Extraordinary Summer

It is October, and it is 29 C in Cambridge.

This magnificent summer goes on and on with balmy days and warm evenings. My time at Cambridge is coming to an end and as I wandered around Trinity at the end of last week, I could not resist taking a few shots of part of this vast College, Great Court with its fountain and blaze of red flowers, Nevile's Court with the Wren Library at the back, and the interior of the Wren, bathed in natural light.

On the right of Nevile's Court is a set of cloisters in the sunlight. They act as a nearly perfect waveguide for sound, and it was here, in the 17th century, that Isaac Newton measured the speed of sound by timing the round trip of echoes, knowing the distance to be double the length of the cloistered hallway. The echo return time he ascertained by clapping his hands in synchrony with the echoes and then counting claps over a fixed time period. .

I took Catherine to High Table dinner last week, and before entering the Fellows Parlour took her to the cloisters and made a loud clap to demonstrate. At the far distance of the cloisters an elderly fellow in a gown grumbled at the childishness, but before he could escape into a side door I called out "I'm only doing what Isaac Newton did!". That silenced him.

Catherine's dining experience was made the more delightful by the fact that she ended up sitting next to Philip Allott, Professor Emeritus of International Public Law, and one of her law teachers during her Cambridge LLM.

Birthday Boys

Today was the birthday party for James and Thomas. Thomas turned 1 yesterday and James turns 4 on Tuesday.

Homa and Manouchehr Fassihi, the maternal grandparents were there, as were Aunties Catherine and Hilda. It was a wonderful day as the pictures make clear.

James kindly acted as present opener for both himself and Thomas, as well as the designated candle-blower-outer.

Bowels

Now there's a change from pictures of the grandchildren! Don't complain. I could have chosen a bowel picture that you would have found much more disagreeable.

For the last couple of weeks I have been in close contact with my bowel, learning so much more about this wonderful organ. For starters, the bowel consists of the small intestine, on average around 7 m long, and the large intestine or colon, about 1.5 metres long, or in my case around 0.4 m, since I had about a metre removed in December 2008. In October 2010 I had another 0.4 m of small intestine removed, in total, from various places.

The bowel is more than a piece of plumbing. The small intestine especially, is intersected by vast numbers of nerves and blood vessels. It is a semi-independent organ with a mind of its own. And it does not like to be obstructed.

For the past 10 days, I have been experiencing small bowel obstructions. It ain't pleasant. The cause is almost certainly adhesions associated with the peritonectomy surgery I had last October. It's not likely to be due to abdominal tumours, since my latest CT scan has still only identified one obvious tumour in the xiphisternum region of the upper anterior abdomen and not really a nuisance to my small intestine.

The symptoms start with an intermittent colicky abdomen pain and a swelling in the abdomen. The pain becomes extremely severe. Next comes burping and then nausea. Over a few hours the abdomen becomes harder and nausea builds until the stomach contents are completely vomited, and if incomplete, then be assured, you will retch violently and repeatedly until the last morsel is out. With the emptying of the stomach, some relief is felt and for many hours the most noticeable symptoms are hardness of the abdomen, the intermittent pain, and a feeling of utter exhaustion.

I know bowel obstructions well. The first was my large bowel blockage in 2008 which led to emergency surgery to remove the section of bowel hosting the tumour obstruction. The second and third occurred in early 2010 after I had been diagnosed with abdominal tumours. One had me hospitalised-it passed in about 4 hours. The next followed a week later, and passed in an hour or two, none of the most severe symptoms being experienced.

For a year and a half I have had none. But, on the night following my return from New Zealand, and while staying with daughter Catherine in London, I had a small event that cleared in three hours, before the emptying of my stomach. On Sunday last I had a more severe event which displayed the full panoply of symptoms. I got myself to Chris, my surgeon son, who put me to bed and examined me, with the advice that adhesion-related obstructions generally clear within 24 hours and we would wait and see. It took 10 hours to clear, the final confirmation being a delightful relief of symptoms followed by a stupendous passing of wind and ejection of remaining large bowel contents.

