Oh, for the sake of momentum I've allowed my fears to get larger than life

Now, anyone can choose to take what I am about to write with as big a pinch of salt as they feel necessary but it is how I view myself.

I feel that declaring myself as a feminist is not only unnecessary but idiotic too. To feel that you have to state that you value approximately half of the human race is just pointless. I have always felt this, even before I became at least part female for what it's worth. You simply don't come from a family like mine where, for myriad reasons, the women in your life play just as important a role in making you the person you are as the men do. The people of both sexes that you choose to have in your life as you wander through it have just as big a role for that matter. The first consideration isn't ever what chromosomes they've got when you look closely enough.

Before it sounds like I am overstating the case here, or I am in danger of virtue signalling or whatever it is that fucking idiots call it these days, it is nothing to do with their inherent feminine nature that makes me admire (or indeed not admire) certain people. There are just as many women that I despise with every fibre of my being than there are men - I genuinely like to think I am an example of equality in that regard. 

Having said so it just happens that a couple of the people that I do seriously admire from my life have been at the forefront of my mind in the last wee bit are female, and the ONLY reason I mention their sexuality at all is because I was in relationships with them. Brief ones in both cases but, in their own discrete ways, incredibly important ones to me.

I am happiest in life when being challenged in some way. That my life has provided ample opportunity on that front hasn't escaped me by the way, but that I actively seek it out in relationships I think paints me in a mostly good light. Not always admittedly because I have sometimes cut relationships ridiculously short without giving the woman in question much of a chance. You could argue that this is an exercise in not wasting both of our time but the reality is probably much more like the fact I can be just a wee bit of a superior arsehole at times.

Somewhere back near the point it probably hasn't escaped your notice that my own body ticking past the point where I am now a chap in his forties has been quite prominent in my thoughts recently. It also means that many of my peers have also reached this particular point too. There's actually been quite the wee cluster of them in the last few weeks, which has resulted in a good few parties where I have shown off my massively improved health by venturing out sans wheelchair (and on Saturday night just past actually walking a few blocks worth of Glasgow city centre to get to the pub) and coping just about OK with it. As a slight aside on Saturday I was with some of my oldest friends and it was absolutely incredible just how complimentary these folks were about not only the old version of me that they knew when we were all growing up together, but the one they find themselves face to face with nowadays too. It was quite humbling actually.

I've digressed a bit again. This happens when I get an opportunity to talk about how great I am.

Seriously, back to the point this time, Friday was the birthday of a particular ex girlfriend that I have mentioned on here before. Laurie was my girlfriend for a brief period in between my being diagnosed with CML and having the Bone Marrow Transplant, which got rid of it. I have said before that her breaking up with me was one of the most courageous things that I've ever seen anyone do. I know most don't understand that but I do and that really is all that matters. Her status as one of the most courageous people I know won't be getting shifted any time but it does get added to somewhat over time. 

You're going to have to stick with me for a bit here as I do know that I'm waffling.

Way back when I qualified with my degree in Medicinal Chemistry from Glasgow Uni I was offered two choices for further study. I could go to Trinity College in Dublin and study anti-Leukaemia drugs or change discipline completely and study industrial heterogeneous catalysis systems at Cardiff University. I chose the latter ultimately because of my family history with blood cancers - my cousin had been diagnosed with ALL when we were 15 and my paternal grandfather had also had Aplastic Anaemia (that I would then be diagnosed with CML a year after making that move is kind of hard to get your head around - 3 members of the same family having some form of blood cancer is quite the curious statistical anomaly, but they are totally different conditions and need to be regarded as such as hard as that is to sometimes do). I obviously knew far more about the former as a subject but I honestly couldn't trust myself to be dispassionate enough to be a good enough scientist to study drugs for a disease that was so important to me. I genuinely feared that I would be too prone to confirmation bias and would just make bad decisions off the back of that.

Now, the aforementioned Laurie came to Glasgow to study anti cancer drugs for her PhD but, if memory serves me (apologies if any of this is wrong love but it was a while ago and I am still taking some pretty strong drugs), she was studying copper complexes in the treatment of hypoxic tumours. This was real silver bullet territory as the idea was that these complexes would cause apoptosis (cell death) within the tumours only as they were only active within the reduced state. As soon as they were exposed to the more oxygen rich environment of the surrounding, normal tissue these complexes would oxidise into a benign form. If you haven't followed any of that do not worry as it means you are a normal human being but the crux is that it would mean a drug that that can kill the cancer but not any of the normal cells and so wouldn't have any of the usual side effects of chemotherapy, most of which crudely acts by attacking cells that divide rapidly. I've often joked about traditional chemotherapies as being like carpet bombing, whereas this stuff is a laser guided surgical bloody strike of an idea.

Nowadays though one of her fields of study is actually in the treatment of the myeloid leukaemias, like the one I had. We've never actually discussed this in any great depth somehow, which I suppose I am kind of addressing here in my own peculiar way, but the fact she is researching treatments for a disease that her one time boyfriend had is partly why I admire her as much as I do. Like I said I didn't trust myself to be a good enough scientist to do such work and not let my own hopes somehow skew the work but she does it and I find that incredible. For her birthday she requested that if they felt that a present was indeed necessary that people make donations to the American Cancer Society, which is also a mark of the person she is.  The team in her research group defied that a little bit by getting her this gift

OK, so it might look a bit weird, but it is actually a model of the binding of the drug Imatinib (known to some as Gleevec - or if you go back as far as I do with it STI-571) as part of its mode of action in treating CML. As far as geek chic goes this is about as elegant and beautiful a present as I think anyone could have conceived for the Prof. 

As I hope I made clear earlier we actually have managed to not really ever talk about her research in this area so it is possible I am being incredibly presumptuous in thinking I was even a consideration in her doing this work but I bloody well hope I was. 😉

Right, that's plenty adulation for her.

The other woman I have in mind this morning has been incredibly important to me in recent times as one of my foremost cheerleaders. That hardly anybody knows this is because it is done very privately, and I reckon she may well indeed be mortified by my even mentioning it now, and so I won't even name her but her input over the last wee while has been absolutely invaluable for my sanity. This is my way of making sure that she knows just how much I appreciate (and she hopefully gets why I use this exact term) every word that she says to me. That she gets a simple, single paragraph compared to the screeds I wrote earlier in this post is in no way indicative of her worth to me - it is simply that while it is a similar level mutual appreciation society, it's one that is just that bit more private.

In other news it would be incredibly remiss of me not to mention my Uncle Stephen this week. He has been so important to me over the last decade and this week he needs a wee bit more attention than he is probably happy about but I hope he knows how much he will be at the forefront of my thoughts.