The week that was 'crap'

Well the mouth ulcers have reached epic proportions, making my face puff up and of course eating no fun at all. Add to this a head cold of runny nose and coughing I am simply rather pissed off and unhappy.

However not to give in to all this too much, Em and I headed down to Rotorua for a good long soak in the hot pools and some massage therapy - fantastic - wished we had this kind of thing on our doorstep.

Off to hospital tomorrow for the last chemo - well last one of this course anyway. Might be given platelets as well, depending on bloods and hopefully a new mouth is available also - just can't believe the ulcers just keep popping up, over and over and over again, surely at some point the mouth falls out?

Ministry of Whining Affairs - Updated

I always marvel at how loyal National Party voters are to this left of central nonsense of a party. There doesn't seem to be anything the politicians do that upsets them.

Maybe this might do it (but unlikely)? Those trough guzzlers that are seeking jobs in the public service have been told of a rumour that jobs will be available at the Ministry of Women's Affairs. Apparently extra money is being sent to this abomination of a Ministry. God there really is no hope for this country.

Why feminists and lesbians support this Ministry is totally beyond me, it is just such a patronising and pathetic symbol to all woman. Why National supports it isn't really that surprising being the pro-government, legislate, legislate, legislate kind of people that they are.

It would be interesting to know the ratio of public servants to productive private jobs. It must be getting totally out of control with the number of jobs being lost in the private sector and very, very few job loses in the trough.

Update: Mark Hubbard informs me that "The number of people working in the private sector, compared to public servants and beneficiaries is something like 1.8:1.7."

Of course any halfwit can see that this is impossible to maintain, but watch them try. The only way to fix this is to abolish all unnecessary ministries, and start slashing and burning public jobs where ever possible and fast.

My suggestion? Vote with your feet and leave. Even in these economic times it's better to be on the ground where things will start happening than languishing in NZ where it never will. Such a shame, it truly has turned into a big retirement village where you come to die. If it wasn't the fact that I'm going to do just this I'd have been gone long ago.

Holey fricking moley

Other patients have complained to me over the years about the sore mouth that comes with chemo. I've had some problems, but never really anything to write home about. Usually just goes away after a few rinses of salt and baking soda.

But this time it's unbelievable. Eating, drinking, swallowing, existing is so uncomfortable. I thought I was being a bit precious when I presented myself to the hospital at Monday's chemo, but you could see them physically recoil and say "we haven't seen something that bad for awhile". Nearly every part of the mouth is effected - ouch!

So I now have little sponges on lollipop sticks for toothbrushes, about three different mouthwashes and a course of Fluconazole to try and get on top of it. Don't really feel much better, but food like rice pudding and custard go down a treat - well maybe not a treat, but with less pain. So I think I should just stay home as much as I can and try and build up some kind of strength.

I have chemo on Thursday and then only Monday for three weeks. The spinal fluids are still running clear of cancer.

Update: Oh my god, then I sneezed!!!!!

My Hero

Gisela Dulko knocked that screaming nightmare Maria Sharapova out of Wimbledon. The Telegraph describes this as the "Shock of the day", all I can say is Gisela you are truly a hero and should be given a knighthood for services to women's tennis.

Michelle Larcher De Brito is even bloody worse, we can only hope that she screams herself into a heart attack. Why the umpires allow this annoying mindless noise is beyond me. If I was playing against her I would have to slam my racket across the court at her. Jesus!

Updatedty Updated Update

Frick what a week last week was. Just after my last posting I was watching the Ambulance program 'Rapid Response' thinking they're kind of cute, gosh my shoulder hurts bad, let's give them a call, maybe they'll come out.

Well okay it wasn't quite like that - but after an afternoon of putting down continuously different pain killers I finally admitted defeat and asked Em to call the hospital to see if I should go to Ward 62 or A&E. My screaming caused them to say phone 111, which Em duly did and the lovely ambo team turned up. Out came the laughing gas to get me under control and stop the screaming - 10 puffs later, no pain - amazing! Unfortunately this stuff only lasts a couple of minutes so it was decided that admission overnight might be a good idea just in case the pain came back. So I got to suck on the juice of angels for a good 20 minutes and was rather chatty by the time I was admitted.

