All quiet

Not much has been happening of late. I finished the chemo in January, but have not been called back to see if there has been any recurrence of the tumours yet. I was told that I would be checked out in about 4 months, so I am not concerned - I expect to hear something in May.

Otherwise, health has been OK - a few chest pains on and off, for which I have been given a new medication - plus I was put on a different drug for my diabetes as the Metformin sucked and I had abdominal pains all the time. The new stuff seems better and, after they plonked me onto maximum dosage, seems to be controlling the diabetes fairly well. Hopefully that will avoid me having to inject insulin for a bit - I hate needles!

Distro wise, still using PCLOS in its KDE incarnation. Still fairly happy with it, although there are a few minor niggles (as with all distros of course!). For example, the root terminal which you can call from the user desktop fails - I know why and I can easily work around it, but it is something which really shouldn't happen. A new user would be completely stuck - which is a bad point. Also the disk editing tools - cfdisk for example - do not do as they should. These need fixing too.
Other than those niggles, pretty happy at the moment, but slightly concerned about the announcement that PCLOS intends to move from the Synaptic package managing system to a YUM based one. Not a fan of Yum myself - having used it years ago - but it is better than Smart or some of the other package managing tools. Apparently, Synaptic won't be compatible with the changes to the RPM system which PCLOS is introducing - hence the change. I will give the new version a good try out before making any decision - I like PCLOS and don't want to end up back with Ubuntu unless I am forced to.

Health update

Seems I need to have chemo to deal with the ongoing tumour issues.

The recurring tumours in my bladder - which have been treated by laser - just keep coming and my consultant suggested chemo might stop this. Unlike normal chemo, the chemicals are inserted into my bladder and kept there for an hour or two. Thus there are (hopefully) no real issues with the side effects of the toxic drugs used, unlike regular chemo where the drugs can cause unpleasant side effects.

Will report back on the treatment as and when I start the course - which should be before Christmas apparently.