On the bright side: some wonderful days on Salt Spring Island the weekend before last, just one fever in the past two weeks and while my counts are not great, they do seem to be holding their own a bit more. However, I'd been having a pretty hard time recently: the pain is unremitting and has to be managed constantly, the idea of Leukemia is not attractive, and my appetite and energy levels are close to floor level.

I visited Salt Spring Island with a couple of friends over the weekend and had a wonderful time. I'm sure the company, the accommodation, the location, the hot tub all contributed significantly, but it almost felt like a new lease on life - beyond the sum of those parts. I did very little but visit a few artisans, laze in the hot tub, or car, and on the sofa where we were staying but it was wonderfully relaxing - I can hardly believe how well I felt.

I have this mushy theory that my fevers are somehow associated with my blood count drops and that I may be able to control the fevers to some extent. Both of these gathered more supporting evidence from the Saltspring weekend. By trying very hard to avoid getting over excited or over tired, I seem to have been able to avoid a serious fever. And my blood counts were higher than would have been expected with fevers over the past weeks. (White Blood Cells: 2.3 [last week 1.75], Hemoglobin: 87 [108] and Platelets rather low at 10 [15]). So if this evidence is further corroborated, I'm going to try to be more laid back and
relaxed every day. I'm not suggesting this is slowing the cancer - but simply avoiding some fevers and related hospital visits would be great - I'll report back on how it develops!

I'm now just getting settled back in from a weekend in Whistler. Very enjoyable and laid back, but without the extraordinary health boost of the last time. My having been topped up well with both red blood cells and platelets with just the right timing before Saltspring must have helped. I was also able to eat more at that time. Since then, my appetite has been poor and I'm sure I've lost some more weight. It seems that small surface changes in my health have a big impact on my eating general wellbeing. Recently, a peculiar bruise on my leg and a swelling behind my nose have been quite upsetting - I need to figure a way to isolate new developments from upsetting what little general balance of health I still retain.

Tomorrow, I'm off for a platelet transfusion. This will be my first with the Hematology department at Vancouver General Hospital - it will be interesting to see how smoothly it all goes. It was getting to be a bit complicated at the BCCA with my medical oncologist not really focussed on blood - which seems to be my big issue now.

The photo is of a humming bird feeder I constructed using a syringe filled with honey and water - it worked a treat, attracting males and females of both Rufus and (possibly) Anna's hummingbirds. Fun to get some of that medical equipment I'm accumulating used for more amusing purposes!

http://viewcourt.vcn.bc.ca/peter