. I understand the dramatic reasons for it but for me it places in the public conciousness the idea that, even for Cancer, you just get your treatment and then get on with your life again. We all know that it's nothing close to being like that and that's there's as much drama to be found in the aftercare as there is for the big event. I would argue there's even more.

To something approaching that end the film Wit, starring Emma Thompson is as close as I've ever found to depicting the life of a cancer patient accurately. It's a tremendous movie and one I may have to revisit.