Looking Forward

Dr. Hugh Tildesley

How am I doing: The blog is a little delayed, as I had to wait for my blood tests to come in. I have just completed 11 poison infusions.

The positive; weight remains steady; cell counts ok, tumour marker shows no significant worrisome trends.

I have been very successful in titrating insulin to control sugars while on dexamethasone, theoretically this will help to slow tumour growth.

I am now working 2, ½ days weekly, I generally nap those afternoons, waking quite refreshed.

I continue to bargain with Dr. Renouf to delay the next imaging, so long as I feel well and am maintaining my weight. To that end, a tentative CT will be booked for January.

My Practice: The patients have been turned over to Dr. Pawlowska, as has the office management. I continue to manage patients on-line.

The International Diabetes Federation meetings are in Vancouver this year, November 30-December 5.We have 2 posters that we will be presenting. In addition by the end of the month we will have the edits to the papers expanding on the posters submitted with final corrections. Intellectually therefore there remains ongoing stimulation.

What keeps me going? Looking forward to stuff.

At the end of this week will be our annual black tie dinner of the TWA group. Reception and dinner for 22, all seems nicely in order, full report next blog.

One of the highlights of my year historically has been our Christmas party. It is a lot of work for Deborah, thankfully the kids pitch in to make it all happen, and to minimize stress all around.

And of course Christmas. As yet unconfirmed we hope to have Uncle Ted and Theresa Gough here for both the Christmas party and the holidays.

The kids:

Donovan has had a very successful year and has surpassed his insurance sales goals. He is walking around trying to puff his chest out; this has been detracted by an increased abdominal girth. He now has his long time trainer, Yves, addressing this challenge! To be frank, he has unfortunately inherited my body habitus.

Great news for Hamish, he now has employment with EA (Electronic Arts), writing an interactive educational game. This will go a long way in securing a US visa, which he desperately needs. We could not be happier for him.

Catherine is finding second year law interesting; her improved marks reflect her hard work.

Tesla Titillations

A few weeks ago autopilot was downloaded and I have successfully adapted to it, so far without incident. One needs to follow the instructions, keep your hands on the wheel and understand its limitations.

Parts of the program were authored by Yogi Berra: “If there is a fork in the road, take it.” This of course is to be discouraged, hence the need to be vigilant.

Part of the download was to be auto park. It only started to work this week, and is in fact magical. Too early to see how often I will actually use it.

Classic Tesla Scream

There are now 2 ways to make women scream in the Tesla, in my sample, 2/3 will scream with the acceleration. The remainder will scream if you parallel park, no hands, and no legs and do not tell them what you are up to!

My agent has still not heard from Tesla, I thought by now I would be offered an audition for a commercial… bloody agent, I think I’ll start looking for a replacement.

More Kudos for Tesla Motors: For some reason my phone stopped synching. I missed getting into the car and reading what was on my calendar. My attempts to solve the problem were futile; I talked with customer support with a fairly quick resolution. From the time I initiated the call to talking to a human was 20 seconds! The support person was very polite as he asked to take over control of my car from Fremont, California. We reset the onboard computer 3 times by simultaneously pressing the 2 scroll buttons on the steering wheel; the ultimate solution involved introducing my iPhone as a “new device”. Great service, problem resolved, happy customer.

The Arts Report:

Spectre: Classic Bond cookie cutter format. Suspend all logic, understand he will escape every time and enjoy the chase scenes and explosions.

It’s what a movie should be… an escape and pure entertainment

Suffragette: a tail of sacrifice and bravery. No Academy Awards here but a story well told. At the end the dates that certain countries granted the vote an embarrassment.. Switzerland 1971! Give me a break.

Canada: variable dates by Province, in essence 1918.

Please take a moment to reflect on the innocent, who lost their lives in the senseless Paris attacks.

Until next time…..