I heard some information a few days ago to patch a significant hole in my understanding of what was going on. But discomfort got in the way of writing. I had heard about some swollen lymph nodes in my abdomen being new cancer growth, and that it could be treated by my radiation oncologist.

What I didn't hear was that they had identified a new tumour with the CT scan near my sacroiliac joint (near the base of the spine on the left hand side) that has invaded bone and pushed on a nerve bundle. They explained the pain as being referred from the nerves to my left abdomen. This would explain lots, including the nature and location of the pain being hard to pin down. It's apparently quite  a small tumour. I will at the BC Cancer Agency on Monday morning to get measured up for treatment and afternoon for the first external beam treatments.

The latest news on the white blood cells and platelets front is that the haematologists didn't find as many cells in my marrow as they would expect for someone my age so they have no definitive answer. They're still talking about myelodisplasure syndrome (MDS - also very close to my displeasure syndrome) but have yet to have definitive evidence. So, I'm going to try not to fret too much yet. They also sent part of the biopsy off for a cytogenetic assay which I think is a broad comparison type of genetic test. They will compare blocks of my bone marrow genetic code  with comparable blocks from elsewhere. This will also apparently give a firm answer, but in around three weeks.

I've had a four-day practical crash course in pain management with morphine and how it's so linked to to “bowel management.” I think we lost control of pain management four or so days ago and I'm only just feeling normal again now (by normal, I mean having strong pain, but well managed and masked). The fast version is that morphine (slow release) is largely absorbed through the intestines and also blocks intestinal movement. When there's little intestinal movement, morphine absorption slows down making it less effective. Add to that, the problem of needing more drug to overcome a particular pain level at first than to manage it after it has been overcome and you'll see what happened to me.

I had severe pain which was effectively managed after 4 or 5 days using 10 – 15 mg of Morphine every 4 hours. I was moved to a slow release of an equivalent dose, in preparation of sending me home. This seems not to have got properly absorbed through my non-moving gut. This led in turn to higher and more regular top-up doses which left me going in and out of pain control, when what I needed was to break through the threshold. That threshold was finally broken by using much larger doses the night before last.  Since then, I've been slowly weaning myself off the excess, so that I'm now back to just the slow release dose. I think the pain might now be stable without top-ups, but phew, it was intense at times!

It's wonderful to be out of hospital and back at home. I'm not doing anything much more that laying on my couch or bed and occasional exercise walks from one end of the apartment to the other (not very far!) But, hospitals are hard to be around with their horrible food and dehumanizing regimes. Most of the people were fine, but despite wonderful doctors and nurse, I think they could be used better to foster health.

Elvin Hensley of DynCorp (Getty) walks through a field in Afghanistan - not giving money to farmers to help supply my Morphine..