This is my only escape from it all

I watched Children In Need on friday night. I don't normally do this because the enforced jollity of the 'fun' bits I've always found incredibly cringeworthy and the serious parts I feel are lost on me because I have a firm belief in charity being a very personal thing and I'm very happy with what I give to the charities I choose to donate to. That changed on friday when they played a film about a little 7 year old boy with leukaemia who needed a bone marrow transplant to survive. They found a donor on the overseas list but sadly the donor took ill a few days before the transplant was planned and it had to be cancelled. This brought back memories of my cousin who was in a similar position, with a donor match who fell ill and couldn't donate. In my cousin's case he had really aggressive treatment and recovered but in the case of the poor wee boy all attempts along the same line failed and he died aged nine. I was watching in floods of tears, not just because of the sadness of the story itself but because it made me realise again just how much of a lucky, lucky bastard I had been. From diagnosis to a successful bone marrow transplant for me was the grand total of ten weeks. Ten weeks from diagnosis to cure - that's incredible.

I was so affected by this film about this I had serious thoughts about emptying my bank account and sending it all to Children in Need but more sensible heads prevailed and I made a decent donation without bankrupting myself.

Today I went to the renal clinic hoping to find out whether the urology department had responded to the letter that had been sent requesting an urgent consultation about the small blockage in one of my kidneys and how, or even whether, it needed dealt with. Having had no response to the written word the renal consultant printed out my information and just walked through to the urology consultant and got him to deal with it, explaining that I was a rush case because I am open to opportunistic infection and want to get back down to Newcastle to see the transplant team as soon as possible. An incredibly simple solution that not enough doctors would have bothered going out of their way to do. So the urologist has organised a contrast CT scan of the kidney to see very precisely what needs done.

So, again it's slow, but steady progress. Pretty pleased with it though.

I get tired, and upset, and I'm trying to care a little less

According to a character in the film Contagion 'Blogging isn't writing, it's just graffiti with punctuation.' This line clearly borrows from Truman Capote's critique of the book On the Road by Jack Kerouac, which he characterised as 'That's not writing at all, but typing'.

I've thought a lot about this because quite a few people have told me I should try writing something seriously and I just feel that while I can stumble onto some good points on occasion and make them quite well, I could never tie them together into something as coherent as a book. Not right now anyway while my brain remains as fuzzy as it does.

I also mention Contagion because it's about the spread of a global pandemic and just how easy it could spread in the modern world. It's made me realise just how close I was to becoming a mere statistic when I got swine flu. I was still feeling the after effects of fungal pneumonia when I caught swine flu so my immune system was already pretty ragged. Added to that I had viral meningitis at the same time and it is incredible that I made it through all that.

I've always been very keen to avoid addressing it when people define me as being strong because I've seen some of the strongest people I've ever met succumb to Cancer and some of those who took it less seriously get through it. I've never really believed it's about strength, but I'm coming around to the idea that there might well be something in it. My best friend Dave says I can't be killed by normal means. A lot of my visitors recently have commented on how strong I must be to cope with the slow progress towards the possibility of a lung transplant and I can't tell them they're wrong. I have been strong, although I would say that with the caveat that I can be really lazy at times. I worry I use the fact that I find things difficult for not even trying so I'm going to try and remedy that.