Sunday afternoon

I am currently receiving my clinical trial drug Rituximab. It is not a chemo treatment, but it is an anti-body that eats the cells which have the CD20 marker. Fortunately I have not reacted badly to the drug, but it is taking hours to empty the bag, so I have been hooked up to the pump most of the day.

My eldest brother Les came to visit today, and also gave blood to see if he is a match for a donor. The chances are 25%, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. My other brother Harry is coming on Tuesday hopefully. Getting a match is the next big hurdle in this game of numbers. My chances of survival are not good without a transplant, so I need a donor. If neither brother is a match, UCH will search the Anthony Nolan Register (which is a database of about 400,000 volunteer donors) for a match to me. There is about a 50% chance of one of these matching. They told me that there is no point in friends or other relatives being tested for match as individually the odds are too low. But by all means you can join the Anthony Nolan register if you like (but your decision should be based on considerations other than me).

I have spectacularly failed to get the iPad to play any BBC from the iPlayer. It does not seem to work with 3G access. So I have been reading, and welcome recommendations from all and sundry, remembering my preference for good literature rather than pulp fiction.

I have downloaded and read Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris from kindle, and I enjoyed it. I followed up by downloading from iBooks (to be fair) number9dream by David Mitchell (he also wrote Cloud Atlas which I can recommend), and I am reading it now. In truth, the kindle and iBooks reader apps are not that dissimilar; after all you really just concentrate on the text. I found that both work best in portrait mode. Maybe as I become more expert I will use some of the features, but for now only the bookmark (which they both have) seems essential.

Les recommended Pandora's Star by Peter F Hamilton, so I have that also, this time from kindle. The iBooks titles seem to be bit cheaper, but maybe that was just chance.

The weight of hours to fill presses heavily, especially in the evenings, the time normally for eating, drinking, and being merry with Rose. I am glad I have something to keep me diverted. I got a book of Times crosswords for Christmas (cryptic crosswords are my big pastime, and the Times are the best), but I am struggling to get into them. Of course I can cheat with the Internet, but to paraphrase Asimov, finishing a crossword using the Internet is the last refuge of the incompetent!

I cannot find any enthusiasm for playing games on this iPad. If anyone has any recommendations then maybe I will give something a try. Post to the blog, or if too embarrassed :) email me directly!