Week 11 - This and that

At a small game reserve near Johannesburg last weekend... Spot the error!

There is an old farmer’s story which is told in South Africa. At the end of the working day the farmer relaxes on the stoep (verandah) with his friends, smokes his pipe, with a cup of coffee or glass of something a little stronger. Their view is out over the maize fields, which have never looked better! The corn is higher than the proverbial elephant’s eye, green and heavy with cobs developing in long, curved rows. And the farmer and his friends complain, and complain, and complain… “There has been too much rain… the plants are too heavy and will fall over in the next strong wind… the strong growth is taking all the goodness out of the soil…, Where are we going to store all the grain?....” They go on and on, and you wonder how they can be so negative, at this time of plenty.

The reason is that the farmers, being close to the soil, and close to nature, know that there are evil spirits lurking in the trees, under the rocks, in the streams and rivers. If these spirits hear that everything is going well, they will be jealous and will do some mischief, to spoil the good crop. Something like a vicious hailstorm, or sudden heat wave….. So, to be on the safe side, the farmers complain, both in good times and in bad times!

I am getting tired of this interferon process; It is really getting quite tedious. Three times a week I inject myself, have a bad night, and the following day I have to take things slowly. I can’t do all the things I used to do, and have had to give up most of my consulting work. Last week I had a bad night, and in the morning when I should have been on the road to a client for an early meeting I could just not get up, and managed to arrive when the meeting was breaking up! My skin does not like this regime, and I have to use special shower soap, and expensive creams to avoid the itching.

OK, enough of the complaining! It’s lousy, we know that. But I have to be honest: I really seem to be doing quite well. I know that other people are having worse experiences and I am really grateful that my problems are relatively minor and under control. I can (mostly) arrange my life around it. I have been able to shift the routine by one day when I need to, and this seems to work OK. No one can guarantee that I won’t have further problems, but I’m trying to do everything to support the interferon treatment: Regular exercise , even if this is limited; Keeping active and involved in my normal life; Trying to keep a positive attitude; Looking carefully at my diet – I will have more on this in the next week or two.

There have also been some really positive things out of this experience: I have made new friends; I have found time to catch up on some home projects which I really enjoy; and I have had time to do some reading. I am one of those people who, when I discover something new and interesting, research and investigate to the extreme. You never know where research will lead you, and often you discover a whole new and fascinating world. So, I have been reading as much as I can about cancer, and melanoma in particular. Perhaps I am spending too much time on this…

I have just finished reading a really wonderful book: Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale. (At 528 pages this is not for the fainthearted!) The book has many themes, but perhaps the most relevant for me at this time is how much it taught me about how our bodies work. All the components: cells; RNA, DNA, proteins, genes, mitochondria, amino acids, etc etc are discussed again and again, in different ways, as we follow the development of life on our planet. It is interesting that the subtitle of the American edition A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution is subtly different to the UK edition A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life! I know that Dawkins’ views conflict very strongly with the Intelligent Design supporters, but don’t let that put you off: The book contains a large amount of extremely interesting and useful information, and gives an excellent idea of current knowledge of life and how it developed.