When my girl left home and I was earning enough money to no longer need to put cash in a cigar box to be eked out over a fortnight, and the presentation of the usual bills didn't leave me running for a calculator as if that was gonna do some loaves and fishes trick with my dollars, after all those years of wondering and adding up and trying to stretch and stealing from Peter to pay Paul, after all that I decided I was never gonna do Maths again.
I fucking hate maths. Yeh I can do it, and the poor old Grandie can almost never beat me in a tables bee, but it is a pisser when numbers become the focus of your day.
I have been a bit nervous about my test results from a fortnight ago, cos if they are shit, it means that the poison is not working and that'd mean - well I don't know what the fuck that would mean, but I bet it wouldn't be anything good.
For the last 8 months I have lurched from one set of stats to the next, and today I got my my 8 months numbers, which were meant to be 9 months numbers so I guess there would be a formula to calculate how much off they could have been but I don't know what the fuck that might be.
My CML mutant count started at 54....54 whats exactly is a question whose answer has never satisfied cos it is said that it is 54% except that it's possible to get a score of more than 100% and even though I have taught some very clever kids, I have never given more than 100% results, but that's all by the by. In any case I started with 54 mutant fuckers, then suddenly the poison had killed off so many that only 5 remained and then we all got off kilter a bit cos the scores are meant to be done 3 monthly but the next one was a month early so the little fuckers still added to 1.2 when there was an expectation that there'd be less than 1. And today, 8 months on when it should really be 9 months on, the score is .13!
I thought Greg Onc was a little disappointed but he said all was ok.
When we get to .0 something, that's a good score and so there was a strange conversation between the Engineer and the Arty-farty on the drive home about a formula that would satisfy us both about how much improved I have to be by Christmas to be doing well and crossing over between fractions and dividing by 10s and working in numbers too small to bother with certainly if you were thinking squares of chocolate, was all a bit abstract and silly.
The researchers have been busy again, or still, and even though 8 months ago Greg Onc said that I'd be on the poison for the rest of my life, he agreed today that there is research into stopping the pills after 3-5 years of effective results. At the moment this is leaving about 50% of CML patients free and clear - cured! and the other 50% have to go back on the meds - no worse off. That is really a big leap forward! Maybe there will a time not too far away, when I can give the pills the flick. Something to really look forward to I reckon.
In the meantime I am gonna give myself a pat on the back cos things are going OK. Yeh the side effects are sometimes a bit shit, but it's a numbers game. Bugger and there was me saying I was never gonna do maths again after I turned 40...fuck it!
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