Still here

I know it's been a long time and apologies to those of you who have been looking for updates on here over past four months. I've just been through five months of chemotherapy which laid me low to say the least. I was mostly concentrating on getting through each day as best I could knowing that the chemo was my only hope. I usually enjoy writing my blog and other stuff but I was blocked by tiredness, physically and mentally.

Chemo is now over for time being and my latest scan showed that my cancer responded to the treatment, in that all my tumours have reduced by at least one third and some have disappeared altogether. But I did have a multitude of them. Also there are no new nodules elsewhere, so cancer is still restricted to my poor lungs. I will need another scan in six months and a decision on fryer treatment may be required. Meantime I can live a more or less normal life, though my bowel continues to refuse to behave itself and looks as if that will be it's fate.

Meantime Eilidh Donalda is doing well and getting bigger by the day. She is very like her mother and  her dad's younger brother. I see them regularly and they are, all three of them, a highlight of my life.

I have news about Heber in Peru which I will write about in next post or two. I miss him. There is still a possibility of a trip to Peru but my oncologist wants another scan before then, sometime in the autumn. I see her again on 14 July and we will decide then on date for next scan. I am tempted to go to Peru without it but so far have always stuck with her advice, so maybe best to stick with that.

I am planning to go to Stornoway again for eight days on 10 June, with a couple of days in Inverness on my way up, to spend with my pal Kenneth. After that I'm going to London for twelve days at beginning of July, taking in the Marxism Festival over the first weekend. My pal John is coming down for the first few days. Then I'm going back to Cheltenham for a week in mid July. My first return there since I left in 1976. I expect it to be an emotional trip, but one I must do. I'n hoping to go to Stratford to see some Shakespeare afterwards on my way home. I'm driving down to Cheltenham which will be fun, I hope.

All for now. My pal John has just called.