Last night I had an even nastier obstruction. At 2 am I called Chris to come and get me. We followed the same procedure. This time it took 16 hours to clear and when it did, a feeling of near euphoria swept my body and I sank into a deep sleep, only to be awakened by Miang who had, by good timing, just returned from Africa to take charge of my nursing arrangements.

It's a binary business. When the blockage clears, you are well, if tender in the abdomen and somewhat fearful of ingesting the food you desperately need. But I will gingerly drink soup and eat yoghurt and ice cream until, after a day or so, I try some soft solid food. When I do get back to a fully recovered bowel, which is my intent, I will no longer swallow whole nuts or large pieces of hard peach, as I foolishly did in recent days.

Why now all of a sudden? Hard to say. What if it doesn't clear in 24 hours? That's a tricky one. For a patient whose abdomen was not a battleground of scar tissue like mine, surgical intervention might be an option. In my case, it might be harder to persuade the surgeons. I think I need to learn to chew my food a bit better, and take each day without a bowel obstruction as a day of grace.

PS: The Bowel picture is from Wikipedia

Reprisal

It is now a daily exercise. The whole debate is reprised day by day. Here is James telling me this afternoon that it is AD58VFT pounds and FY51UCR pounds. Well it's a fair deal. Thomas gets his swing in the park. James gets to kick goals, and Granddad gets to have James ride on his shoulders.

Why do I get the impression that James has crafted this whole ritual so that he always gets to ride in triumph at the end?

I do like the images of James aloft, and especially appreciate them, given how hard it is to take a photograph using a reversed iphone handheld from an outstretched arm when a nearly-4-year-old sits on your shoulders!

Debating with James

Most afternoons I head over to Hills Road to see the boys. Part of the ritual is to take them to Coleridge Park, about 1 mile away, with Thomas in the pushchair and James happily scooting alongside. These occasions provide an opportunity for James and me to exercise our shared interest in mad humour. This may include James walking backwards, to the sound of my singing Spike Milligan's classic "I'm walking backwards for Christmas", or "choral screaming" where we both shriek as loud as we can simultaneously, to the alarm of the neighbourhood. Today, we staged a great debate.

It all started when James challenged my description of the rental car, used to ferry Peter Stilbs, and parked overnight in the spare parking spot outside the Callaghan house. "It's not a rental car", said James. "It's a Vauxhall Astra". He triumphantly pointed to the "V" on the bonnet badge. "It's a Vauxhall Astra and I rented it", I replied. "What's renting?" he probed his opponent, seeking my weak spot. "I paid money to borrow it for a couple of days." "How much?" "180 pounds!", I shot back. The debate was well and truly started.

"No, it was 3 pounds", James countered. I stood my ground because grandparents are tough and brook no nonsense from the toddler generation. "Hell, no it was 180 pounds!"

James tried another pitch, upping the ante. "It was one million thousand million pounds." Unfazed, and determined to be resilient, I replied "No it was 180 pounds!" Clearly James needed to move to another gear. He glanced at the Mazda parked on the side of the road and, sensing that he was about to skewer me, said, amidst giggles, "It was three-two-three pounds". Now a granddad really needs to be firm. I was having none of this. "It was 180 pounds."

By this stage Thomas was chortling, sensing no doubt that big brother was just warming up to his game. James, inspired by his source of data on the back of parked cars, was ready for a whole new tack. "It was Peugeot pounds", and then, rising to his new line of wit, "It was Mondeo pounds!". I have to admit, I was temporarily on the back foot, because I had not expected this foray into the use of the whole range of alpha-numerics to describe the cost of renting a car. I decided that keeping the debate simple would be best. "It was 180 pounds." was the feeble best I could do.

James was on a roll now, and his younger brother was almost choking with merriment, gasping for breath between belly laughs. Inspired by his younger sibling's admiration, James was overtaken by moment of transcendental genius. He saw at that instant the means to torment his granddad, a source of alpha-numerics which could not be answered, and one which he knew would once and for all clinch the debate. It was the yellow numberplate on the nearest car, and there were plenty of them in the street whose letters and numbers could be hurled at me. "It was BF34HGX pounds", the obvious absurdity of such a sum of money being so overwhelming that James himself was starting to choke with laughter, though I doubt he could have easily heard himself over the din from the pushchair.

