Sibylla would have been proud; at least I hope she would. I was trying my damnedest to pull off a half decent "Sun salutation" in the middle of Regents Park whilst being filmed by a Macmillan film crew. Having only ever done yoga in the privacy of my own lounge, I find it a relaxing introduction to the day but I'm sure my technique and posture is far from that achieved by a true yoga junky typically to be found, at least in most clichés,  balancing on one leg, the other behind their head in perfect pose on a tranquil beach; the sea lapping gently against the distant shore.

It has been sometime since I posted anything on this blog although it still seems to still get regular traffic. For the benefit of those whom I don’t keep in touch with regularly or those that have found this site in the hunt for information on HCL having just been diagnosed then, by way of an update, I can happily state that two years on from treatment I am still in remission.

Although this is, what I term ‘ the scary year’ – that being the one where most HCL survivors seem to relapse or get diagnosed with a secondary cancer – I sometimes find almost a whole day can pass with me not having thought about it. Slowly, slowly, the whole thing ebbs away into the background and ceases to become the most central thing on one’s mind.

There are two key reasons for this: One is having “A Small”. By far one of the most distracting things anyone can introduce into their life is a child. In my case a Daughter but I’m assuming that Son’s also work. As a distraction from cancer and its related fallout these are ideal to have around but being complex to create, and expensive to maintain, they are not for everyone.

The second reason for my almost constant optimism, and one that is far more accessible to anyone who has gone through chemotherapy, is exercise. Regular exercise. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Nothing has helped my life after chemotherapy with regard to wellbeing and especially mood more than exercise.

Since my treatment finished I’ve been in regular contact with a number of cancer related charities, mainly Macmillan. I’ve reviewed books that might be used by others going through similar situations. I’ve read a few leaflets and documents as they go through the publishing process to offer thoughts on how useful they might be or how, as far as I’m concerned, they might be improved. I’m one of many, many people who do this and if you are interested it is worth signing up as a Macmillan Voice to help out where you can.

As part of this contact with Macmillan I, along with two others, were interviewed for a video on physical activity and how it had helped them in their recovery from cancer treatment. This video was filmed some time ago as part of a much wider campaign on staying active that, for all the effort that went into it, sadly got lost in the press under the sheer weight of the news covering riots that  struck a number of towns and cities across the UK last summer.

Some of that campaign appears to be being re-launched and along with it a cut of the video I was interviewed for. Macmillan’s YouTube channel is well worth checking out and if you’re just trying to come to terms with a diagnosis then their website and leaflets contain some excellent information. Even if they are not always very good at advertising the fact.

One of the people I don’t keep up with regularly is Sibylla and I hope she is one of the handful of people who still pop by and check this out. If only to see me trying to do her proud by pulling some nifty yoga moves in Regents Park as part of this video. Years after being introduced to it at her fantastic retreat in Plymouth I still do it, although not as regularly as I’d like. I came upon yoga long before I was diagnosed and yet it was the one activity I felt I could still do even on my weakest days.   

It has been a week of nausea fill days and sleepless nights. The six monthly check seems to come around so soon and it brings with it the angst of waiting for exam results multiplied a thousand times. Life starts to slow as I put things on hold not wanting to look ahead too optimistically, waiting to see if the outcome will curtail any immediate plans.

The sun beat down for the lunchtime walk up to the hospital. The routine is now well rehearsed. I have a slot booked with a consultant but must have blood taken first. You don't need to book for the blood letting you just turn up and at some point they'll take what they need and then sometime later will send it to the lab. The lab, in turn, also don't have you booked in so process it when they can fit it in around other more pressing demands.

The problem then is that if you turn up at your allotted time and only then get your blood taken, you miss your slot with the consultant. Resulting in a wait to fit into a slot between other appointments that can only happen once the lab have turned up with your results.

The natural way round this is of course to go really early to get bloods taken and take a leisurely walk to the consultant's office. This I have tried and even made time for a long lunch between the needle and the chat. This backfired with the lab assuming, given how early I was, that my bloods weren't for the Thursday clinic and put them aside whilst they got on with the stuff that came in later.

