A contribution from guest blogger Chris Durbin
Dearly beloved bloggers
It is a while since I communicated with you all properly. I had a lingering lung infection which has now cleared up so that I am here and ready to go to having an autologous bone marrow transplant. My cryogenically frozen stem cells will be defrosted and transfused and after a high dose of chemo, they will regenerate my bone marrow which will give me a few more years on this planet to bug, cajole and contradict you!!
It has finally come to pass that I have entered the Hotel Queen Mary or the Hilton Pokfulam. I have passed over the threshold of this en-suite private room for three weeks may be a month in a public hospital. Incarceration for one with romany inclinations will be hard to bear. These 12 sq metres are to be my home with only medical staff and the family to see. I have a view through the towers to the island of Lamma over the Hong Kong U Medical School. I am protected behind double doors breathing the cleanest air you will ever have breathed in Hong Kong – double and cold filtered. Everything has to be wiped with alcohol before entering – so I am getting my daily dose of the A stuff through a sniff of the swabs!! Tinned and packet food is to be my diet so last night the family went out for a foodfest at the Mozart Stub’n in central Hong Kong – Adam ate a Frisbee-sized wiener schnitzel and I had some fortifying liver and onions. I decided that a Austrian meat fest is what I needed as a last supper…………forgive the biblical analogy, although it does feel a bit like it entering into this next phase.
You will be pleased to know that the room is full of all mod cons…broadband internet access, tv, dvd’s, music etc. However, the piece de la resistance is not the pedals for exercise where I will shut my eyes and imagine that I am cycling up the Col de Ventoux, it is the breathing exerciser known as the Triball….this is the Nintendo for the respiratory challenged. Picture three plastic tubes side by side, each with silver balls inside and when you breathe …..inspire as the nurse stated when he briefed me on this play station for the hard of breathing. I was about expire after five blows and wanting to score top marks. You are attempting raise the balls to the ceiling of the tube. Now the competitor in me is charmed by this game. You score 600cc/sec when 1 ball raised to the top of the tube, 900cc/sec is 2 balls or 1200cc/sec when you raise to the roof a magnificent 3 balls if you don’t suffer from hyper oxygenation of the blood. This game alone will save me from boredom.
The first medical experience today was an X ray through glass doors…Name rank and serial number. It was a bit like those classic shots from American penitentiaries of prisoners on death row. Prison visiting hours are 4.30=6.30. I will try to set up a camera later when I am recovered from the chemo – it will be the same as a phone looking through the window.
Many thanks for all your support in the last year – I couldn’t have asked for better. It has been very uplifting and helped me fight like a tiger. Next stop bone marrow biopsy and the dietician will police the food items that I have tried to smuggle in. There is money to be made in smuggling in all those banned foods – cheese running…..nut contraband and fresh fruit piracy…keep your fruit and nuts under lock and key!
The black and white photograph is 'The Dance of Light' by Erik Holmoyvik and you can see more of his work at the brilliant photographic website Photo.net
The colour photograph is of the beautiful Lofoten Archipelago in Norway.
Thanks Chris
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