I had only one viable course and that was to press on. "It was 180 pounds." "It was VH26BUW pounds." "It was 180 pounds." "It was JI03TDF pounds." "It was 180 pounds." "It was LP788GUM pounds".......Stretching ahead of me, all the way to Coleridge Park, must have been 100 cars. I was in for a rough ride. I needed a new level of defence. It was taking James about 3 seconds to read the number plates. I reckoned I could read them in 500 milliseconds. "It was not LP788GUM pounds. It was 180 pounds.", and so it went, all 100 cars being thrown into the furious cauldron of debate, me belting out the plates in a slur of syllables, and James getting them read at a faster and faster rate.

I was exhausted and needed a game changer. And so I went for the low blow and started to whistle. James dislikes me whistling and always tells me to stop that. His laughing subsided. He was clearly floored. He looked at me nonplussed. Here was my chance, my moment of truth. Could I ramp up my advantage a notch? The park was by this stage right across the road. There was no pedestrian crossing. I said to James "push the pedestrian crossing button!". He grinned and jabbed at the air beside him,. Immediately I started a "beep...beep...beep.." whistle, imitating the crossing signal. He clasped my right hand and together we crossed the road, me using the left hand to perambulate Thomas. We had made it to the park and James grabbed his ball, ran off across the grass and started kicking.

Had I won the debate? Well, all I can say is that on the return journey James happily scooted in silence, though he insisted on jabbing the air as we stopped beside each road crossing, waiting for me to whistle "beep...beep...beep.." before traversing the road. He seemed to have forgotten the argument. Then his eyes wandered upward to the sign on a lamppost. "Coleridge Road Bus Stop pounds", he said, with a wicked look in his eyes. The pushchair erupted!

I was defeated, well and truly. I had only one decent course of action and that was to honour James accordingly. I swept him up onto my shoulders and carried him home in triumph, warning him that he would need to grip hard if I was to push Thomas as well. His small hands clenched my chin. Losing a debate isn't so bad.

PS: Yes, those are my glasses James is wearing.

Peter Stilbs in Cambridge

Over all the time of my cancer, many good friends have encouraged and supported me. Amongst those is my very dear and longstanding friend, Peter Stilbs from Stockholm. Peter is Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH).

Over many years, I have made a habit of travelling to Sweden and spending time with Peter in his summer house. Many a happy evening has been spent on the porch, eating Scandinavian delicacies, drinking schnapps and beer, and keeping a keen eye out for deer in the meadow and swifts in the sky. We have often walked the forest collecting cloudberries and I have many times made an early morning jog through the trees down to the local lake for a refreshing dip.

I would have loved to have gone to Sweden again this year, but Peter insisted he visit me, so as to minimize my travel. I hadn't seen him for three years and it was a delight to spend two days with him in Cambridge, dining in College, walking the backs, wandering the courts and streets, and, on the last day, introducing him to another old friend, Michael Kelly, the Prince Philip Professor of Technology at Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity Hall. Michael shares Peter's skepticism about climate science and it was fascinating joining in their discussion at a Trinity Hall breakfast.

A brief dip in the pool

I spent four extraordinary days in New Zealand and when I boarded NZ 2 in Auckland yesterday it seemed as though I had just stepped off NZ1. There is an element of madness in flying around the world twice in a week but there is also the sense that one has passed through Lewis Carroll's looking glass, or CS Lewis's wardrobe. It is as close to magic as one gets in the modern world.

And New Zealand is another world, in so many ways. From late summer to early spring (witness the hailstorm), from day to night, from the crisp diction of Trinity High Table to the lazy, but beautifully familiar vowels of the antipodes. And then there is the disarming kindness of home, exaggerated in my first activity, an intravenous vitamin C session at the little "complementary medicine" clinic in Newtown, where the entirely female staff of receptionists, nurses and doctors greeted me as a long lost friend and tended to me amidst enquiries about my overseas adventures.

The week was packed with activity, the book launch of course, an extended TV studio session with media superstar and erstwhile psychologist, Nigel Latta, meetings at Magritek, with Zealandia, with Glenda Lewis from the Transit of Venus project, three radio interviews, a submission to the City Council, a catch-up with fellow amateur economist Shaun Hendy, and of course, in addition to the IVC, a blood test, an X-ray CT and, just before boarding the plane back to New Zealand, a consultation with my Wellington Hospital oncologist.

