January update

10/1/12

Happy New Year folks!
Well December came and went and I didn't update you - you can take that as no news is good news! We all hope that you've had a great Christmas and New Year - we certainly did!

I'll update you on my health quickly - day 157 post transplant - woop woop! Everything is good (even the mindset!) - I had a review early December and then once again today.  Bloods are all clean and my counts are approaching normality - platelets being lowest which were at 140 (up from 130 in Dec) with the norm at 150.  So this is all very encouraging and a relief to us all. 

I do say to people "I'm in remission and long may it last" because that is where we are in terms of the impact this disease has on us all - unfortunately it's remission not cure - however it appears that successful treatment is moving more towards a potential for the 'c'.  So recently I have been lucky that to some degree I haven't even been thinking about the illness - this really helps the mindset.  In a couple of weeks I'm having my port removed (from my chest) - this is done under local and is something of a farewell to an old friend, which was dependable throughout all of the former treatments.

Mellon doings
Liz had a milestone birthday in November with a party with many friends.  She enjoyed it once we were at the party!

We've had a lovely trip to New Zealand, returning home on New Years Eve.  We toured through the North island on a pre-planned tour which showed us a lot of the top spots that must be seen. Relaxing, informative, beautiful and sometimes exciting.  I won't bore you all with the details but an idea is as follows:-
Bay of Islands - beautiful, swim with dolphins, very wet bike ride, drinkies!!

Auckland - the city and Segway tours.

Coromandel Peninsula - beautiful, dodgy Garmin navigation, great walks, changeable weather (well it was NZ!)

Waitomo - CAVING!! (yay!) - glow worms, blackwater rafting, fantastic streamway.

Rotorua - smelly hot springs, mud baths, geysers, cultural presentation and Hangi meal, Liz and Kyle rafting the Kaituna river and the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world - 7m Tutea Falls.

Taupo - a short float plane ride, low oil pressure, another float plane another ride!!!! Nice accommodation, water out of the light fittings! another nice accommodation!!  Beautiful, big storm.

 

Huka Falls above

Napier - Christmas day - pressies, beautiful dinner - chilling & drinkies!

Wellington - the windy city, literally! Te Papa museum, catching up with long time friends Karen & Paul - brilliant and a lovely dinner with drinkies.  (the only photo is below courtesy of Karen - thanks mate - notice you avoided getting your piccie taken!)
                              
Christchurch - home from home with Lesley & Barry, catching up with Lesley's Mum and Dad - smashing people.  Great walks, sad city centre and surrounds, interesting container Mall, "old-time" chats.

1600 kilometres!  1000 miles in old money.

Hayley flew from NZ to Fiji with "the Girls" and had a great week sunning themselves and chilling.
Kyle is currently in Sydney competing tomorrow in a triathlon, he'd like to qualify for the world championships in England in September -watch out blighty!
Kathryn is in Arizona on training camp with the Cal U team.

Liz and I are on holiday next week also (chilling out!) and we are planning a USA trip in May for Kathryn's graduation.
Some piccies of New Zealand above - I'll update you in about 6 months so that I don't bore you all with more holiday chats!!