Moving House..

The new house is almost finished and Sarah and I move in this weekend 14th Feb.

Last Fridays sausage sizzle and drinks went very well with a few surprise visitors, some I hadn't seen in years! We are planning to have a big house warming party once we are settled in. I'll post the details here once we set a date.


My energy levels are really good now and I'm using my regained strength to do as much work around the property as possible. Today I was securing 'Novadrain' pipework to waratah stakes down into the bush and into a small stream. Much swinging of a sledge hammer and climbing near vertical bush covered slopes left me puffing and sweating but it felt good to be doing such energetic work again. Last weekend I painted the workshop floor and tonight Sarah and I laid carpet in my "man cave" / Office.


You might remember a couple of weeks back I posted that I had a heavy fall in the driveway, a "Face-Plant" that left me with a grazed face and a badly bruised chest. Last week I was talking to the builders about how the steroids can cause sudden muscle weakness and spasms causing me to trip.
We were loading a trailer with rubbish from the building site. Suddenly my legs gave way and I tripped falling heavily against a metal tie-down peg that was protruding from the trailer, almost impaling myself. I say "almost" because to look at the black bruised and grazed circle on my back, it looks like I was shot with a rubber bullet. I think had the peg been a little sharper I would have been in more serious trouble!


I can see that I am going to have to be ultra careful over the next year while on medication :)



My daughter Ashleigh and her boyfriend Gary have been staying with Sarah and I for the last four weeks. They returned to Brisbane yesterday. Was so good to catch up with her, it had been two years since she last visited and so much has happened to me in that time, it's good to have had this measure of health so that we could get out and do a few things. Not as much as I would have liked though as the new house soaked up a huge amount of my time.






...Ron

Life's Good!

Other than a few muscle cramps at night I seem to be completely well.

It's actually kinda strange to not be sick. It all seems normal and at the same time unusual.
An almost deja-Vue feeling. You get so used to not being able to do things, that when you can it's a novelty even when it might be something that's so familiar. For instance.. Who would have thought that being fit enough to spend a whole day painting and sanding would be cause for celebration when in reality I hate decorating!

I've been very precise with my steroid dosage and timing and it seems to make a big difference.
Previously I'd have them at various times of the morning and play with the dosage if I thought it would help my aches and pains... turns out it was the "playing" with the dosage that caused the problems!.

My weight is still climbing but not as quickly as over Christmas. I'm now about 77kg which I'm happy with. However I just need to make it spread out a bit more, as it all seems to want to sit on my stomach :(

I entered in the Port Road sealed sprint the weekend before last. Murray let me use his Rally-Rides car (a very tired Evo Lancer). It had to be one of the worst cars I've ever raced in! I complained bitterly to Muz after my first run and he thought I was joking... (he hadn't driven it on Tarmac) That was until he took it out for a drive!
He returned to the pits after his run, slammed the door, said "good luck buddy" and went back to driving his yellow beast, to ultimately take out second place.

I took my daughter Ashleigh out for most of my timed runs and we drove the wheels off the car trying to post a half decent time. It had a slipping clutch, terrible handling, poor brakes and absolutely no power! In desperation I looked under the bonnet for something to "tweak".
A bit more boost and a tad more ignition timing was all I could do.

I went out for my second timed run without a passenger, hoping that the small weight saving might help. It didn't.. but I thrashed the car within an inch of it's life and managed to post a time good enough to take out 3rd place over-all. This was very much a surprise as there were nearly sixty cars entered and good deal of them were of a much higher spec than the bucket of bolts I'd been sent out in.

The house is really rocketing along now. There's just 14 days before we move in!
This Friday (5th Feb) we are having a few drinks up at the house to celebrate it being closed in and almost habitable. Feel free to drop in after work if you are so inclined! (83 Kaitangata Crescent, Kelson. Turn left at the 'regional park' car-park and then it's the first driveway on the right)

It's been three months since Targa, and Victor and I are in the process of preparing "Thank you" gifts for our main sponsors. Loosing two months to ill health put a huge hole in our schedule.
My apologies to those that have sponsored us and feel we have just disappeared off the face of the earth. Nothing could be further from the truth.

However I really do need to sit down at some point and detail all we learnt and what we did and didn't do right. It seems so long ago, and all a bit of a haze with me being so sick at the time with both pneumonia and pneumonitis. I'm sure if I get the team together and review our videos and pics we should be able to peace together the whole story.

..Ron

Ouch!!

Tuesday afternoon saw me successfully attempt my first "Face Plant" manoeuvre, complete with much pain and blood, and in the following days a bruised and battered body.
While walking down the gravel driveway at the new house I had stumbled slightly on the loose stones and rather than just fall over like most people would have, I decided to run forwards and let my legs catch up to my falling body.