After a night of no sleep (god it's noisy there, nurses just stood outside the rooms talking in daytime voices that borded on outside voices), I headed home in the morning to have a shower and back to the hospital for #2 radiation therapy. Took Methadone for the rest of the week, which seems to work the trick for me. No pain now, and radiation therapy seems to be working a treat and my dead left arm is coming back to life.

Being sick is a busy life I would have you know. Was at the hospital 10 times last week, 6 for me and 4 for my flatmate who visited A&E twice on Wednesday night with an extremely painful eye - she didn't scream like me, but was in more pain. Anyway we are all fine now and I'm enjoying a more relax treatment schedule of chemo into the spine twice a week. This should go on for a few more weeks until my spinal fluids run clear of NHL.

Updated update

After a rather sleepless night I was dozing uncomfortably at 8am when the hospital phoned and said come on in for a consultation and possible treatment pronto. So bounced out of bed, into shower and stumbled into car.

So the day was spent in Acute Oncology being seen by the radiotherapists, being sized up for radiation and then my first of five treatments at the end of the day. Finish on Friday.

Rather painful now, so taken all the drugs I can take & just trying to get comfortable and waiting for 'Spooks' to start.

Update

Bad news from the MRI that I had Friday last week. It shows cancer on the C3 & C4 vertebrae and a lump under my arm. All this of course explains the massive pain and discomfort I've been having in my neck and shoulder.

In the meantime I've been put on 16mg of Dexamethasone every day and this killed the pain within 4 hours of my first dose - arh bliss. I wasn't going to handle all this so well being in that amount of pain.

Also I am on Methadone which works much better in pain reduction than Pethidine and unlike the Morphine doesn't make me throw up two or three times per day - a relief to finally get on top of all this - without the horrible side effects.

Treatment is unknown at this stage, still under investigation at the hospital. Will update you as soon as I know.

Little House of Horrors (Updated)

Yesterday I headed up to the bach for Queens Birthday weekend. With me came four Monarch Caterpillars to be replanted on the swan plants that are all over the property.

Replanted them in a nice sunny spot and wandered around to check out the caterpillar population on the other plants. To my delight I found a big fat juicy one, hanging by its bum, ready to turn itself into a chrysalis. Returned half-an-hour later to find it was half way thru the process. It was so amazing, the speed of the transformation is so fast, you can watch it happening. So I stood there for about 10 minutes watching the magic that is nature. He wiggled and jiggled and with great effort he shed his furry skin to reveal a green slug which was partly chrysalised. It was truly an amazing event to behold when horrors-of-horrors he fell – splat on the ground – dead instantly. I was mortified – I felt a mother losing her child – I was devastated.

No wonder the Monarch Butterfly are supposedly* struggling for survival. All that effort for nought.

* Personally I see Monarch Butterflies all over the place, so wonder about this shortage report.

Update: Look at this for horror.
Hat tip Lolly Scramble.

Media 7

Watch the first 4 minutes of the latest episode of Media 7. Ha, ain't that the truth.

Fanny Adams

I just spent a lovely long weekend in Nelson with my dear school mate and her hubby. Great region of New Zealand and I can list numerous wonderful places to go in the Nelson area - one of the best place is the Saturday Market.

Here I found this wonderful underwear! They are just fantastic with jeans and they don't move anywhere all day - brilliant. They come in full brief and hipsters and available online.

Nemesis goes down

Back in July last year I posted about my parent's dog Boss who was making life difficult for me (and the rest of the world) when I was living at home for a period.

Well his behaviour hadn't changed one iota since and on the food/biting front, he was actually becoming worse. The lasted incident was a rather scary attack on Dad - blood was drawn, bandages were applied, doctor was sought. Dog got away with it scotfree. Don't get me wrong, he's a beautiful dog, who is lovely to be around 99% of the time. But he does manipulate the folks and doesn't know his place.

Anyway in the interests of harmony and fear that he might go at the girls one day, I decided that a Dog Whisperer (DW) was required. So on Tuesday I headed over to Mum & Dad's for a group lesson. Just like on TV Boss knew that DW was the real boss and she had control of the house instantly.

We did lots of role playing around the issues that we have with Boss and learnt what we were doing wrong and how to train him - super fun. The feeding bowl was the real problem, Dad showed DW how he feeds the dog, which meant grabbing a dog biscuit and throwing it at the bowl from a distance of about 3m - very funny.

During this lesson Boss broke into his rage and surprisingly went for DW, but more surprising, she just took her hands out of way, stood on his lead and commanded that he lay down. He kept trying to attack, but finally submitted - huge respect DW.

