ADAM UPDATE Friday 29 June

Spent most of today in UCH with Adam for a bone marrow aspirate, he had a blood test on Tuesday which showed his platelet level to be very low, hopefully there will be an innocent reason for this but as ever, we’ll spend an anxious few days waiting for the initial results and hoping they are clear and then a further few anxious weeks waiting for the results of the chromosome test

He has been using his leg in conjunction with crutches and is managing quite well, he walked into the pub recently which is something he has avoided doing for ages until he could actually walk in himself, the new leg is very realistic and has one of his trainers on it, the bad foot has a weird shoe on it so everyone assumes its that one that’s got something wrong hence the crutches!

So, once again, we sit and wait, try to be normal and get on with life……

Love to all

Colin

dumballers return

Hi all

I know, I know, I was supposed to send updates on the move from the rally but I left the laptop charger in a hostel early on so that put paid to a lot of my great ideas!

We had a ball! The week went like a flash and the car got us there in style and in good form.

It’s impossible to write enough to fill everyone in on how the trip went but suffice to say that Adam had a great ime, he enjoyed meeting all the people and visiting the various places!

I have uploaded the photos I took last week to an album at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/colinhorn1/Dumball

I make no apologies if any of the photos are considered distasteful or offensive, that’s part of the plan with the Dumball!

Adam had his stump cast on Monday and we hope that he’ll have his initial leg fitted next Monday, he is really excited by this as it is the start of the return of his independence

Love to all

Colin

Istanbul at last!

We've arrived at Istanbul!

The journey was interesting to say the least, a nember of cars have already been left in Bulgaria becuase of difficulties wiht disposing of them in Turkey and the number of ingenious plans has been awesome!

we have now come up with plan 423B/2a and will put it into action tomorrow!

Adam has been brilliant, he's struggled being in the bus wiht the old farts at times but generally he's enjoyed it i think

sorry i havent posted recently but the laptop mains supply has disappeared so I havent been able to do anyting until i got to this hotel!

love to all

greetings from Budapest

June 12

It’s 6.30 UK time and I’ve just woken Adam from his pit after a 1.30 a.m. finish last night, he seems to have remembered that his liver is evil and must be punished so he has been imbibing on the local beers each night.

The rally has so far been great fun, an 11 hour drive the first day to get us into Prague, it shouldn’t have taken that long but with 22 vehicles, all quite old and costing very little there are numerous stops along the way, we lost one Vehicle somewhere in Germany when the Rave Rockets Scorpio decided to lose weight by shedding most of its engine, still the guys jumped into someone else’s car, gave some Euros toe the tow truck and they will never see the car again.

The entry into Bratislava was with a full police escort, stopping traffic and shutting roads to let us through, now we know how Royalty feel! The exit from Bratislava was with the escort again and this time Adam rode shotgun with the police in the mid car.

We are now in Budapest and just about to go to find some breakfast, on a couple of the night we have had to book into a hotel as the hostel’s don’t have great facilities for wheelchair access and there are only so many stairs I feel like lifting the chair and Adam up! So the accommodation has been ok so far.

Will try to post more information soon but it is quite difficult, the main dumball website has a link to the live update site and can be found at www.dumballrally.org.uk

Love to all

Colin

dumball ready to go

Have just arrived at the Ibis in Brussels having had a late start and lunch in Brugge, the van got to just over 100 miles per hour even loaded wiht 3 lardy blokes and Adam!

we have met with the film crew and are planning to go out with them tonight for dinner to learn how to sppeak american, (they aren't allowed to admit to being American so we are saying they are Canadian.

Am using a webmail service whilst away so cant spell check properly, apolorgeees for the bad spooling!

will try to update regularly.

love to all


colin

DUMBALL - good to go!!!!

Adam went to the hospital yesterday for a follow up blood test and Pauline rang me to say that his platelets had dropped a lot and that the prof wanted to increase his Dasatinib and start steroids as a precaution in case the leukaemia was coming back, he also requested that we go back today to get the results of the blood film test that looks for blast cells in the blood.

Not much sleep last night as you can imagine!

To cut a very long story short, the blood film was ok and the steroids have been stopped again (use of the steroids stops the healing to his heel) and we are good to go for the Dumball on Friday.

If anyone has spare money they don’t need then you can donate to the Dumball at either www.justgiving.com/colinhorndumball or www.justgiving.com/dumball if you use the latter then please mention Adams apples when pledging.

I will try to do some updates during the rally but hopefully we’ll be too drunk, too busy, too tired etc…..

Love to all

Colin

dumball beckons

Sat 2nd June

It’s now less than a week before we set off for the Dumball rally and Mac and Alan come over to apply the new finish to the car, Adam had bought a number of bits and bobs for the car so we spent the afternoon changing it from bog standard Fiat red to something slightly more noticeable!

Adam has been training to walk with just crutches for emergency reason just in case when we are away we need to leave somewhere in a hurry in case of fire etc. he called me whilst we were doing the car and I turned round to see him standing at the front door in his crutches, how cool is that!.

We have a meeting on Tuesday with the prof and on Wednesday with the E N T crew so barring any nasties we are good to go on Friday… watch this space.

Thanks to all who have donated, directly or indirectly to the rally effort,

Love to all


Colin