Ali's art

Ali is submitting his matric art today. 4 big canvasses and a sculpture, all of Annabel Vincent, Susie Shave’s delightful and beautiful daughter. This one is my favourite.

He will have the sculpture in the middle and all the canvasses surrounding it. They depict different moods; pensive, passionate (conducting), elated (twirling) and then there is one with just her face v large, done with a broad brush. He’s worked and hard matured considerably, particularly through the frustrations with the technical difficulties with the sculpture. It was completely trapped in a block of plaster of paris twice.

Mocks start next week and he has so much work to do to achieve the outrageously high mark he needs to get a place in medicine.

Whatever he does, I know there’ll always be an easel, jars of brushes and that scent of turpentine in his world, art makes his heart sing.

The weekend has gone well and the only side effect I have is a headache a bit like a vice around my head, which is easy to manage. What a happy suprise!

Family in Mozambique

Mamma Mia

Bristol Myers finally managed to track down their senior executive to sign the document and I received permission to use Ipi yesterday.

A friend at Harvard kindly described how it works in plain English for me and the description of the action of the drug follows:

when you have cancer growing, the body naturally produces cells called T killer cells to fight off the cancer cells. But what happens during the progression of the cancer is that T cells begin to express something called CTLA-4 on their surface which acts as a brake on them and T cells are no longer produced to fight the cancer cells. The ipi drug acs as an inhibitor to the CTLA-4 and thus allows for the T cells to be produced and fight off the cancer cells. My guess is that this will produce some side effects b/c mass production of T cells will not only kill cancer cells but possibly attack other things as well-thus resulting in side effects.

I had the first of four doses today. The return to the oncology department is chilling and raises all the questions about quality of life again. I always feel so robust and well compared to the other patients. Tim and I had a laugh about R 220 000 worth of meds going into my port. It's hard to grasp. I know how lucky I am to have access to this highly sophisticated medicine.

The anti histamine put me to sleep for more than half of the drip time and I have been alternately asleep or drowsy the whole day. Mild nausea is here too.

Let's see what tomorrow brings, but so far so good.