It was a great couple of hours, we learnt so much about how to control him and move ourselves up the pecking order. As you can imagine the easiest way was via food treats - very effective when you've got a golden retriever. Training him will be great fun, just have to make sure Dad (the big sook) doesn't let the side down.

So if you are visiting M&D, just knock on the door, give them time to arrange the dog, wait to be invited in and simply ignore Boss, don't touch, don't look him in the eye. You can say hello later, he just has to know that he is the least important thing in the room.

So Boss is no longer be my nemesis! I'll just have to find another.

BTW: I tried the training techniques back home on Foxy the cat - doesn't work!

Pain, pain go away

Yes I'm still very much here, have been offline due to a painful neck & shoulder - made more painful the more horizontal I got - thus sleeping became impossible and no painkiller seemed to work for longer than a day - never a night. Physio has been helping me for the last month and GP prescribe Pethidine and the pain is now bearable and sleepable. Anyway Oncologist suggests I have an MRI to check the cancer hasn't moved into the bone. I don't think this has happened, but it will be good to know for certain.

Anyway on a more positive note, today represents one year since my grandmal brain seizure, at the time I had an expected survival time of approximately 6-months, this estimate didn't improve when the chemo failed. Brain radiation was the next treatment and that seems to have done the trick. So one year means I can now legally drive again - must say totally ridiculous law banning me for a whole year. Epileptics and even Narcoleptics are allowed to drive as long as they are on medication - I'm as likely to have a seizure as you are, and you haven't even had the reassurance of a brain CT. Making blanket restrictions on patients isn't particularly productive, surely this should be a decision of the doctor and as I have proven each time I've been treated, I've outperformed each expectation. Some people just respond to treatments better than others.

First 100 Days

They once said that a black man would be President when pigs flew.

His first 100 days and - wham!! Pig's flu!

B3: Bloggers Bar Bash

Don't forget it's drinks on Thursday night at Galbraiths for the monthly B3 Bloggers Bar Bash. See you there from 6.30pm onwards.

PJ: He came, we heard, he conquered

I sit today in the hills of Christchurch watching the clouds sweep in and the rain fall - arh true bliss. Mind you rather cold down here - ekk not nice - but no one dies of the cold right?

Anyway I sit in a friends lounge which is probably the warmest spot known to man - fantastic. I'm visiting for a long weekend and struggling to stay awake after only four hours sleep in the last two nights - reasons?

1/ Sore neck that doesn't like it if I lay down or sit up or stand around or anything for that matter. It likes it if I go for a walk or make muesli at 3am or for reason #2 ....

2/ Up at 4.30am to catch the red-eye to Christchurch - what was I thinking? I must be mad, particularly as I knew I would be out late (1am) with reason #3 ....

3/ Late night with PJ O'Rourke - thanks to the CIS team, wonderfully organised.

Mr O'Rourke didn't fail to amuse all, he really is the most entertaining and long serving satirist in the world. At some point during the evening he commented that he doesn't have the intelligence that the great economists have. But to reduce a concept down to its core, add current events and brilliant observations, mixed it all together with fine humour shows a massive comprehension and fine intellect. As all writers can attest, it's hard enough doing the first, adding humour without sounding like a bitter fool makes it nigh on impossible.

PJ has the skills to point out a person's stupidity/weakness/hypocrisy, create a brilliantly revealing and entertaining story as to why, and then make us all laugh, hoot and cheer - but here's where a special talent is exposed - the victim of the humour will be laughing along with the rest of us (the Topp Twins and Jon Stewart seem to possess this skill also), very cleaver.

PJ's skills are highly useful in an era where the majority of the population possess little to no concentration skills. If you can reduce a concept down to a few words or sentences, then make them memorable by injecting a huge dose of humour, then you're there.*

Later in the evening I had the great pleasure of talking to the honoured guest face-to-face, which was all a little overwhelming. I've never meet anyone that I really admired before, it's hard to think of what to say and you forget every question you always wanted to asked - really you want to just grin and say 'you're fantastic' - over and over again. But we did talk about 'The Troubles' that we have both experienced - the fact that he has flown half way around the world for a grueling media fest in both Australia and New Zealand is to be admired. I would have to take the rest of the year off.