On that occasion I ended up being at the hospital for four hours. With Emma accompanying us this time so that was a wait we did not want to face and practice saw us time the blood taking and the arrival in the waiting room to perfection whilst fitting a sandwich in between.

Delighted by the box of well worn toys in the corner of the bright, airy waiting room Emma kept others amused with babbled talk of "car" and "book", as well as repeatedly feigning no interest in the stairs before then running at them to climb.

The waiting room was not as busy as usual, recent cancer treatments are either going very well or very badly, and I was seen bang on time.

Nervously we all made our way to the consultants office and pulled up some seats. The announcement was quick and delivered with a cheery smile. My bloods were good. Very good. As good as anyone without a history of Leukaemia could hope for.

The relief was astonishing and, pleasantries exchanged, we soon found ourselves back out in the sun phoning relatives and texting the news.

later the 'no drink on a school night' rule was abandoned just this once.

It is such an odd ritual to go through; the wait and the fear. Whilst Cladribine can offer some very long remissions there are those that relapse quite soon. In my mind I'm aiming for five years but it is an idle hope and something that I have no control over as far as I can tell.

The signs for now though are good. Perfect bloods and no symptoms. I'll keep eating well and pounding the treadmill if not to keep it at bay then at least to ensure when it does return I'm ready for the fight. in the meantime there is lots of stuff to plan.

Please sponsor me to walk a marathon at night for Cancer Research UK. There is still so much more to do.


Click HERE for more information. 

I don't like to beg, but I'm going to. 


I'm not going to rattle a tin in your face as you try to make your way to work and I am not going to accost you with a clipboard as you try to get on with your shopping. I'm going to walk. In a very large circle. While you're asleep.


In the years since being diagnosed with Leukaemia I've been the recipient of a great deal of good will whether through colleagues donating blood, or care and support from charitable organisations who fund research, nursing, and counselling.


Since 2009 I have made a concerted effort do donate to cancer charities and organisations when the opportunity has arisen. The time has come though, I feel, to go out and play my part in earning some of that generosity.


In October this year I am going to walk a marathon at night in aid of Cancer Research.


At first I thought that, compared to some of the bike rides and runs I could have opted for a walk would be relatively easy. I walk between my desk and the coffee machine at work a lot every day. I walk around town at weekends. Walking is just walking. 26 miles is just a bit more of it all at once.


The more I thought about it though, after I had signed up, the more I realised how much of a task this was likely to be. The time needed to do it is likely to be greater than the amount of time I'd ordinarily be spending asleep. The distance is similar to the distance I'd hike for Duke of Edinburgh awards in my teens but that would be spread over a whole weekend with stops for food and merriment.


Since signing up the number of conversations I've had about appropriate footwear and anti-chaffing under garments has made me realise that this is going to be a bit more arduous than the last sponsored walk I did age seven in my Primary School playground.


The effort it will involve, I think, sits well with the disease I am walking for. Leukaemia, like many cancers, is not a fast run thing. It is a slow hard slog.


It is waiting. It is slow treatments. It is drawn out pain. It is lengthy sickness. It is weeks or months of recovery. And if you're lucky, it is years of watching, waiting and testing to see if it returns. 


I cannot think of a more appropriate metaphor for dealing with cancer than an extraordinarily long walk through London, at night, in the cold.


You have all supported me greatly already through hugs, gifts, help, time off, talking, emails, or just through reading this blog. I am eternally grateful for all of this but I'd like you to give me just a little bit more. I'd like you to donate just a little bit of money so that when it comes to it, on the 1st October this year, I know I am walking a bloody long way for a reason.


The money I am hoping to raise will go to Cancer Research. It cannot be stated enough how much of an impact charitable giving has on the research required to help people like me live longer. The drug I was treated with was first developed at a University funded by donations. The treatment has been refined over the years by no- for-profit organisations. As recently as last month research funded by charity has identified a single genetic abnormality linked to Hairy Cell Leukaemia. This is a massive step and similar steps are being made in research for other cancers every year but the job is not done yet. We are a long way off from a cure. 