Unfortunately my legs didn't move quick enough and all I succeeded in doing was hitting the ground face first at running speed. I failed to get my hands out in time, they somehow ended up being ground into the gravel while pinned to my chest. The impact was huge, it felt like I'd been hit in the face with a length of timber. I picked my self up, and dusted myself down. Blood pouring from my face, I was convinced I'd done some serious damage.

Luckily I just suffered a couple of shallow grazes to my face and some sort of bruised muscle in my chest. I thought I must be getting old! I've never had a fall like that before. I mentioned it to the doctor today during my monthly hospital visit and he said it would have been caused by the steroids weakening my muscles. I'll go with that explanation ;)

The appointment with the doctor went well, I had a chest X-ray beforehand and he was pleased with the result. My lungs now look completely normal. I'd figured as much as I haven't coughed in over a month now and I haven't had asthma in weeks.

I told him that I'd been playing around with my prednisone, splitting the daily dose in two. Taking 20mg in the morning and 10mg after dinner. This seems to help with the back pain I sometimes get in the early hours of the morning as their effect wears off. He said that he had no problem with me doing this, even though strictly speaking, steroids should be taken in the morning. Dosage drops from 30mg a day to 25mg as from tomorrow and then next month it will be 20mg. Tapering off over the next 12 months.

My weight is now up to 76kg but it seems to be all sitting on my stomach. 76kg is still light so I need to build some more muscle. I'm glad it's up 7kg on where I was early December, but it's still a gain of 1kg a week and it needs to be reined in or I will be 130kg by year end!

The house is rocketing along now. Sarah has been working on the decorating side of things. I've been working on the water etc, the tank was filled tonight thanks to Jeff Ward and his firetruck.

Over the next week we will have the storm water completed and the waste water system connected ready for the house to have it's showers and toilets connected after the paintings all done.
The deck should be underway next week too. We move in on Feb14th ready or not!

This weekend See's me competing at the Port Road sprint at a totally social level in cars borrowed from Murray O'Neil. I'll share a drive in his "rally-rides" car with Piran Pigneguy and then maybe later go and have a play in the yellow beast that Murray will be competing in.

My car is still gathering dust at the panel-beaters due to my commitments work-wise and up at the new house. There's no way it will be ready for the Mount Vic Hillclimb in March, my favorite event of the year. But I'm not too worried. This year is all about change, our new house to enjoy. The new workshop to play and work in. My new found health to embrace... the motorsport can take a back seat to that any day.

..Ron

Lots happening..

I've been flat out lately catching up on the time lost from being sick. I figure I've lost about two months out of my life!

I have yet to find the time to finalise things from the Targa Life Challenge campaign. There's still photo's to organise and sponsors to personally thank. The final total raised for the Cancer Society is yet to be finalised but it appears to be around $5000.

The dented and bruised Evo race car finally made it to D.E McMillan panel for it's repairs on Christmas Eve. Over seven weeks after Targa. Better late than never. The poor car spent that entire time parked outside, and mostly in the rain. It had a pampered life before that ;) Now dented and looking rather second hand, I no longer treat it like a precious possession.

(Now it's just a car, out of sight out of mind)

The new house and workshop is progressing well. I've spent several days there now working on the water system. I've turned my hand to a bit of rough carpentry, some plumbing and a bit of electrical work. I've been making a base for the housing that protects the water pump from the elements, and putting together the components of the U/V water treatment plant.

In the photo you can see the large blue filters and the stainless steel, ultra violet light , water treatment plant that will give us water qulaity close to, if not the same as that of bottled water. Next to that is the large "accumulator" that stores 100liters of water under pressure. This allows less frequent cycling of the electric water pump.

The garage door was fitted last week but when we opened it for the first time we found that it had been damaged in transit, the installer tried painting the damaged areas but it just highlighted the problem, so it's up for replacement next week. All the other doors and windows have now been fitted and it's just a matter of a week or so before we can start decorating the main living area. Water and waste water system should be all go in about two weeks too.

Today was the first real day of hands-on work on cars that I have done in many months. Four wheel alignments in a row. All the customers had been waiting for me to return to work. Two of them had gone elsewhere and had huge problems. A 1955 Ford Thunderbird had spent a week at one workshop trying to sort the steering out and no one had noticed that a lower suspension joint was loose and about to fall out, or that the steering arm on one side was badly bent through an accident sometime in the last half century!

The next job was a Ford Mustang Muscle car that had been converted to rack & pinion steering using a kit imported from the States. The kit was a shambles, with no regard for correct geometry of the steering and linkages. The result is that the car will always have major steering problems unless it is replaced. The car had been on three alignment machines and not one of the operators understood the problem.!

Tonight my daughter Ashleigh (17 years old) and her boyfriend Gary arrive for a 4 week stay. I'm looking forward to seeing her as it's been two years since her last visit.

