Happy New Year indeed to you all. 2010 well I never.

No change on the medical front in the last couple of days though the bouts of nausea and tiredness that I mentioned last time have not been as bad. Maybe my ciclosporin levels have adjusted back down. Now for related but non-medical items.

Housekeeping

As you will see if you read this via the web page and not an RSS feed, I have taken down the Xmas decorations and gone back to my usual layout. Maybe I will look for another template style but I do rather like this one and it is nice a clear for reading on things like the iPhone so any replacement will have to be just as good.

Looking Back

I was looking back over some of my posts from this time last year and into early 2009 and there are a couple of telling sentences in there. They both relate to being on steroids and how this will delay my immune system recovery and hence returning to a normal life. You can use the archive list at the side of the blog if you want to read them for yourself.

In one I talk about delaying things by a couple of weeks and the other suggests it'll be March or April before I am back in full circulation. Well I really didn't expect to still be on steroids and ciclosporin a year later and whilst it is true I didn't say which March or April I meant I wasn't thinking 2010 at the time either.

That said, maybe March or April this year will be a reasonable goal to be off the anti-rejection drugs and have my immune system returning to normal. I'm on my lowest level of steroids and tolerating it well ( albeit with help for my adrenals from two other steroids ) but even so I'm not counting my chickens this time. There have been too many false dawns in the past year so I'll just play it by ear. Though if I am writing a similar blog entry to this next year and still on ciclosporin and/or steroids then I will be very disappointed.

Overall on the medical front it has been pretty good, a couple of minor infections and only one short hospitalisation. About 40 days off sick in the year which seems a lot, but better than the close to 120 I took in the previous nine months March - December 2008.

Looking back at other things that happened in the year it was May that I persuaded my consultant to relax things a bit on my purdah and I started back in the office two days a week which has been very nice to have the extra human contact during the day. If the office wasn't so far away and only accessible by car I would probably try and do a bit more but as I struggle to get going in the morning especially until the steroids have kicked in I can only manage a couple of 6 a.m. starts a week at the moment.

I was also able to have the occasional trip to the cinema and restaurant. For the most part I have chosen the excellent Electric Cinema in Birmingham which is either fairly quiet or where I can have a sofa seat with Gareth and keep the unwashed masses at bay. The alternative has been Gold Class tickets at Star City where you get big electrically adjustable armchairs that are well spaced out.

I've been to a couple of concerts as well though sadly couldn't go to some because they were standing only and I didn't want to risk things bumping into sweaty Herberts in the "mosh pit".

One of the other highlights has been getting the garden into shape to grow my own vegetables. This started as a little pipe dream when I was staying at Mom and Dad's after recovering from a bout of chemo and whilst lying bed I got to thinking how nice it would be to go out to the garden and pull some spuds and few other veg to bring in for tea. Well we are all set for this growing season, just need to weed the beds and work in some compost.

Late in the year the completion of my novel, Reunion as part of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) competition meant a lot to me and showed me what I can accomplish with a bit of grit and determination and more importantly regular application of myself to a specific task.

Looking Forward

On the medical front it is really the same goal as it was for last year, namely get my immune system back to normal. From that flows everything else really and I should be left on just one antibiotic twice a day to help my spleen which will probably remain under-active as far as its role in my immune system is concerned. (Otherwise known as the reticuloendothelial system for the medically minded. Don't you just love these complicated terms?)

My little milestone for this is getting back to going swimming again which, despite the chlorinated pools, is something you can really only safely do with a fully functioning immune system.

The garden as I mentioned at the end of the "looking back" section will be a major focus for outdoor activity in 2010 and I look forward to starting seedlings on the window cill and transferring them out to the beds. If I can provide some of the veg for this year's Christmas dinner then that would be an achievement even it is a single sprout or parsnip.

I want to build on my NaNoWriMo experience and find forty-five minutes most days and a bit longer at weekends to do something "improving" as the Victorians would probably call it. Initially this will be editing the novel I wrote for NaNoWrimo and giving it a second draft. As I've mentioned previously this will just be correcting typos and removing major inconsistencies. What I do with it then will depend how I feel about it once I have appraised it in the cold light of day and not the white heat of the competition in November.

Aside from that I'd like to spend some time having a concentrated month or two on other projects but I'm not sure what they will be. I'd like to get back into learning Russian again, though on my own at the moment though maybe I can go back to a class by September.

I also want to get back to a regular reading habit of at least half an hour a day. I love reading and find it an immense source of comfort and mental nourishment but, not unreasonably, during NaNoWriMo I got out of the habit and I find it is something I have to make a bit of effort to get into as the lure of television is all too great.

