Friday, 22nd July

I'm very pleased to be able to say that my financial year ends for both my businesses are done and dusted and payments due have been forward dated to the relevant dates.....bleh!

This week has been a week of updating business web and face book pages and I have also spend some time sprucing up the blog.  You may have noticed a change in look as well as colour scheme.  My next goal is to start a crochet blog :)

I follow quite a number of blogs myself, mostly related to Multiple Myeloma but various other ones too.  I have always made it a habit to type the date as my post title, although many bloggers prefer to give their post a name....something relating to what they are going to blog about.  I tried this in the beginning but couldn't get my head around a nice catchy title so have stuck with the date all along.  The only down side of this is that if you look at my Blog Archive at the top of the right hand side column there is no reference in the way of a post title should you be wanting to go back and look or read something up on a particular post.  I find being able to do this very helpful with the blogs that I follow.  Of course most of you read my blog update and you're done, but for my fellow Multiple Myeloma/Cancer sufferers who follow my blog this could be very user unfriendly.  You may want to find the 60 days of daily posting relating to Jimmy's stem cell transplant for example.

For this reason one of the tabs under the main photo at the top of my blog is a Timeline tab.  If you click on and open this, there is an extensive list with dates in reverse order (latest on top) of any significant milestones we have crossed on this journey.  You are now able to check the date here of say the stem cell transplant and then find the posts using the same date in the Blog Archive.  I hope you will find this helpful.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend and if you're in Cape Town keep warm.....there is another cold front on its way.

Sunday, 10th July

I've been a bit slack at updating the blog since Jimmy was discharged from high care but I have been very busy positioned in my chair in front of the TV each night crocheting :)

Jimmy was discharged on Tuesday the 28th of June and he went back to work on Monday the 4th of July.  He really battled with gout.  Emma and I had to assist him getting around at home but by the Saturday he was hobbling around on his own.  He has been back at work for a week already and still limping as his right foot/ankle is still painful.  I always find it quite difficult to get out of Jimmy what kind of pain he is experiencing.  Even when his vertebra was completely compressed he would say his back is stiff! I keep telling him that I find it difficult to believe that he can have gout for, what by yesterday was, 2 weeks.  I did some research on Thalidomide and it turns out that one of the possible side effects is pain in the hands and feet.

Jimmy had his follow up appointment with Prof last Monday and he is happy with Jimmy's recovery.  I did not go with him but made him promise me he would tell Prof that he still can't put all his weight on his foot and is still in pain.  I know Jimmy....he would have grimaced and taken the pain to walk in there as if there is absolutely nothing wrong with him.  Prof doesn't feel that it is a side effect of the Thalidomide which is a good thing but still doesn't explain the continued pain. They did a full blood count at the chemo clinic prior to his appointment and all his blood counts have come up nicely as well as his platelets which are now standing at 178.  This is the highest they have been in a long time and very positive news as this means that the Thalidomide is not supressing his platelets which was Prof's biggest fear of putting him on Thalidomide in the first place.

It's funny how things go....it's always the side effects that we are most concerned about that end up being plain sailing but then something small will catch us unawares.  But I'm not complaining a we too have weathered this storm.  Oh and for anyone that bumps into Jimmy he will explain that he wasn't as bad as everyone thought he was and they only kept him in high care as a precautionary measure.

So much has happened since we raced back from the Kgalagadi and Jimmy's Mom passed away that I never even got to tell you about the amazing animal sightings we had.  Unfortunately there is something wrong with the memory card that I used and have not been able to download any of the photos but I have a few memories using my cell phone - apologies for the poor quality.

For my overseas friends to show where the Kgalagadi is in relation to

Cape Town

Our overnight stop on the banks of the Orange River, Kanoneiland.

We didn't even unhook the van for an early morning departure.

View of the sunset over the Orange River

from our site

Our home for the next 8 nights

Lion on a Giraffe kill

Hunting and eating is an exhausting business

One of our favourite breakfast stops

An inquisitive little visitor

This perfectly captures the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park

One of many magnificent Weaver's nests

The day of our famous breakfast stop...Jimmy had just started skotteling the

bacon and eggs when we spotted a lion lying just to the right of the closest tree in

the background.