Spring has been teasing us for the last week or two with sunshine and temperatures of 15C one day followed by grey, cold days where the temp never even got in to double figures. Spring flowers are beginning to come out and new born lambs can be spotted in the fields. It can’t come soon enough for us wimpy ex-pats! Too many summers in a row have left us with no resistance to the cold.

This was a hard month for us. We are just waiting to get it out of the way so we can start on the Big Stuff. Andy hasn’t been that well, he’s been feeling tired a lot of the time, but we did manage to get a few days away which did us the world of good. We went up to Bristol for four days and visited a selection of friends that we have wanted to see since we came back. They live in lovely bits of Somerset and Gloucestershire so we drove through the Mendips, the Malvern Hills and the Cotswolds reminding us of how beautiful the UK is. Thanks to all of them for feeding us delicious meals and making us laugh and giving us a respite from illness.

Andy had to come back to face another bone marrow biopsy to assess whether the treatment has managed to get rid of those pesky myeloma cells. His first biopsy was very painful and has given him a bit of pain ever since so he wasn’t looking forward to it. Luckily this time one of the Consultants did the procedure and it was quick and relatively painless. We have an appointment this week with the Stem Cell Transplant Consultant who will hopefully tell us it’s all good to go.

We’ve made it a policy not to read up too much ahead of time about what’s in store but thought we ought to as it’s now so imminent. It doesn’t sound like much fun. A large dose of chemotherapy which will make his hair fall out, 7-10 days of injections to stimulate the bone marrow to release stem cells which are then harvested, more chemo to kill everything else off then 3 weeks in isolation where he gets given them back and we wait for them to start kicking in. I asked Andy how he was feeling about it, expecting him to say bloody awful! “Excited” he said. “Can’t wait to get started!"