Cois

Spent the past two days cleaning Joes of my tyres. The one tyre took 5 hours, the other took 4 hours. Used a Dremel with a soft nylon brush. Was a huge pain in the ass to clean off. Next will be the wife's bikes tyres. Wife is on Stans.

Our bird family... They all have their own personalities. Kiwi (Yellow and green has been with us the longest) is my “liefie liefie” She will sit on my head for a long time and will try to sit on the couch with us. She was a little dinosaur, but changed since the other babies arrived.

Hi Chris.At home and not the hospital. Feels weird not to spend December in hospital. Fudge Momentum forced us to another tier so that I can get the needed chemo. But now everyone went quiet. If it was possible I would have wanted to start on chemo over the holiday period. It is a new treatment so would have been better to start it when I am at home and not at work. We have endless trouble with Momentum at the moment. Non payment of doctors bills and blood tests. The new tier in the medical scheme has a R400000 oncology limit. But still missing out on R300000 of this years. Got a tow hitch installed this morning, got new tubeless valves for the bike so hope to be on the bike next week. But have a feeling that it would be a 5km max ride. Mowed the lawn on Saturday and had to sit down because I was super light headed. Lets hope I can stay out of the hospital this year [emoji16]

Thanks.I just need to pump the wheels and replace the sealant. That is the only thing I am going to sukkel a bit with. The rest would be a breeze. But my dad will help with tyres and pumping the tyres.

Started getting things ready to get back on the bike. Ordered a tow hitch because my dad destroyed my roof carrier to fit it to their camping trailer. Will get the tow hitch fitted next week. Will try to work on the bike the public holiday. The tyers are flat and guess there is a meter of dust on the bike. Hope to take the bike out to Cow House sometime before next year if I do not start chemo this year. Can’t wait to be outside in nature again

You can’t “ghost or HDClone” an sATA to NVMe drive. Would say start with a clean Windows install on the NVMe.Make sure to disconnect the sATA drive when installing Windows so that it creates a boot partition on your NVMe and not on the sATA drive. What you need to have is a blank 8GB flash drive. Search for Windows 10 media creator Download and run the file Create a Windows 10 install disk Starting from the flash drive install Windows on the new Drive. Make sure you download the needed mainboard drivers. Windows 10 is rather forgiving regarding drivers, but a system just works much better with the correct and newest drivers. And do not trust Windows Update drivers, they are still prone to break a system. If you get stuck I am willing to help. Installing Windows is 2nd nature at the moment and a everyday thing at the office for me.

For the first time in more than a year I can drink normal Coffee. Not decaf crap. Normal kick you in the nuts coffee! And with low fat milk and not nolac or easy(inde)gest(ion). Just normal tasting milk. Have a few decaf capsules that I will finish off or save for the late night drink as I can have two cups of coffee per day. And I placed an order for a i Cafilas Reusable Capsule from Amazon for the Nespresso machines. Might as well use a bit of the Illy cans of Coffee that I bought. Think I have some 5 cans stored.

To read this I can go gentle into the good night. I have left a little bit of a legacy! And as long as I can help other people with what I am going through, I will be up for it! As soon as I heard that I can be part of a stoma product trail I was lets go for it. As long as I can help people I am happy. A hard one I need to think about is what to do with my body when I die. At this stage if I can help doctors to understand and see cancer, and even find new treatments for others I will say ”Good, lets Go!” All this shall not be for nothing! There will come good out of this!

Agree 100 on Ampath. They arrived at my bed even before I made it to my bed when we booked in.So I am 100% sure on where the problem lies. The same place where they do not know how to give a patient oxygen when he was passing out and turning blue thanks to a lack of oxygen

Found the problem. My infection count was 50x above normal. Not to put it lightly I wanted to die Monday morning. Yesterday my arm was immobilized to a drip moving out of the vein. So could not use my phone. Last night around 22h00 they removed the drip, 23h00 got a sleeping pill and I woke up at 06:30 this morning with a nurse waiting to take my vitals. I was alert, awake and no pain. The doctor saw me. Ampath or the nurses forgot to order the needed bloodwork. So he could not decide to send me home or if I should stay one day more. At 12h30 Ampath drew the blood and went off to test it. Got the results at 16:30. I started packing my suitcase. 17h00 the nurse called the surgeon with the results. I could be discharged. So after almost a week, I am home at last. The Oncologist begged me not to lose weight because a bit of fat help with the treatment One week in Kloof:

The tube was removed. I still vomited with the tube in. I can’t talk or swallow anything. So have to type everything on my phone that I need to ask the nurses and physiotherapist. So communication sucks at this stage

Will do a bit of reading on it.

