I've been feeling much better as the week has progressed. I've cut the grass and taken a trip into town without any ill effects. My temperature has remained normal. Maybe it's the warmer weather.
My last bout of chemo was during the first week of February, which is over three months ago.
My muscles ache, especially my lower back, but I suspect that is more to do with lack of exercise than anything else. I'm looking forward to getting fitter.
My friend Jerry Arhelger and I toured the UK a couple of years ago, playing churches and clubs and meeting a lot of people. During our conversations he used to refer to his "chemo brain" and I know what he means. I lost the ability to concentrate on anything, and it's only gradually returning.
I always said that mental work was as tiring as physical labour, and these last six months have brought that home to me. I'm struggling to concentrate enough to play my guitar and sing for more than a few minutes at a time. I'm hoping for the all-clear in a week's time and want to play some part in Nicki Gillis' UK tour, which starts in mid June.
However, the idea of me driving a couple of hundred miles and playing bass for a couple of hours afterwards still seems very optimistic. But I'm hopeful we can work something out. My son Chris is lined up to drive the van and carry the kit.
Let's hope that Monday week brings good news.
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Dave Clemo's account of living with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. Don't forget to add your comments when you drop in.
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My recommended reading
- "The Stars my Destination" by Alfred Bester was published in 1956, so it stands as the last of the pre space-age sci-fi novels. The hero is Gully Foyle and he is a man on a mission. He is out to exact retribution to the occupants of a space liner who ignored his distress signals and left him to die in deep space. It's a brilliant epic story, and is Bester's best novel by far. Neil Gaiman writes in the forward that it stakes a claim to be the first cyberpunk novel, albeit thirty years before the genre was established. I've read it at least four times in the last forty years, and I can highly recommend it. 10/10.
- "Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner. First published in 1968. This is a stunning book, written in the 1960s but set at the turn of the 21st century. The title refers to the fact that if every person alive was given a space 2ft by 1ft, they would all fit on the island of Zanzibar. By the time the novel ends, they have overflowed the island and are standing in the water. It deals with the pressures of conflicting world ideologies, overpopulation, how advertising and propaganda can shape our worldview, and features a character called Chad C Mulligan, a socioligist who was so appalled at mankind that he just dropped out. But not before publishing a book called "The Hipcrime Vocab" which was duly banned by the authorities. Brunner predicts legalised recreational drug use, intelligent computers, politics by assassination, and a state of war between conflicting ideologies. And spontaneous riotings and "muckers"- people who just go beserk and run amuck, killing as many people as possible. Spooky. 10/10
- "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. First published 1957. Over 10 years in writing, this is a stunning read. Set in the near future (from a 50s viewpoint), it sets out what inevitably happens when socialism is allowed full rein. Eerily prescient. 10/10.
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