One week into treatment and I feel pretty good, no side effects to speak of so far apart from a medium size bruise on my arm where I had the infusions. Wrote quite a lot, even managed a couple of days at work. This week is the red zone for immunosuppression so I’m keeping away from people. Hope to get out and do stuff next week.
I’ve been thinking for a while about posting this, whether it was something I wanted to do or not, but I’ve decided to put it out there mainly for those widely-scattered friends who will see this on Facebook.
You may have noticed I haven’t posted in a while. You may have thought he’s just being lazy, or nothing much is going on. Laziness is always a possible explanation, but really I was waiting for the right time. Some things have continued ticking over: I’m still writing, the workshops at Worldcon are developing well, my agent hasn’t sold my latest book.
What is new is related to my last post. Following the bout of pneumonia I’ve been spending a lot of time with doctors. They suspected that something was lurking behind the pneumonia and now that something has a name – Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia. I start treatment on Monday.
This is something that is well understood, with many treament options and an excellent prognosis. However, the next few months are going to be consumed by the treatment. I hope to be able to use some of that time writing since I won’t be going anywhere much. I have bought a stack of books so I won’t have to resort to daytime TV. I will be immune suppressed so if you invite me to something and I turn you down, its not because I don’t want to come – I just don’t want to risk catching some trivial bug that I can’t fight off.
I’ll still be here on e-mail if you want to talk to me, otherwise I’ll see you in the autumn.
martinowton 