The primary reason for my dip back in the New Zealand pool was the need to deliver the "Chancellors Lecture". To my astonishment, tickets to the Town Hall venue were sold out a week before and the packed auditorium of 1400 people helped create an electric atmosphere. I post a couple of links below. Rugby world cup madness must have contributed to the occasion which ended in a standing ovation of disproportionate enthusiasm. But, to be truthful, I did enjoy myself.

My oncologist wasn't so gloomy after all. My cancer has progressed but only slowly, so that I can now plan a few more months of fun ahead. Most remarkably he brought up the matter of my IVC treatment, expressing some interest, confessing to me that he had been reading up on it and suggesting that it may have some therapeutic value. To hear this from my hospital oncologist only confirmed an impression that I had indeed passed through the looking glass and had joined the mad hatter's tea party.

http://sciblogs.co.nz/just-so-science/2011/09/15/inaugural-chancellors-lecture-professor-sir-paul-callaghan/

http://www.civicsquare.co.nz/?p=584

http://vimeo.com/29126569

At last!

Yes, it is astonishing, but here it is at last, in my hand. A couple of boxes with 15 advance copies arrived at the Trinity College porters lodge this morning, just in time for me to catch the plane back to New Zealand tomorrow for a festival of events, one of which is the New Zealand book launch!

I have to admit, for all my travails with OUP, the finished product is a delight, with the diagrams sharper than I had imagined and with the feel of the book, very nice indeed. I had the idea of this book in my mind since about 2000, and started work in earnest in 2008. It kept me company through some dark moments, the writing taking my mind off the lethargy and nausea of chemotherapy.

I've had a nice week, capped off by finally managing to Skype with Miang in Arusha, Tanzania. Her electricity comes on for just a brief hour or so during the day, which is when she charges her laptop. She Skyped me in the dark, illuminating her face with a flashlight. She is doing great things with her food technology project. More on that later.

Last night, after taking Chris to dinner at High Table, I went back to Hills Road to sleep. I was wakened by James at 6-30 am. He wanted to play airports. This is a game where I send instructions from the control tower (Sierra Charlie Alpha 732, this is Stansted Control, you are cleared for takeoff), and which has all sorts of amusing variants, especially when he lands at Carcassonne and I send very strange instructions in a sort of faux-French accent directing him to "runway du Sud, merci beaucoup", etc. After playing airports I read Thomas's favourite book to him. It has a collection of animals and I make all the animal noises. The butterfly is a challenge, but I must say he particularly likes my chicken squawk and tries to imitate me amidst giggles.

Speaking of books I must tell you my book story. I was walking through town on my way to Heffers (the quality bookstore in Cambridge), when I was accosted by a young Red Cross collector. She asked me "how is your day?", "do you have the day off?", "where are you going?" Never being one to refuse conversation with a nice young woman, I replied "I'm great; no, this is what I do, read, write and walk about in town; and I'm off to Heffers bookshop". "What will you buy?" she asked, to which I replied, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, by Adam Smith. "Oh, she said-do you like his stuff?" "Why yes", I said. "I love his books, Can't get enough of them!".

Well, having ascertained that she had no collection bucket and that the pitch was a ploy to get me to go to their website and donate, I headed on my way to Heffers, walking straight up to the girl at the upstairs information desk. "Do you have Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments?", I asked. She obviously had trouble with my accent. "Dan Smith did you say? Thinking a model sensitive?". I spelled it out, slowly. She searched the computer and proclaimed. "No, we don't have that." Probing further I said "well, what about Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations." which I knew they must have. "Weather station did you say?". I was starting to find this young woman irritating, much preferring conversations with the Red Cross girl. Despairing I walked down the stairs to the vast basement area of the shop where there are endless shelves. I searched and rummaged helplessly through Economics, History, Philosophy until I turned a corner and saw a young man behind another information desk. I posed my question. He got up without a word, walked quickly and purposefully via several aisles going straight to a shelf near the floor, whence he retrieved, "tout de suite", two editions of Moral Sentiments, inviting me to exercise my preference.