I'm going to give some of my time, I'd like you to join me in giving some money, and in return some very clever people, who you or I will probably never meet, will work tirelessly to try and save either my life, the life of someone else you know, or even you.


For the sake of a just a few pounds from you and astonishingly sore feet from me this seems like a pretty good deal.


As is the norm these days you can sponsor me online...


http://www.sponsormetoshine.org/hairycell


..or stick to the more traditional route of handing me some money in person.


Be sure to make it clear though why you're giving it to me lest it gets used to purchase some comfy trainers or some anti-chaffing pants.

It is easy when you’re either single or just a couple for time to pass so quietly that it seems not to pass at all. Week days see the same tasks carried out and every weekend the same past times are enjoyed.  Days, weeks, months and even years can pass and one never really feels any older. Jobs may change; careers may advance but inside you feel you are you. Seemingly ever young with nothing to make you think otherwise.

I now find that once children come along, amongst everything else they bring, the rate they advance becomes an absolute and daily reminder of just how fast time passes and how quickly we get older. It has been a year since my little girl was born and it is a year that has flown by. Her birthday marking not just her arrival in the world but also the week I was released from hospital following a month and a half of post-chemo suffering.

The year has been one of indulgence although not to excess. I’ve enjoyed every moment possible with my little girl. I’ve concentrated on doing the things I enjoy and abandoned those I do not. And on the matter of food I’ve eaten whatever I’ve wanted. I figured that with the combination of leukaemia related weight loss and over a month of hospital food I could afford to put on a few pounds and that I have. I’ve not gone overboard, I’ll confess to feeling no qualms about occasionally indulging in a second piece of cake but I’ve always been reasonably healthy and I enjoy a massive salad as much as I do a burger. Everything in moderation as they say.

Recently though I’ve decided that I need to pull myself out of this torpor and get back into training. Aware now how fast time is ticking and with low platelets on my last blood test I know that all too soon I may find myself back in hospital having chemo and fighting off whatever that brings on next time. When I get there and the treatment knocks my health down I would like to at least be starting from a pretty good position. And so this month I shopped around and joined a gym.

I’ve been a gym member before. I joined my first in my late teens. It was a small local place populated with guys who seemed to spend every waking hour drinking tuna milkshakes and exercising their upper bodies so much that they turned into massive piles of muscle set atop tiny spindly legs.

More recently I spent a year as a member of one of these new plush chains of gyms but eventually the exorbitant fees and lack of any proper cleaning or repair led me to leave. I was a member of the local YMCA gym in the run up to my diagnosis and used it regularly and had put down my inability to make any real progress with my stamina too not being as young as I used to be;  unaware of my dwindling platelets and ever growing spleen.

This time I’ve joined the local leisure centre. It is affordable, no frills, and I figured that local services could do with my investment. My training has started and whilst for the first few sessions I felt I’d get more from just running to the gym and back without paying to actually go in, things are starting to change. I feel as though I am using all of my lungs again. I mean the full depth you get from filling them through exercise rather than the little bit you use in a typical loafing and sedentary lifestyle. And I just feel a lot better in myself.

In addition to the physical benefits I had hoped for I hadn’t really counted on the mental. The regular exercise really lifts the spirits and I find myself getting low and dwelling on this all a lot less often when I work out at least a few times a week.

This is all part of what I call my “one more day” plan.

Previous efforts at the gym have always been to get fitter, to look better; a purely cosmetic aim. This time it is very different. I do not expect the exercise to stop the Leukaemia coming back but what I do hope is that I can stay fit enough to see off any more treatment I have to go through. The real aim of all the work is to buy myself at least one more day with Emma. It is that thought that drives me each time I up the speed on the treadmill, squeeze more metres out of my row, and add another weight to the bench press.

“One more day”.

It is a year ago today that, around lunchtime, I walked into our CEO’s office and said “I’d like to go home; I’ve just been told I have Leukaemia.”

It was already turning out to be a busy day cramming work in so that the following day I could take the morning out to attend our baby’s 20 week scan. Of all the curve balls that come my way on a working day this was one I was not expecting.

