PHOTOS: Bottle Brush in Sydney; My brother Nick and Hayden in the Blue Mountains; A Couple of Pelicans; Me and Hayden on the Beach; Family Picnic in Cronulla; Dad and Nick; Kas and Chloe; The two girls Eva and Chloe; Me on the Caringbah Waters...
It’s so close now I can just about taste it and with big beak of mine, I can certainly smell it! I’ve been munching my anti-leukaemia pills now for the past 29 ½ months - that’s a combination of around 1,581 tablets of Gleevec and Sprycel at various doses. For the best part of that time my PCR was stuck somewhere between 2-3% and this, in view of the doctors opinion, was far from good enough. If that sort of PCR didn’t budge, then it’d mean I’d have to travel down the bone marrow transplant road. However… since the introduction of Sprycel to my daily diet, my PCR has slowly come down and heading towards this huge 0.1% goal. 2.5% was the norm, then 1.7%, then 1.0%, 0.75% a few weeks later and now I’ve just got my final results back in. 0.3% - gold!! I know it’s not quite at the 0.1% mark but this latest result has more than halved since the last one only three months ago. With that news, I felt I had a pretty good reason to pop open the champers and have a good night in…
On the flip side, most of my good news seems to come with the bad news. When anyone asks me if I want the good news or the bad news first, I’ve always opted for the former. My grandpa had been battling hard after his operation on bowel cancer but it spread pretty quickly soon after – unfortunately he passed away a couple of weeks ago. Without thinking too hard about this situation, I was onto the phone with the travel agents and before I really knew what was going on, I was sitting on a 24 hour journey Down Under. It was a really bizarre and surreal feeling to be walking around Sydney, when not so long ago I was saying goodbye to my girls at Glasgow Airport. I had mixed emotions about being home too – I felt I was being disrespectful when the huge smile appeared on my big head when I looked up and saw the sun (first time in a long time!). Obviously it was great to see my family, meet my niece for the first time and see my nephew again, see a few good mates and enjoy a few beers by the beach but it was also a pretty tough time to attend the funeral for my grandpa and also be so far away from Kas and Chloe. The service was very good – full of lots of happy memories and stories. I only had a few days back there anyway and before too long, I was sitting on the 14,000 mile long haul flight to Scotland. I arrived back on the weekend and the next day I was sitting at my desk and getting stuck back into work. Crazy, crazy week!
The time finally came yesterday – the big 30 has come and gone! I’d been clinging onto my 20’s for a few months now but there’s nothing left to do now but accept the inevitable. I’m a 30 year old family man now with a mortgage, a company car and have friends who have also left the city for the suburbs…that in itself makes me chuckle – when did I grow up?! We had a good party at our house on the weekend however and I proved that I’m still a kid at heart. With the news of my 0.3% result, a new decade to celebrate and some good mates, I decided that I could throw the straight and narrow philosophy out the window and have a good night. I can’t remember the last time I’ve partied ‘til the sun came out…
The lead-up to the 3 Peaks Challenge is still going well, besides the fact that I need to get my big body (I’m not fat, I’m just big-boned) into gear and up the training levels. It did freak me out slightly when a friend (who happens to guide climbers up Ben Nevis 30-40 times a year) said that there’s no chance he’d try and climb all three mountains in 24 hours. We’ve already raised just over £3,500 now and nearing our £6k target but there’s still a lot to do before we hit that total.
On the good news front, my mate Dave Cox has just been given the clearance to go home after his bone marrow transplant to cure his CML late last year – he’s just spent 126 days awaiting the news if the procedure was a success and now he can proudly say that his blood is 100% B negative although he used to be A negative. He will still be closely monitored but I’m stoked to hear that it’s all going so well for him after his CML meds didn’t work too well in his body. His website is this and it’s definitely worth a read - http://cml.davidrobertcox.com/
I’ll add a few of my party photos next time but until then, keep the emails, messages and sponsorship coming in. My next visit with my Consultant is in two weeks so it’ll be interesting to get her take on what’s been going on…
www.justgiving.com/3peakschallengeuk
*Unreal to see that this site gets regular visits from the following countries: Australia, USA, Great Britain & North Ireland, Taiwan, France, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Czech Republic, Bosnia, Chile, Canada, New Zealand, Malaysia, Ireland, The Netherlands, Indonesia, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, China, Brazil, Turkey, Germany, Israel, Egypt, Austria, Singapore, Tunisia, Hungary, Belgium, South Korea, Finland, South Africa, Japan, Kuwait, India, Denmark, Bulgaria, Serbia & Montenegro, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Jordan, Falkland Islands, Nigeria, Costa Rica, Norway, United Arab Emirates, Martinique, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, Poland, Cuba, Latvia, Luxembourg, Sweden, Thailand, Argentina, Romania, Antigua & Barbuda and Ukraine…