The foregoing are as close as I am going to get to New Year's resolutions but let us consider them more as hopes and aspirations than goals and targets. After all we never know what is round the corner do we? And a good job too I reckon.

Happy Twixmas to all my readers. Twixmas of course being the official name for that weird twilight period between Christmas and New Year.

I had a very nice Christmas at home with Mom and Dad and observed all the usual Stanford family traditions. This year I was also able to go see my Brother and his family in the morning of Christmas day as they were all healthy this time.

As far as medical stuff is going, things are ticking along nicely. I've not had any occurrence of GVHD and the 2.5mg of prednisolone steroid every other day is not causing any major problems as far as my energy levels. The only thing I have noticed is a bit of a bout of nausea, tiredness and general yukiness about 2 hours after I have had my morning pills.

It passes after about 15 minutes so I just have to sit quietly and wait it out for the most part. I'll mention it to the doc when I go next Wednesday ( 6th Jan ) but I suspect my ciclosporin levels might be just a bit high and causing this reaction after my morning dose.

I logged on to work this morning for the first time since the start of my Christmas break and I'll be working a half-day tomorrow as well. Then I am off until Monday the 4th January.

Oh and just for a bit of fun, if you read this via the web and not an RSS feed you'll see I have a "guest columnist" offering words of wisdom on the site, just over the holiday period.

Now to promote a rather good podcast I have been listening to for a while...

Escape Pod

Escape Pod is a weekly podcast that is a reading of a Science Fiction story. I came across it a few months ago after seeing my Dad had subscribed to it when he saw it featured on the iTunes store.

I can't praise this podcast enough. If you like science fiction then check the website http://escapepod.org or search for "escape pod" on iTunes.

The stories are really well read and for the most part the audio quality is very good. ( Just the Xmas day issue had poor quality but we'll let them off that as they were probably busy with other stuff like eating turkey and getting drunk ).

The stories themselves have been really engaging and only one of the couple of dozen I have listened to has been "not my cup of tea".

Check it out.

They also have sister podcasts Pseudo Pod for horror and Castle Pod for fantasy. I've listened to a couple of the fantasy ones and they are equally good. I just don't have time to fit in listening to them on a regular basis along with all the other podcasts I have. Can't vouch for the horror stories on Pseudo Pod because as you may know "I don't do scary."

As you can see I've put the Christmas Decorations up on the blog.....

It's been another tough week this week and I've been in to the office everyday except Wednesday. This has been a special occasion as we have had some visitors from our outsourcers from India to do a Knowledge Transfer for oracle that has required me to be present in the office to assist them.

I've coped but I've been in bed by about 20:30 most night and asleep by 21:00

Wednesday I went to the transplant clinic and saw one of the registrars. My B12 and other tests have come back and they are all fine which is good news on the one hand but means the cause of my low haemoglobin remains a bit of a mystery. However the level was up to 11.3 this week so as it is going in the right direction the doc was happy to just keep it under observation, ( known in medical world as MICO, masterly inactivity and cat-like observation ).

We decided to keep me on the same level of prednisolone of 2.5mg every other day rather than try a further reduction and disrupt things over Christmas but things are going well in that direction so whenI go back on January the 6th I might have my very own epiphany and finally get off the pred.

Mommy Dearest

Not Joan Crawford, but my own mom. I am pleased to report she came out of hospital after just over a week and she is making a good recovery at home.

There's still a way to full rehabilitation as it were but everyone is really pleased with how she is doing.

We are all trying to make Christmas as stress free as possible for all concerned and I am looking forward to the festivities.

Avatar

Yesterday I went to the IMAX cinema at Millennium Point in Birmingham to see the latest blockbuster Avatar in 3d and a full 70mm IMAX print.

The opening scenes and initial impact of 3D is very impressive but after that has worn off it comes down to the basics of story telling and there I am afraid it is all rather predictable.

The plot has variously been summarised by others as "Smurfahontas" or "Dances with Smurfs" and to that I would add my own as "A Smurf called Horse". ( The smurf references all relate to the fact the alien, Na'vi people, are all a Smurf shade of blue ).

It is very pretty to look at and all the night time bio-luminescence effects in the forest are impressive but you get the impression they only did those because they could.

There are a few "Basil Exposition" moments where someone says something and you think, "hmm I wonder if that will be important later" and sure it enough it is.

There are some nice ideas and the overall concept is good ( see elsewhere for formal plot summaries ) but, as I say, the main problem is the predictability.

It is a great technical feat, but the animation and 3D effects can't make up for a poorly executed story.

I wouldn't recommend seeing this film unless you want the 3D spectacle (pun intended). on a regular 2D screen I would wait for the DVD to come out but maybe on blu-ray just to get some IMAX effect.