"You cannot imagine how impressed I am", I said. He vaguely smiled, shrugged, and went back to his desk. I suspect that this man knew the exact location of every volume of every one of the hundreds of thousand of books in the store. Of course I went triumphantly to the girl in the upper floor information desk, waved my book under her nose and said, with a smile and a wink, "you need to fix your computer system." She feigned concern, looked at the book, rechecked her system and apologised. I am sure she thought that any sensible person would much prefer to read Thinking a model sensitive. What are moral sentiments anyway and what sort of peculiar man would want to know about them? Chinese premier Wen Jiabao apparently. He never travels anywhere without taking his copy to read.

So, I head off tomorrow to New Zealand, returning Thursday night. I have four medical appointments, one public lecture, one book launch, two TV interviews, two radio interviews, one short address to the Wellington City Council, and some meetings at Magritek, in the lab and in the university. The lecture is entitled A prosperous 21st Century New Zealand: educating for the new Tiger economy. Yes, I know it's mad, but this is Rugby World Cup time. The nation will be mad. All this should mostly be fun, though the final medical appointment with my oncologist, a few hours before I board to come back to the UK, may be less fun, depending on how gloomy he chooses to be. Ah well, that's what oncologists are. Gloomy.

Things I like

It's a balmy late summer's evening in Cambridge and I have just returned home from Great St Mary's Church after a pleasant walk along the flagstones of St Johns Street. Today Miang left for Heathrow to fly to Tanzania where she will work for a month on a food technology aid project.

I had spent the afternoon with Chris and the boys, before cycling home in the warm afternoon air to a snack and a 5 minute walk to Great St Mary's, opposite the Senate House on Kings Parade. Here, in a free concert, the Trinity College Choir performed Bach, Tallis, Purcell, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Parsons, Byrd and Bax, finishing with a beautifully complex rendition of "Over the Rainbow". This is one of the greatest choirs in the world, and it is comprised entirely of students.

As I sat enveloped in music, glancing occasionally at the choir members, gifted, youthful and inspired, I reflected on what I have experienced here over the past few weeks. I have discovered much that I like.

I like it when Thomas smiles at me when I greet him. I like his pink cheeks when he has just woken. I like it when he curls up in my arms and happily lets me feed him his formula milk from the bottle. I especially like it that as he sucks away, his left hand reaches instinctively for my stubbly chin, and that he pinches it, and grabs the jowls in my neck, occasionally pricking me with his tiny, but sharp fingernails. I like it when he beams with delight as I push him on the swing in the park, and that he opens his mouth wide for another spoonful of his soft food when I whistle.

I like it when James giggles as I threaten to eat his food if he doesn't. I like it that he calls for me to wipe his bottom after a "poo-poo". I like it when James reads to me, and when he lets me design the layout of his plastic railway track. I like it when he is tired and starts to whimper a little as he walks, so that I can compliment him on his fine whimper, and invite him to try other variants, such as whining, coughing, whingeing and screaming like a banshee, all of which he is incapable of doing because he is, by this stage, laughing so much. I like it when he asks granddad to carry him home from the park, and that when I perch him on my shoulders he rests his chin on my head, or, when I carry him "like a baby", he puts his arm around my neck. I like it when we ride on the bus together, discussing the pros and cons of bus travel, and I especially like it when we catch the wrong bus and head off to an unknown oblivion, with James holding granddad's hand and resting his head on granddad's shoulders, and with not the least concern that we are lost.

All in all, I think I quite like being a granddad.

Ross Mair and Melanie Britton

Ross Mair and Melanie Britton were two postdoctoral fellows who worked in my lab at Massey University in the 1990's. Ross is from Melbourne, Australia and now works as an MRI researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Melanie is a lecturer in the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham. As contemporaries, they became firm friends. Ross happened to be over in the UK and the two of them decided to pay me a visit.

With my finely honed tourist guide skills I took them around Cambridge sights. Melanie was extremely patient with me, having lived here for four years when she was a research fellow at Hughes Hall and working in Lynn Gladden's laboratory.