I guess that relative to many cancer sufferers the time from my diagnosis to being told I am in full remission is pretty quick, particularly given that my treatment was on hold for a good three months and yet conversely the last year seems to have lasted a lifetime. That three month wait probably doesn’t help.

As autumn arrives laying a cold damp blanket across the country I am looking forward to spending time outside, walking through piles of fallen leaves and spending occasional evenings tucked up in a warm pub packed with others sheltering from the inclement weather outside. From this time last year I was confined to home lest I met anyone who gave me so much as a cold that might kill me.

This year I fully intend to immerse myself in the cold seasons; to be with people.

Meeting people recently I am frequently told how well I now look. Looking back on the few photos that survived my attempts at deletion I can testify as such. Thin, pale and gaunt in hindsight it should really have come as no surprise that something was deeply wrong.

Since leaving hospital in February I’ve certainly gone up a few belt holes and clothes bought just before I was diagnosed no longer fit as they should. I am sleeping much better of late and it is over a month now since I had any dreams of being in hospital, of being treated, of needles in my arm.

I find it a little scary at times not having the constant check-ups. For all the discomfort of being in hospital the daily routine of tests and scans brought with it a sense of security. Reporting the slightest change in symptoms brought waves of tests, studies and consultations. I felt safe in the knowledge that should anything be found to be abnormal I would be told right away and it would be treated and addressed. The most complex decision I ever had to make was what to choose for dinner.

At least slightly institutionalised I sometimes miss that safety net and worry about aches and pains that are most likely symptoms of nothing more sinister than sitting badly at my desk all day or tiredness that is caused by nothing more than being a father. Statistically HCL sufferers have a fifty per cent increase of developing a secondary cancer in the first two years following treatment. Only after five years of remission do chances of normal life expectancy begin to appear and I feel that, in spite of the good news, I am still very much in the woods

Not a day goes by when I don’t worry about dying of cancer and this is a cycle I need to break.

I keep telling myself that this is all just statistics. That my fear is only great because this is still such a recent event and that a fifty per cent increase in the chances of getting secondary cancer are an increase on an already small margin not a fifty per cent chance in itself. Readers of Dan Gardner’s “Risk” would tell you that. My pessimistic side counters with the observation that the chance of me getting HCL was also infinitesimally small as to practically not exist and yet it happened. And so the debate rages in my head. It is difficult at times not to descend into a quiet spiral of worry and when I do it can take a good few days to climb out. I am yet to find the thought, word, or phrase that pulls me out early.

In the meantime I crack on with work. My job has changed over the last few months, a lateral career move oddly into a position where my deadlines are much more immediate; the view less long term. I wonder if it is purely serendipity or actually a subconscious move on my part to no longer need to look to far ahead.

I love the job though and as a distraction from the background fears it is seconded only by the greatest joy in life that is my daughter. The change in my life over the last year is as much about her as it has been about Leukaemia. With every day that passes the joy she brings more and more eclipses my fears of shortened life expectancy. Every new thing she does that I witness is a gift, an event that without very recent advances in treatment I’d simply never have seen. She is the absolute reason to get up every morning and the reason to keep on working and to keep on fighting.

We slowly worked our way through a post dinner bottle of champagne as we gorged on a few episodes of West Wing on DVD before finally retiring to bed; Emma well fed snoring in the adjacent room. A thoroughly relaxed evening contrasting with the start of the day.

Taking a nervous break from the working week Thursday afternoon saw the return of the judges verdict following my BMB a few weeks ago. The results were in; the votes had been counted; my ordeal was over. For now.

The bone core sample, the marrow, and the marrow aspirate show no signs of any hairy cells. I am glad that it was the consultant that had seen me through most of this that was there to tell me, along with the fantastic nurse that runs the day room and who had given me my chemotherapy.

There is little I feel I can say at this point other than I am glad it is all over. It has been a nervous week as today approached. Not knowing whether it would be good news or whether we would be planning another round of chemo in a bid to knock of the last of the hangers on. I hadn't let myself consider the possibility that it would have been a complete success. Instead wondering how long I would be in hospital next time, and whether the next round of treatment would fit in with various holidays and work trips planned for the rest of this year.

