2007 — 7 August: time to hit the road

It's almost a re-run of 27 July. To the GP's surgery, with the second of what will (doubtless) be a long batch of repeat prescription medicine requests. The walk will do me good! And the sun is (intermittently) shining. Then, after "lemonses", we'll decide what's next. Her new, improved "take it easy" policy appears to be paying off to some extent. She is having a gentle zizz, and says the pain is "bearable". All meds are safely onboard.

Thank you, Heidi, for your Waitrose trip yesterday. Very much appreciated. And very nice, too, to see ex-neighbours Dick and Judy who popped in briefly on their way back to Torbay.

Today's NZ factoid

In case they ever feel sheepish down there. "Food that travels well":

Most notably, they [Lincoln University in NZ] found that lamb raised on New Zealand's clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.

James E McWilliams writing (from Texas) in the New York Times

Not again... department

My poor lass once again has blood in her urine (this was, of course, the last day of the antibiotics that seemed to clobber this last week) and so, once again, I'm playing the "waiting for advice" and "waiting for GPs to call back" telephone game. Rather disconcerting, to be honest. But She remains in good spirits, and the pain level is certainly rather better today. Let's just hope these are all solid signs of cancer cells being zapped. Well, we got the promised ring-back and one of our local GPs will pop round "after surgery today". The exact time is a moveable feast, but they "lock the doors at six" to stem, as it were, the incoming tide.

Been, seen, assessed. Basically nothing to cause undue concern. The blood could indeed be indirect evidence of how badly the tumour is suffering¹ under this chemical onslaught. That thought pleases us muchly.

A Good Day?

On balance, yes, it's been a Good Day. Good Night!

Footnote

¹ Tumours cunningly trick our bodies into laying on a blood supply for them — a process called "vascularisation" — but they do it somewhat chaotically. I remember reading a Scientific American article in the early 1970s that suggested control of vascularisation would be a long way further toward victory against cancer.