A mammoth undertaking

In spite of a slight hiccough yesterday, it has been an extremely good week. I’ve been on three excursions, received some test results, had very little pain, and even sold some redundant photography gear on eBay.

On Monday Gillian and I went to visit Gloucester cathedral. I remember it as being full of light, and rather airy, which indeed it was. I took a series of photographs of the nave, all at different exposures, with the aim of combining them into a single high dynamic range (HDR) photo. I’m still working on that as it has proved trickier than I expected. But the surprise of the visit was the wonderful enclosed cloisters, and their stained glass windows. When I’ve finished processing the HDR I’ll post some pictures.

On Thursday Hugh took me to Croft Castle, which was a lot of fun. And today Gillian and I went to visit Little Malvern Court which was opened in aid of the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association, with the Malvern Sea Scouts helping out. It baffles me why Sea Scouts would be set up in Malvern, which is almost as far from the sea as it is possible to get in the UK, but there we are. The grounds are quite pretty, and the house and church do provide a great backdrop for the garden. Spring is still a little late, so the daffodils and tulips weren’t out yet, but it was still very pleasant wandering around the gardens.

On Wednesday we finally got the results of the HER2 test, which were negative, meaning that it is pointless to try treating my tumour with Herceptin. Oh well, we always knew it was only a slim chance. We also got the results of my mid-treatment CT scan, which were very good. Both my tumour and the secondaries have shrunk, and we also found the reason for my back pain, which was the healing bone where a tumour had shrunk. Funnily enough, knowing why my back hurts has made it much less troublesome to me, and I even feel as though there is less pain. Weird.

There was a little incident yesterday when I threw up my lunch and then my temperature spiked, leading us to visit the hospital in Cheltenham. The senior house officer couldn’t really find anything wrong. He was expecting to find clear signs of an infection, but my blood counts were good, and my temperature went back down again fairly fast, so in the end he sent me home with some horse pills that he claimed were antibiotics. And indeed, judging  by today he was right to have done so.

I’ve developed a bit of an eBay habit. I bought an upgrade to my camera a few weeks ago, and decided that I shouldn’t keep the old one too. I had some lenses that couldn’t be used on the new camera, and some old compact cameras that I no longer used, so I auctioned off the cameras and the lenses. So far, even with the eBay and PayPal fees I’ve managed to recoup the price of the camera I bought. I still haven’t covered the cost of the two lenses, but I now have a complete replacement system with which I’m extremely pleased. You can tell that I’m happy because I’ve been posting quite a few pictures.

My weight has been stable, I’m still eating well, and have vomited only once this week. It has been another good week. In fact, this has been one of the best cycles so far. Let’s hope things continue in this vein.