I spent some time wondering if I should have been more careful over what I was eating. Should I have abstained completely from alcohol. Numerous books would suggest that this is imperative yet medical science suggests otherwise. For my type of Leukaemia there just isn't much you can do at a dietry level to bring it on or send it packing. I eat pretty healthily anyway and just had the odd glass of wine here and there. Any more would have put my liver under pressure, giving it more work to do on top of sorting out all the drugs I have been taking.

Friday morning was the first this year where breakfast has not been accompanied by a cocktail of three different pills. Last night the thought "shit I forgot to take my drugs" flitted briefly across my mind as I realised it was a habit I had gratefully been allowed to kick.

My next checkup is in January. I'll be having bloods taken and tested every six months now until the Hairy Cells come back and there is a pretty good chance that they will.It may be one year, it may be ten. Remission times can be long for this cancer and, fingers crossed, there will be even better treatments by the time I have to take my next turn.

Until then this blog will cease to become the major part of my life that it was when my Leukaemia was around. It has been just under a year and yet the whole thing seems to have taken years. It really has felt that we have all been dealing with this all our lives.

I would like to thank all of you who have read this blog, be you family or people I am yet to meet, who have sent emails or messages of encouragement through friends, family etc. they honestly have made it easier to get through. There are family here in the UK, friends living or travelling abroad, fellow suffers around the world, and students in places as far flung as South America who have stayed in touch an accompanied me on this ride.

Thank you all. And please feel free to keep in touch.

I will add to this blog as I have new thoughts on my ordeal. As I find new things that those coming up behind me on the same path may find of use. And possibly as my health changes and I begin the next round of treatment in many years time. Until then life is back to normal. Emma is nearing 6 months old and is an absolute joy. Such a bright little person she has got me through this as much as anyone and has been what the fight has all been for. I hope to see her do a lot of growing up before I have to go through all of this again.

For those who have stumbled across this blog because they have just been diagnosed or those who are in the best of health I just want to say make the most of what you have. It is hard to live life to the full and until something like this happens you never really appreciate how fragile this all is and how quick it can all be gone. There have been a lot of song lyrics that have helped me along this road but one in particular has been an internal mantra on bad days or days of doubt and for now I shall leave you with that.

Good health to you all; and thank you.

"We’ll be washed and buried one day my girl

And the time we were given will be left for the world

The flesh that lived and loved will be eaten by plague

So let the memories be good for those who stay"

– Mumford and Sons

I have just had my first shower in two days and that's only because I have been pooed on quite violently. Having spent Sunday suffering from a completely unrelated stomach bug, the symptoms of which Emma now exhibits with great abandon, I spent Monday afternoon, still nauseas, having a Bone Marrow Biopsy. The second of my life but the first I planned to sleep through.

I had barely sat down before I was tagged and a cannula was in my arm. Just over six months on from finishing my chemo it was time to see whether or not the effort had all been worthwhile. The cannula felt so normal; an almost welcome addition to my arm. Thoughts of all the other injections, lines, scans, jabs, pills I have had came flooding back. It has only been six months but it feels as though we have been going through this for years.

The procedure was to be done in the 'Day Room' where oh so many months ago I had been given my chemo. It was relatively quiet in there with only one patient on a drip. A small bed was prepared in the corner and as the time got close a small screen was erected so as not to add to everyone else's woes by having to see me drop my jeans and curl up, arse out, on the bed.

The process is relatively simple: having cleaned a small area on the back of my hip a large, very hard needle is inserted through the skin and flesh and into the bone. This is used to take some aspirate - a liquid portion of bone marrow. With this done a thicker needle is used to take a hard core of bone marrow. Slices of which i believe are placed on slide of glass for viewing under a microscope.

