Week 43 – Stable blood counts

This week’s visit to hospital for blood tests revealed that the blood counts are still tracking along pretty well.

Hb 89, Wcc 4.5, Platelets 34 (have dropped a little) and Neutrophils 3.0.  As expected Creatinine has crept up to 106, largely due to the side effect of the higher dose of Valaciclovir.  And the CMV result from last week was down a little from the previous at 487.

All in all the doctors are still happy with progress and are keeping me on a weekly schedule of monitoring.

I must admit I wake up every day and remind myself how grateful I am that I am not in hospital, I am feeling pretty good and my overall progress back to health seems to be well on track.  What more could I ask for!

Claire flew back into town on Friday night and travelled up to Wagga for a party with her friend Toby.  She has now finished her old job in Perth and is off to Brisbane for some training in the new role with Shell before returning to work from Melbourne early in August.  She will be a gas analyst for Shell.

Lance Wolfe from our Aviair Team in Karratha was in town for training

As was Tim and Chief Pilot Max Bladon

We are now starting to plan a few trips out of town to visit friends and do things other than walks around Docklands.  This has been a little confronting for me as we had our second night sleeping out of Melbourne on the weekend – a long way from the  hospital but all went well.

We stayed over with Richard and Zara Brookes at the weekend on the Bellarine Peninsula, near Port Arlington.  We also had a great dinner party (late one for me at midnight) with George and Serena Chirnside and Lyndsay and David Sharp – who run a group of vineyards, restaurants and a golf course on the Peninsula.

I’ve said this before but the simple act of catching up with some friends for a coffee or lunch has been stimulating and very rewarding for us both.  There is nothing like staying connected with old friends and family and the support this has given me has certainly helped with my recovery.

Knox and Cate Heggaton dropped in Sunday afternoon on their way to Europe for a well earned holiday.  We managed to catch up on news of our farm in Tassie  – all is going well.

A bunch of Wagga people including David Foster, Mark  Hillis, Peter Clucas, David Hodge, Col  Duff, John Smith and David and Cathy Pyke made the trip down to Melbourne for the Swans- Tigers match on Thursday night.  What a great night out at Etihad Stadium just next door!  Note Clucs dressed me up in Swans gear and is proudly wearing the beanie I knitted him.

Lachy heads out of Melbourne to Bali with his girl friend Hanna next week to work from Bali!  Hanna has a job transfer and Lachy has decided to go along – indefinitely.  He has convinced his boss that he can work flexibly from Bali with a return to Oz every few months for client meetings and so forth.  He has sold everything up and is about to start a new chapter in his life!