Sarah and I have offered them the use of our old Suzuki Vitara 4WD and we are expecting that they will head out around the country in it and have some adventures. There's nothing more fun than a road trip with no set plans or schedules. (Maybe Sarah would disagree!)

Health-wise I'm in good shape. Absolutely no cough at all, not even a touch of asthma. Energy levels are as good as the next persons. I even went rabbit shooting last week (don't worry no rabbits were harmed in the making of this blog) and trudged around the hills with no more effort than that of my brother Mark, ten years my junior.

I do get a bit of a back ache sometimes, but I'm not going to worry about it as it comes and goes and usually only in the mornings when my steroid has worn off. The biggest bother is that I can't drink alcohol, and I so want to kick back and enjoy my life now that I'm well again.

..aah but food does taste good these days! My sense of taste, which was hammered by radiation treatment seems to have restored itself to it's former level and I'm eating like crazy from both the steroids and new found enjoyment of eating.

That brings me to weight gain.. 6kg's in one month! Good in that I am almost at my goal weight, but bad in that if it continues I will be 140kg's by the time I finish my treatment in a year.

I shall have to exercise more and eat less. I only want to gain another 3kg's and that should be in muscle as I have lost a lot of muscle over the last couple of years.

OK.. wow what a big update! Later ...Ron

Happy New Year!

Well it's 2010.. It certainly doesn't feel like it's been ten years since the start of "The new Millennium" ? I'm sure back in the 1970's and 80's we all thought that we would be flying around in space ships by now and living in a vastly different world. Other than the development of the Internet and the mobile phone the world isn't that much different than it was 30 years ago.

Still, I have a feeling that this is going to be a great year, maybe even a great decade. The world seemed to have stood still for the best part of the last ten years. I would be nice to think that the next ten years is a time of catching up.

Last night Sarah and I celebrated the end of the year by going out to dinner at "Little India" in Lower Hutt, then dropping in to my brother and sister in laws to see in the new year.
I drank a little more than I have in a number of years, I knew I'd pay the price today and I did.
However it was an interesting and rewarding exercise in pain and what it all means in my case.

I'll explain... At around 4am I was woken by an excruciating pain in my lower back. Now I have mentioned before that this pain is exactly like the pain I get when I have had active Hodgkins Lymphoma, so it freaks me out. After about ten minutes of attacking my back the pain suddenly moved to my hips and increased in magnitude to about 8 on the 1-10 pain scale.

It was so bad it took my breath away and I was moaning. I got up to grab some water to take some painkillers and my legs collapsed from under me. I had to drag myself back to bed by supporting myself with my arms. Sarah asked why if I was in so much pain was I laughing?
The answer was simple.. This was steroid related, it's a classic symptom, pain and muscle weakness in the hips. This was not the same as when I had HL. I was over the moon with relief and at the same time in massive pain!

Then as suddenly as it arrived the pain left my hips and moved to my knees! Now I can tell you now there are no lymph nodes in your knees! So again this reinforced the fact that this was the prednisone playing havoc with my joints and old injury areas.
I put up with the pain for three hours before deciding to get up and eat so I could take my steroids. Within an hour the pain had completely gone.

Sarah and I had gone for a walk yesterday in the Belmont regional park. The track runs alongside our property for quite some distance then heads up into the hills above the "Dry Creek" quarry. I found the walk very easy and it was a good test of my reviving fitness. However it is hard on the knees on the walk back down and perhaps this is why they flared up in the morning?

I'll see what happens over the next few mornings and if I have a repeat of last night's pain I shall look at splitting the medication into two lots, morning and night.
You should always take prednisone in the morning because that is when your body produces most of it's hormones naturally. However I'd need to balance that against the damage done by the fever and inflammation when the drug wears off too soon. Hopefully by splitting the dose so I take a small amount at night will carry me through to the next morning's dose.

OK.. enough of the boring steroid dramas..

The new house is really coming along now. There's still quite a bit to do in getting the water system running but the house build itself is on track.
The water system involves a 15,000 liter catchment tank, a UV light water treatment plant that then filters the water down to a point that it's as good as the bottled stuff.

By passing the water through a tube and exposing it to Ultra Violet light any virus's or bacteria are instantly made inert. The UV destroys the DNA and makes it unable to divide and replicate. It may sound like over-kill but with my immune system so weak I can't afford to risk getting sick from the water we drink.

The same water tank supplies our Fire sprinkler system and that's powered by a huge capacity electric pump capable of running four sprinklers at full flow. To get the whole system up and running I need to co-ordinate the work of a plumber, a fire system engineer, a drain-layer and an electrician.
Doing all this in the middle of the holiday period is going to be a challenge!!

Have a fantastic 2010!!

Till next time ...Ron