This entry gives some background about the lead up to my diagnosis.

In early June 2017 I had a comprehensive set of blood tests for my aviation medical which I passed after a thorough examination in mid July. At the end of July we travelled to Whyalla, Perth, Kununurra and Darwin. Although we had a busy 10 days, everything felt pretty good.

Having returned from Darwin to Tassie in early August I experienced some lower abdominal pain for 3-4 days as did Dougall (some members of the family had experienced gastro).

The following weekend we flew to Wagga for some ProWay business. During this time I started experiencing night sweats and I also had one of Liz Dowling’s awesome green smoothies which I found to be delicious.  Liz lent us a book titled “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande – a commentary on why we don’t look after our elderley and sick very well in the Western World – an interesting read!

Towards the end of August we flew up to Hamilton Island for a week of sailing with Paul Mara and a whole bunch of doctors – more than you could poke a stick at. I continued experiencing night sweats. I completed a free dermatological check up during the week without ANY concerns despite the fact that I had a number of weird looking small red skin blotches on my chest back and legs- they thought they were just some viral thing (more on this later) .

We returned to Tassie on the weekend of  26th August after a great week of sailing (our boat Helsal 3 won its class!). I had noticed a few bruises in unusual places but I assumed this was due to the sailing.

Sailing photo thanks to Ruth Bailey: