The Equipment

From left to right:

Aria Pro II bass guitar: This belongs to a mate of mine but I've had it for about four years now (he has a much nicer bass to play). It's actually really good and can give a wide range of sounds thanks to the rotary pickup selector switch - it has about 700,000 positions. I've replaced the original strings with the bottom four from a 5 string bass so I can get some serious low end.

Washburn Nuno Bettencourt Signature Model: My baby! She's been with me for 10 whole years now and plays wonderfully. I've replaced the bridge with a better quality Floyd Rose system, but other than that it's all original stuff. Washburn pickup with plenty of bite in the bridge, Bill Lawrence in the neck position for a more mellow sound (or accuracy when speed picking). I love this guitar!

TLAudio Fatman stereo valve compressor: Everything runs through this before it hits the PC. Gives a nice valve warmth as well as mases of punch and a volume boost.

Korg AX1500G Multi FX: (the silver thing on the floor) Brilliant effects on a budget with a stack of parameters controllable via the foot pedal. Great distortions and amp simulator and some nice delays too - sounds really fat when run through the compressor, particularly combined with some software like Guitar Rig.

Digitech XP100 Whammy Wah: Picked this up years ago and I don't really use it for its wild pitch bending capabilities any more. I tend to use it now for the impossible double lines (when you should have run out of frets), low octave doubles and for adding textures and layers.

Jackson DX7 7 string guitar: Heaviness on a budget! This beauty set me back less than £300 back when 7 strings were a rare commodity and aside from a high-ish action and some annoying reverberations on the low B, it generally delivers the goods, just don't try 2 handed tapping on it unless you want to fail. Once you know how to manage it live and in post production though it's a cracker.

The Computer: It's old, it's beginning to slow down (I shan't embarrass myself by revealing the spec), but it never crashes and never complains. It's running Cubase SX 1.1 (although I have SX3 on my laptop) and a load of VST instruments and effects, although I mostly just use Guitar Rig and some high quality compression, reverb and delay plugins these days.

Random SG shape guitars: They aren't Gibsons, and they didn't cost me a penny. One usually stays in 'open c' tuning (for those Devin Townsend moments), and the other gets used when I need that 'SG sound', but mostly my wife likes to play Soundgarden on it (rather well too I might add)

Misc: Random dvd drives and external HDD, but I also have a mandolin, two recorders, a jaws harp and some kazoos - some of which may get used on future recordings. Oh, and there's another guitar which I'm in the process of 'customising', and there used to be an audio amp and speakers but my AV system need a re-jig, so stuff had to be moved. I also have a 100 watt Laney Linebacker transistor amp (from the 80's) but that has to live somewhere else at present.

Music update

I've finally got around to doing some more recording - it's been a while. To ease myself back into it nice and gently I decided on a theme tune, or more accurately four theme tunes in the form of a medley of sorts. Click here to go straight to it, answers on an e-postcard as to which tunes I included!

Now that my treatment is over (for the time being - I find out the details on Friday) I've decided on some direction for my musical output over the course of the next year. On the guitar and 'real' instruments side of things, I intend to write another album of metal, possibly less complicated than I usually write but we shall see where the old brain takes it. Anyway, the purpose of this is to put together a band to play the stuff live, so at some point I shall be requiring musicians of reasonable competence and flexibility. I currently have a stack of ideas for tunes but as yet have not recorded a single note, however my little notebook accompanies me everywhere I go.

To go alongside that I have decided to broaden my production horizons by undertaking some remix work. Well, not work exactly, but there are masses of remix competitions around so I thought I'd enter a few and do some downtempo electronica (using my alter ego 'Bubble Ghost'). I'm currently remixing a track by Zombie Nation, results to be posted as and when they arrive.

Scan and appointment updates

So I've finally had a date confirmed for a CT scan, after much hassle and irritation. It seems that communication in the NHS, particularly at Cheltenham hospital, is utterly hopeless and it was only after a chance trip to my GP that I found out I had a scan at all. Nobody had told me, in fact nobody had told Hereford hospital! It then took a further week for Cheltenham to send the paperwork through (which they should have done in January) and I finally got my scan date confirmed this morning. Rest assured I will be writing to complain about all of this. Anyway, I shall be scanned on the 2nd March, and then see my consultant on the 5th, and then I should know my fate i.e whether I need more chemo, if/when I can have this wretched tube removed or whatever else the scan reveals.

In the meantime, I'm back at work doing less than not very much ;) and occupying my spare time with occasional bouts of activity in my studio making a mess of popular theme tunes once more.

Further updates to follow early in March, if I can uncross my fingers to type.

'No more chemo any more'

Ok, so maybe that's a bit optimistic, but there's no more chemo for the time being. I have a follow up appointment in six weeks and I should also have a scan at some point (dates yet to be confirmed) which will determine whether or not I need more treatment. I sincerely hope I don't but I'm prepared for anything really. I still have a tube draining my right kidney and it is still draining, albeit a very small amount. I shall wait and see. In the meantime I have decided to go back to work early in February although I won't know how much I can do until I start. As and when anything happens I shall post here, but I might also post about music as I have been writing new stuff over the last few days - inspiration provided by a chap called Don Ross - listen to everything, he's brilliant!

Happy Christmas

I know it's been a while since I updated, but during this cycle of chemotherapy I have felt just fine. It's been thoroughly uneventful which, I suppose, is the ideal situation. I now have no hair and no beard, but that will grow back at some point. Anyway, happy Christmas to one and all whatever you are doing, and I shall keep you posted with health related developments after the festive season.

Chemotherapy

I had originally planned to write this post about a week ago but I'll come to the reason for the delay later on. Anyway, I've had my first course of chemo and the first three days of it were as an in patient and pretty intense. The chemo itself wasn't too bad as I didn't suffer any sickness or anything during the treatment. The worst thing turned out to be the trapped wind I managed to get from being hooked up to a drip and pumped with fluids for two and a half days solid. I hadn't expected trapped wind, and it was the sort that makes you feel like someone is sticking knives into your chest, rather than just needing a good fart. I eventually solved the problem in the night with the world's biggest belch - I kid you not, it was ridiculous!

So I started to feel better by Sunday afternoon, apart from the tiredness which tends to come in waves and all of a sudden sleep is the only option. They'd shifted my next chemo appointment forward a few days to bring it back in line with clinics and things, so I was back in Cheltenham on Tuesday for 'day 8' of my treatment. One small bag of toxic stuff later and I was back home munching on a chicken doner kebab (I felt the need for a treat).

The headache started just before bedtime, a real pounding migraine type affair. I had a night of frustrating non sleep and Wednesday began as Tuesday had ended. On Wednesday we had been booked in for swine flu and seasonal flu jabs, so we had those and expected to feel off colour for 24 hours or so. By night time I was feverish and beginning to get concerned but decided to ride out the 24 hours to see if it would ease off. Thursday was spent alternating between freezing and sweating, so early on Friday morning I took the bull by the horns and phoned the chemotherapy helpline offered by Cheltenham hospital. They advised me to come in straight away for a blood test, which I did. The results of the blood test showed that my white blood cell count was ZERO, which means no immune system of any description consequently no method of fighting any sort of infection. Seems I had bypassed all the other side effects and gone straight for the worst one.

I was duly admitted, and due to my highly vulnerable nature I had to have a private room away from sources of infection, a room which included my own bathroom, flatscreen tv and dvd player (paid for by charitable donations). So whilst I felt dreadful, I did at least have some way of combating the usual monotony of a hospital stay. It's a good job they kept me in, as that night my temperature went up to 38.9 degrees and I blacked out, collapsing to the floor and taking loads of stuff down with me, luckily I escaped any serious injury suffering only a bruised bum and a pulled muscle. So they've pumped me full of a wide range antibiotics and fluids for a few days, and by Monday my white cell count had moved off the floor. By Tuesday I had recovered enough to be allowed home after my 'day 15' chemo. I'm still a bit fragile, but at least my body works a bit better. As an aside, we all know that cancer and weight loss are always associated - I lost just over a stone in 11 days, and I was eating.

So now I have a week to be at home, during which time I will hopefully build up some more strength and mentally prepare myself for the next 3 week cycle which begins the middle of next week.

'Nurse, I've got foot rot', and other stories.....

I've just spent 5 1/2 days in Cheltenham hospital having the procedures I described in the my post. Both bits were supposed to happen at the same time but due to internal waterworks distortion they had to be performed separately. Both bits were successful, thankfully, but I would have to recommend that anyone having stents put in has it done under general anaesthetic rather than local - hurts like hell, even after 8 injections and 10mg of morphine, but at least the surgeon let me watch him poking a needle into my kidneys (via the ultrasound machine) - quite an experience. Anyway, I now have bags connected to each kidney to drain them effectively, and two wounds on my back which means a massive lack of comfort when doing anything. I even have to have a complicated arrangement of pillows to sit down properly

I've also had two of my pre chemo tests done (hearing and lung function), both of which were fine. During the lung function test, the lady in charge recommended a game called Korg DS10 for the Nintendo DS - it emulates the classic Korg MS10 analog synth but adds a sequencer as well - I'm so gonna get that to help with more hospital stays! The lady performing the hearing test was surprised when I exclaimed 'Oooh, a modulated sine wave!' I just can't help myself.

I spent a total of 2 1/2 days as 'Nil by mouth' whilst I was in, and two whole days just sitting around with little but my own brain for company (couldn't have any visitors due to complicated family circumstances). Being a cancer patient is sometimes a very lonely place, and I don't mean that I'm not getting enough support because I'm getting so much it's overwhelming and something for which I will be eternally grateful. It's more in the sense that over the last week virtually all the patients I've met have some kind of cancer, some terminal, some not, but everyone is slightly different, and whilst we could identify with each other on a certain level it remains impossible to completely understand exactly what each person is going through. That said, I struck up some good bonds over the last week, in particular with the chap in the bed next to me, a 62 year old man with terminal cancer. We talked long into the night on several occasions about the whys, whats and whens of cancer and he seemed very curious about my approach to the disease. He was happy to be able to talk everything over with someone outside his family, not involved in the whole process of death and timescale, and I think by the time we parted company on Saturday morning his perspective had shifted somewhat and his whole outlook was different - just from talking stuff through, but then that's one of the points of this blog.

On the day before I left we had a new arrival on the ward called Charles. Poor old Charles is about 300 years old with little or no comprehension of where he is or why he is there. I have no idea why he was admitted, but his condition did give rise to the odd moment of mirth. When anyone (literally, anyone) walked past his bed he would cry 'Nurse' to raise their attention, and when he got lucky and it was a nurse he would ask any one of a variety of random questions or engage them in futile conversations. The best one of these was on Saturday morning when the interaction went as follows:

'Nurse........nurse.........nurse...........nurse'
(sigh) 'What is it Charles'
'I've got foot rot'

I think it will remain the only time I have seen a ward full of people erupt with laughter in unison. I realise I shouldn't laugh at another person's misfortune but in hospital there is little other source of amusement.

My chemo starts next Thursday, so for the time being I'm going to enjoy being at home with my family for the next few days before it all starts getting weird again.