Had a few fallbacks this weekend. Started vomiting yesterday morning and again this morning. Yesterday at 04h00 and today at 00h10. Was given an NGO tube to help stop the vomiting. I have not eaten anything since Saturday evening. They do not know why I turned sick all of a sudden. Also one of the weirdest things happened yesterday. We walked to the cafeteria to get a coke to help with nausea. When we were 30 meters away from the room, I noticed that my fingers went from reg to white and it was spreading. I made it to the bed where I started shaking. My feet started going white. My wife called the nurses and was surrounded by 4 nurses a few seconds later. They fried getting a pulse and O2 saturation reading but got nothing. Even the Apple Watch could not get a O2 reading. They wanted to get me on Oxygen but there was a problem with the coupling system. After about 20 minutes my vitals started returning to normal. They drew some blood to check what might have caused all the problems, but they can’t find anything wrong. Two hours later I was in serious need of a shower. 10 minutes into the shower started seeing the blood draining from my hands and feet again. I was busy towing myself off and asked my wife to get the nurses again. This time the same results. But they monitored how long it took to return to normal. So they did an ECG on me to check if it was a cardiac problem, but the ECG came back as clear. So hope the surgeon might know what if going on. This tube is a bloody nightmare.

we love doc Martin.It is good clean humour. We still have to watch season 9, but wife is still watching the crown

Hi guys and girls. Dr said the operation was a success. Just in a world of pain. They had to put in a catheter in as I could not pass urine. Doctor said it was possible to remove it tomorrow to see if I could still urinate. The incision is about 20 cm long, and a colostomy was put in place. The stoma nurse swung past me this afternoon. She wants to get me on a Stoma trail for a new product to test it due to all my scars and drainage holes making the normal products very tricky to fit. It also sounds like they redesigned the locking mech so things have changed in the past 3 months. I just made one huge mistake... I drank a bottle of juice (supplied by the hospital as part of the diet I am following) but it caused a huge amount of gas and severe abdominal pain. So the hospital's idea of right and will work for you is not always right.

Just got back from the surgeon. Will be booked in on either Tuesday or Wednesday for surgery. Will get a stoma again. There is damage to my sphincter so I do not have control over my bowels and with the first surgery to remove the cancer the doctor said there was a very slim chance that a reversal will work because the cancer was growing lower than we thought. The surgery will not be a small surgery. The chance of being completely opened up again is there, as we do not know what new damage and cancer will be found. So no laparoscopic surgery. That said, it all depends on my bloodwork (as I am still anemic and my blood counts are low) and my sodium levels.

i should send this to Momentum.

Have a appointment to see the doctor after 17h30 tomorrow evening. The receptionist wanted to help me tonight, but the surgeon was in theatre most of today., and was fully booked for the afternoon. Had a talk with Momentum as well. The oncologist has to send a motivation to get me on the chemo that will work for me. They will re-evaluate the application as we are a month and a half later on my treatment that I need that they deemed to expensive. So I hope for a better outcome as the pain is starting to get to me.

Thanks BigDL. Sadly it is true. Some doctors are ruthless when it comes to what the charge. And Momentum is ruthless in paying the hospitals and doctors. Every visit to the hospital is a huge nightmare with unpaid items at every twist and turn. I have some sad news. Today I visited a client. They did not have water on-site, so I could not visit the bathroom when I needed. When I got to the office this afternoon, there was blood in my stool again. I still do not have control over my bowels. So I have to make the dreaded call. I will have to get a stoma (colostomy I hope) again. I know what effect it will have on me, I know the depression with it and the cost, but not being able to make the bathroom in time 3 to 4 times per day is not working. I have stopped eating during the day and only eat one meal at night. I want to thank every one of you for the messages and the help. Especially the financial help. I would not be able to fight this on my own. One day when I can we will all cycle together! And that is the only thing I can look forward to now! Thanks my Hubber Family! Love you all!

Hi Sheldon At this stage, I am not sure how things are going. Momentum is full of poo! So I am still waiting to hear back from them on what treatment they are willing to pay for. Every day is still a struggle with my stomach problems. I have resorted to diapers as there are times where I do not make it to the bathroom in time. I am on the point of phoning the surgeon and asking for a stoma to be put back. At the moment I can only take it day by day. It’s not easy, some days are a lot harder than others. I am not sure if I will survive this beast inside of me anymore...

wife saw it as well. 6 hours of blissful sleep ahead for me

We received feedback from Momentum. The reason they rejected the treatment plan, is because we are not on a high enough scheme plan to get the treatment. The cost of the treatment is R241000 for 4 cycles of treatment. So they said I must move up to a better scheme plan to get the treatment. Cost will be about R3000 per month extra. So now we again have to wait for another treatment plan, and then hope that I would get approval for it. With the current plan, I can basically get the same treatment as I received at Steve Biko. Or that is what it seems like.

Momentum rejected the new treatment plan. So much for getting tests done to see what treatment will work. The Oncology team is working on a new treatment plan, just hope Momentum will pay for that!

Just received feedback from the Oncologist... Pending approval I will start STIVARGA as a treatment option. The other treatment we hoped for did not respond to the tests. So we are waiting for Momentum to say yes or no and then I will be back on chemo.

If someone here goes by D de Lange. We need to thank you. Your donation will be used to cover the cost for the genetic tests that we are still waiting the results for. We can never say thanks enough for everyone that assisted us for the past few years. You restored our faith in humanity. Thanks everyone for your help. And thanks for fighting this disease with me. We would not be able to do this on our own.