Of course the Libertarianz were beside themselves that we had tables right in front of the stage and like a bunch of kids we had grins from ear-to-ear. At the first opportunity we pinned him down for a group photo.

* Lynn Truss taught me more about grammar in one evening with Eat, Shoots & Leaves, than I learnt after 13 years of education. Mind you 'chemo brain' stops me putting this into practice - that's my story and I'm sticking to it - I can get a doctors note if you don't believe me. Bill Bryson inspired some kind of interest in the English language - over and above pig ignorance - with Mother Tongue, as well as bringing science to the masses with A Short Story of Nearly Everything. All this via humour.

Update - CT Scan

On Monday I had a scan to check that my latest chemo had destroyed the tumours. On Wednesday, Doc and I looked at the pretty patterns - I freaked out when I saw a round white tumour - turned out to be my heart - ha, kind of need that. So I decided to leave conclusions to those more knowledgeable than I. Doc couldn't see anything, but we waited for others to check out the CTs and as usual they confirmed Docs original opinion.

We also scanned my brain for re-staging purposes, curiosity and my sanity and it all looks the same as before - so all good there as well - phew!

My very sore neck is being drugged into submission - if the pain doesn't go away I might need an MRI, but I think it is a bad posture problem rather than a cancer problem.

So there you go, you are now informed.

Geographic Board

Without a doubt the Geographic Board seem to be running out of things to do, given their bizarre actions of late. They appear to be trying to avoid redundancies by creating work. Mind you I suppose ultimately this is the modus operandi of all government departments.

But seriously - for being time wasting irritants - they really should be next to be investigated for over staffing.

Not PJ writes on this matter over at Not PC.

IRD - hahaha

Oh joy, 250 IRD staff are to lose their jobs - not really enough for my liking of course, but it's a step in the right direction.

To all you softies out there that say "but what about the the poor workers" I say, working for any government agency makes one morally bankrupt - unless of course it is a temporary job in HR that lays off hundreds and thousands of workers. Working for the IRD makes one morally bankrupt and the scum of the earth. So no I don't feel sorry for any one of them. Save your sympathy for workers and businesses that contribute to the growth of New Zealand, not to its demise.

Another idea for redundancies is the whole of Ministry of Women's Affairs - yes 100% of it - its mere existence is patronising and an embarrassment to us all. Killing this gravy train will show the world that we are a nation that has moved leaps and bounds in regards to the female standard of living and any improvements is totally up to the individual - not the government - mind you I never attributed any gains to the government in the first place.

All ex-MOWA can go and work for a charity that try to raise the standard of living of women in those many barbaric countries that seem to be Islamic in nature. And I don't mean an admin job, I mean an on the ground posting in the middle of Afghanistan or such like. Mind you if they really cared about women that's where they would be already. Really they just want their snout in the trough.

Avatar Nerd!

I'm one of those strange people that just love winter, I love rain and I especially love storms and can't understand when people moan as soon as any of the above arrive. So I loved yesterday particularly - pity there was no thunder and lightening.

With the chill in the air, the central heating system has been switched on, along with the electric blanket and the Winkie sees the light of day - so to speak.

I have been entertaining myself reading books and going to the odd movie:

* Topp Twins 8/10 By the by, I met them once - at a Bayleys awards dinner - where they stole my bag and made me come up on stage to get it back. Great fun, fantastic ladies.
* Gran Torino 8/10
* Welcome to the Sticks 7/10
* Slumdog Millionaire 7/10
* In Bruges 7/10

And a whole list to view over the next month: The Wrestler, The Reader, The Boat That Rocked, Milk and Dean Spanley,

Great viewing, but none so great as Avatar - the last airbender, which is a Nickelodeon series that seems to grab kids and adults, male and female alike. I highly recommend the three 'books' in the series and would love to know when series two is due out.

But in the meantime, under production and screening in 2010 is a fantasy film of the first series, with our own Cliff Curtis to play Fire Lord Ozai, ooooooh I can't wait - another event to aim for.

So yes - as this photo demonstrates - I've become an official nerd and now I rue the years I've wasted in boring world. Or am I regressing back into my childhood? Oh well, either way, all good.

Cool

Sorry if you've seen this already - I know I'm always behind the eighth ball, but this is excellent.

Although you might get a better view if you go to the YouTube page.



And by the way, I've noticed that my spam mail has decresed by 90% of late. Does anyone know why?