We finished in the Eagle Pub. This is the place where Crick and Watson made their announcement that they had discovered the structure of DNA, the old Cavendish Laboratory being just a few metres away. We enjoyed a pint of ale while Miang kindly acted as photographer for the occasion. I have no idea what I said that caused some amusement to Ross and Melanie!

Bonus birthday

When you have a birthday against the odds, it is worth celebrating the occasion properly, if necessary with a festival of birthday events. On August 19, the 64th anniversary of my birth, I climbed up the Great Wall of China.

That evening, I joined friends in a Beijing restaurant for the first of my birthday dinners. This magnificent meal was organised by John Zhen (on the right front of the photograph)

A week later, I met with friends in Paris for another restaurant celebration, in a little place called Bistrot d'Henri. Meghan Halse came up from Lyon, Simon and Krista Rogers came over from from Julich in Germany, and Allan Raudsepp and partner Steph, come across from the 13th arondissement. Mark Hunter joined us enroute to New Zealand via Paris.

Finally, I had a family birthday brunch in Cambridge at Giraffe restaurant, where James and I shared the birthday cake and ice cream. I have promised to help James eat his cake on his fourth birthday, due in a few weeks!

Having found unexpected birthdays to be such fun, I am determined to have more of them. I think I might now aim for 65. The gloomy predictions of my medical advisors will need to be respectfully circumvented, and thus it may not be possible for me to please everyone.

More China images

In the forbidden city











The grand staircase in the Great Hall of the People.








The Banquet Hall











Paul giving the address from the Banquet Hall stage.














Miang outside the "Bird's Nest"









Typical evening entertainment.


















64th birthday on the Great Wall











The palace temple













Paul eating scorpion









Outside Tian'anmen Gate

Rising CEA

My latest CEA shows a renewed rising trend. This is a disappointing result after the drop in early July. Something has changed and two possibilities come to mind. By late June I had exhausted the supply of the Chinese herbal medicine supplied by the Ngee Ann clinic in Singapore. I have been taking an alternative Chinese herbal treatment supplied by Bo-Ying Ma in London. And, since coming to the UK, I have taken a weekly treatment of intravenous vitamin C when possible, although there have been periods when I have been unable to take treatment, such as my week's holiday in France. Perhaps more significantly, my London physician has been reluctant to give me the 100 g dose which I had taken in New Zealand, prefering instead to stay with 75 g per infusion.

I have another IVC next week. I will try to persuade Dr Adeniyi-Jones to increase the dose. And when I return to New Zealand for four days in September (12th to 15th) I will collect the prescription sent by Ngee Ann to my New Zealand home address. The four days back in New Zealand will allow me to give a public lecture for the University ("New Zealand as the new Tiger Economy"), to launch my book, and to have a CT scan, another CEA, an IVC treatment and a consultation with my oncologist.

It is not too surprising to me that my latest CEA is up. I have experienced more pain from the upper anterior abdominal tumour in the last few weeks. It is not too unpleasant but the discomfort acts as a reminder that all is not well. The CT test in September will give valuable insight. It will also act as a crucial evidence base for deciding what the next step will be in this long journey.

A brief sample of Beijing contrasts

I am now back in London en route to the Euromar meeting in Frankfurt with just enough time to make a brief posting with some images: Robin Dykstra and John Zhen from Magritek, looking in on an NMR logging tool factory, a tricycle taxi outside our hotel in Changping, the giant 7500 square metre overhead electronic display at "The Place" mall (at that moment showing text messages which anyone could send to the device), and, part of the foyer of the National Centre for the Performing Arts.

This NCPA centre contains 20 separate theatres, and runs simultaneous concert, opera and drama performances. The architecture, like so much of Beijing, is simply breathtaking. On our last night in Beijing, Miang and I were guests of Professor Lizhi Xiao in the concert hall, to experience 7 master concert pianists from all over the world perform in succession.

This morning, we got up early and took the subway to East Tian'anmen, to join people in the Palace Gardens practising Taiji. After visiting Tian'anmen Gate we wandered across Tian'anmen Square, amid the tight security that this place now features. By 8 am thousands were queuing to see the embalmed Mao in his Mausoleum. China is deeply paradoxical.