On the advice of pretty much everyone I spoke to about it I had this done under a general anaesthetic. I do not remember my last BMB being particularly painful as such but I do recall a lot of swearing and it being very, very uncomfortable. And so it was that, staring at the wall, I was given first a pain killer which made my eyesight go blurry and then another jab to put me out. One I am pretty sure was not working as I continued to stare at the wall listening to people clattering behind me as 'the area' was swabbed.

I was about to point out that I was still awake when all of a sudden I was sitting up on the bed and everyone had gone. Only my wife and one of the nurses remained. There was a dull ache in my back. I do not know how long I sat there and I cannot remember whether I was fully dressed. For some time after, hours even, I kept asking the same questions and telling people the same things I had told them only minutes before.

Apparently during the procedure I had wriggled, kicked my legs, and moaned about how painful and uncomfortable it all was. I recall none of this even now. I am not so sure if the anasthetic did not so much make me unaware of what was going on but just made me instantly forget everything the instant that it happened.

Memories of the journey home are still patchy and the only evidence I had to show of the ordeal was a tiny bloodied dressing that had to stay on and stay dry for 48 hours. Having to wash at a sink rather than shower brought back memories of washing in my isolation room and this morning we attempted an "upside down shower" where I hung over the edge of the bath and my wife helped wash everything above the dressing which was, in that position, now below the dressing. There was simply no way I could go to work in this heat without something bordering on a proper shower.

My memory is back to normal - just averagely bad - and the affects of the stomach bug have pretty much passed. It has reaffirmed my idea that any day is a good day if it starts with a shower. My only regret is that I didn't have my Blackberry in my pocket when Emma let loose. At least then I could get a new one.

It has been a long time since I went to hospital and an even longer time since I've posted anything on this blog. Understandably my readership has dropped to zero. It is now just over five months since I stared my chemotherapy; four since I last left my isolation room only days later becoming a father.

Little Emma has helped life get back to normal very quickly. I frequently go for days without thinking of leukaemia, chemotherapy, blood tests, and neutropenia. Nappy's, baby milk and a never ending quest for a full nights sleep now take precedent. The one constant reminder is the daily pill intake which has become so normal it is like popping vitamins in the morning. At a rough count I think I've taken close to 500 pills since the beginning of the year. I appear to have suffered no real side effects, my liver is holding out, and the once massive stock of pills has now dwindled to the tail end of a lone blister pack and a few chalky tablets rattling around the bottom of a large bottle. Today I was hoping to officially end this daily ritual and begin to enjoy an even more normal existence.

Apart from routine visits to the hospital for Emma's sake I have only been back once on my own account. On that occasion bloods were still low but on the normal route to recovery, there was so little of note that I did not bother to post anything here as it would have descended into a rant about my continued bemusement that a clinic that starts at 2pm can already be running an hour late at only 2pm. The oft touted excuse being that they are over booked, which I take to be another way of saying they are terribly under resourced. The staff that they have are brilliant, but they clearly need a lot more.

I awoke today with a sense of nervousness and worry. Not for anything in particular as there was only a blood test in the offing, more just a feeling that I was being dragged back to reality. A reality that I had worked hard to forget or at the very least ignore. Over time you do accept the diagnosis and over time you just learn to live with it; I assume its the same with any disease. I guess if I am honest its a form of grief, but oddly a grief for one's self.

Repeatedly going to hospital at the beginning of the year was a bit of a roller coaster ride in the sense that I just had to hold on and go along with it. It was easy to detach myself from it because it all seemed so unreal. Going back after such a long break brought back not the surreal atmosphere of endless blood tests and isolation rooms but oddly the feelings of the week when I was first diagnosed. Loss; depression; anxiety.

After a morning of work with butterflies flitting around my stomach we made our way as a family up to the hospital. Bloods were taken as usual and we made our way to the waiting room. It's one of the oddest places to be. Other parts of the hospital seem to bustle where people have to wait. You can pass areas full of people with legs in plaster, kids being corralled together so as not to get in the way of old people being pushed around in chairs, relatives lost trying to find a particular ward, or having been to a ward, their way to the exit. There's a certain hubbub about most places except that is the cancer wing. The waiting room is always silent in spite of the fact that there is usually only standing room; the thirty or so chairs all taken. Everyone knows why they are all there. They all have something massively life changing in common, and yet in a terribly English way no one mentions it. No one says a thing.

