I get slandered, libeled....

The head coach of UK cycling Dave Brailsford has a central dogma to his training methodology. To improve as an athlete in your given discipline there should be an aggregation of marginal gains. That is to say if you have a natural talent then to optimise it you don't need to radically change anything, instead you take each variable and optimise that and they will add up to a marked improvement overall. You might wonder why I mention this in relation to myself but it is because if you take that central dogma to be true then you might be inclined to say that the reverse is true as well. To wit, no great big thing need necessarily go wrong for there to be a marked decrease in ability, just lots and lots of small things. I hope he would spare me the tortured paraphrasing but I'm calling it my degradation and small pains. 

In a couple of weeks it will have been four years since this journey of mine towards transplant began and while there have been events of varying degrees of seriousness, it is the small everyday breakdown of my abilities that is getting to me. A couple of years ago I found it markedly easier to get out and about so I have to acknowledge that there has indeed been some decrease in my state of health. That said, every visitor I get in tells me I look healthier and they're kind of right and that's down to staying infection free and keeping weight on. I look better but I don't necessarily feel it. I feel weak and that is down to muscles just wasting away. That's the degradation. The small pains have the same source - my muscles and bones ache almost constantly and whilst medication does give me temporary respite I don't want to up the doses of the medications any higher than they already are.

My year breaks down into definable blocks. Aside from the weekly sports I watch I can basically see where I am in the progress of the year by what sporting tournament I'm watching at any given time. Last week it was the Augusta Masters, this week (and the week and a half after) it's the World Snooker Championships. After that it's the French Open Tennis and the assorted football cup finals before we reach into the summer and we have Wimbledon and the Tour de France and on and on it goes. It is one of the few benefits of having all this time off and a low attention span. Sport is something that I can just passively absorb. And I do. Lots of it.

Man! I Feel Like a Woman

I had two appointments this past week at the hospital, one being heart and one for lungs. The heart one was to check lipoproteins (cholesterol and triglycerides). Since I went on the liquid fat diet my cholesterol level leapt up to over 8 so has to be controlled through the use of a statin drug, which is working very effectively. I was waiting an age in the reception area because the consultant wanted to see me personally. When I was last there we talked about my family's rather colourful cardiac history with the previous generation having had assorted heart attacks and triple and quadruple bypasses and the likes, so we were keen to see if there is a genetic predisposition in the family towards cardiac problems. The genetic marker that can tell you about this predisposition is only found in men so we took a blood sample and sent it away for the test. If you have spotted a flaw in this you're a better person than either myself or the doc. It seems he got a rather sniffy letter back from the testing facility telling him he must have mixed up a blood sample as they were unable to test the blood as it was XX rather than XY. In other words they couldn't test it because it was female blood, which they assumed had just been mixed up rather than the actual reason that I do in fact have female blood. After my bone marrow transplant I have my sister's blood. Why we never thought of this I don't know but it gave us a right laugh. So we don't know if there is a genetic predisposition to heart problems and can't find out unless my brother gets a blood test and the chances of that are probably slim. My big bro is not particularly fond of needles. And anyway as long as we control my cholesterol level while I'm on a deliberately fatty diet and monitor it when I get back to a normal one then we shouldn't have any problems in that area.

The other appointment was across the hallway the next day in respiratory and I have never had as quick an appointment at that clinic ever before. From arrival to leaving was 25 minutes. It was amazing. They just wanted to check that I was coping ok with the nebuliser and the flutter tool that I use to try and break up the nasty stuff in my lungs that normal people can deal with just with a strong breath in and out. I am getting on very well with it but I'll arrange to go and see the respiratory physio again in a few months to get some replacement kit for the nebuliser and to get it checked.

Not the most interesting of updates really but just wanted to keep people updated.