The silence was only punctuated today by occasional squeaks and grizzles from Emma. We are both thankful that she didn't fart. For such a small girl she can make quite a thunderous noise when it comes to air dispersal.

The room is populated mainly by elderly people who you know now know what it is that is likely to see them off. Interspersed amongst the crowd are obviously much younger people, myself included, who look around and wonder if they will ever be so lucky to ever be so old. It is a very solemn place.

Eventually I was called and was seen by a consultant I hadn't met before. Clearly they are slowly increasing staff to meet demand and he was a bright friendly guy. He knew my history without pouring over his PC and even said "Ah you must be Emma" as my wife carried her into the room with us. You had to hand it to him he'd clearly done his revision.

My bloods from today are, apparently, pretty much normal including the levels of white cells particularly hit by chemotherapy and an indicator of bone marrow health. Not much more could be concluded though without the dreaded BMB which he would have reviewed today were it not for the fact that the bone marrow extraction has been scheduled for two weeks after this review meeting.

And so it was we returned home. I am still on the antibiotics and antivirals while we wait to see what the bone marrow can show with regard to recovery. The pill popping is to continue and I have a new bag of drugs sitting in the kitchen along with all the other breakfast items. I've opted for a general anaesthetic for the biopsy in two weeks time. I know it sounds chicken but I've had it once before without the aid of sedation and whilst I am sure it is not the most painful thing a man could endure it is staggeringly uncomfortable and I think I have had my fair share of suffering this year. Besides I could really do with the sleep.

There just simply hasn't been the time to write. For that I apologise.

Each day I swear that I am going to update my blog and then come late evening the time to do it has passed and I retire to bed. The last time I wrote I had just been let out of hospital for the second time and was close to becoming a father. I have recently begun to receive emails from friends tentatively asking if all is well with me or the baby, wondering if the radio silence is an indication that somewhere something has gone wrong. An update then is long overdue.

Two days after my release from hospital, popping hundreds of pills a day, my temperature spiked and I nervously called the hospital to see what they thought. I felt fine during the day but sweats still plagued my nights and along with this feverish temperature they decided to call me back in. On the Friday I was put back in my room and taken off of all medication. The plan being that what ever it was would be allowed to come to full strength and during a shivering, sweating fit, bloods would be taken and cultures made so that they could nail this infection for once and for all.

And so in my room I sat. I slept; I read; I watched the start of the winter Olympics; I persuaded the nurses to bring the leftovers of meals to me rather than binning them and thus enjoyed massive portions of lasagne; I felt no increase in symptoms; I watched the cannula in my arm slowly block with blood as it went unused.

Come Monday morning doctors arrived ready to inspect the samples taken from the weekend and were confused to find no record of anything being taken. On finding that nothing had happened, that I had not descended into a feverish hell whilst not on any medication they took some blood to check the infection markers. I felt great and the bloods showed that, unaided, my body was fighting off the infection on its own. I still had a way to go before they would be normal but feeling great I was discharged. Thoroughly rested and ready to face the world.

The weekend inside had been worth it as far as resting was concerned and I felt ready to think about returning to work. From that Monday I also had only ten days before our baby was going to be delivered so I planned a week of working from home, followed by a weekend of finishing the nursery. Those plans were soon derailed as the date for the caesarian delivery of our little breech was brought forward a week and only three days from my release from hospital I was back inside. This time though as a visitor. Sitting in an operating theatre chatting to my wife whilst our baby was fished out of her tummy. At exactly thirty nine weeks Emma came screaming into the world weighing in at a slight five pounds she is small but absolutely perfect.

From then on there simply hasn't been the time to write. Paternity leave over I am now back at work pulling full days, every day. Evenings and weekends are spent cuddling or just gazing at our new born baby. Although a lot is new I feel like I am living a normal life again: The morning commute; a day at my desk; the coming home to a family.

For the first time in nearly six months Leukeamia is not constantly at the forefront of my mind; Living has taken over.