I have always known that Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede on 15th June, 1215 (which set in stone certain rights and protections eg habeas corpus which are still foundational to our laws today).  I also have known since I was a teenager that the very first aviation accident occurred on 15th June in 1785 (can you believe ?? - an "aviation" accident over 200 years ago) when two French balloonists were killed.

None of this is very impressive any more, because these days everybody can look up on the internet, type in "dates in history" and see what famous or interesting things happened on their birthday. 

Yes, I had a birthday.  Not a big zero birthday with bells and whistles and hoopla, but a nice day all the same.  Out for lunch to Don's favourite place, where they do a nice beef eye fillet, medium rare, just the way he likes it.  Being in the nursing home, he does get pretty good meals, things he really likes such as lamb roast so tender it is falling apart on the fork -- mouth-watering.  And a good variety, better probably than I used to cook when he was living at home.  But what they cannot do, obviously, is beef eye fillet medium rare.  How could you prepare a hundred or so of that?

I had been minding our little grandson Gavin for the weekend, so his dad came to pick him up and came to lunch with us.  He took a picture of us at the bistro, sitting in front of "Donald's Wool Press" - in the photograph you can't read the sign, but Don being an ex-shearer was quite impressed with it so we used it as a background.

        

The "new" church at Toronto is twenty years old this year, and it was built under Don's leadership as Minister there, so it forms a major achievement of his ministry.

When ministers say they "built" a church, it sort of brings to mind the minister up a ladder hammering in the nails, or else laying the bricks somewhere.  What they do is, however, almost as involved as that!  It took endless planning and meetings and decision-making, and problem-solving when things didn't go according to plan.  It wasn't just a simple matter of getting a building designed and then contracting builders.  Think about it!  A small group were assigned to planning electronic needs and the sound system, another to design landscaping, a kitchen committee because the old building was used to prepare Meals on Wheels, a finance sub-committee because how would we pay for it all, plus constant liaising with the architect when builders decided something was impossible or else more expensive than budgeted for.  And other planning groups I can't recall.

And of course, the crucial decisions regarding: what was worship going to be like in the new building.  Don was adamant that in worship, nobody should be more than eight rows from the front - because all his reading indicated that this was the range up to where worshippers would feel at home, rather than strangers and onlookers.  So that meant a wraparound style, but he also said no really long rows because people don't want to climb over dozens of legs to find a seat.

Well, the "new" church is still looking good, still worshipful but comfortable and welcoming, and is used for a diverse range of activities.

Another thing about ministers building a church, however, is that it is one of the most stressful projects a minister can undertake, and sure enough, in the October of 1989, Don lost the sight of one eye due to a retinal vein thrombosis that was undoubtedly stress-related.

The twenty years are being celebrated in a week's time, with special services, memorabilia, invitations to past members and previous ministers, and an invitation to say a few words.

I, of course, will be in Western Australia when all this takes place!  Predictably, you pluck a date out of the air when whole months on end look free, and then when everything is set in stone you find out that it was the worst possible date to pick. 

Don is going, though.  At first I thought I would have to try to re-arrange all my Perth bookings, because it would be un-thinkable for Don not to be there on that day.  But now it is all organised:  son David will come from Sydney for the weekend and go with Don; the wheelchair taxi is long since booked, to get him there; I'll arrange with nursing home staff the clothes he would like to wear (best suit, and Scottish tartan tie); we are working out together what he would like to say, and I'll type it out, so that if he is not having a good day David can read it on his behalf; the RSVP has been sent.

All that is needed now is for David to remember his camera so that I get to see it all later.  Meantime, I will also take plenty of shots on the Indian-Pacific and in Perth, to reciprocate! 

        

I ask myself what on earth I do all day that stops me from getting things done.  And I have no answers.  Because I should have all the time in the world.  I think back to my lifestyle over the years - my "normal" life, if you like - and seemed to be balancing about three different lives, all at once.  Working full-time as a TAFE teacher, then coming home to do dinner and family things, then more often than not going out at night to choir, fellowship, Amnesty International, church stuff.  Weekends catching up with housework and more church stuff, and friends.  Putting on endless barbecues or having people for dinner or picnics.  Enjoying it all.

Nowadays I have only myself to look after, and Don to visit each day.  You'd think my house would be immaculate, all the cupboards tidy, and the photograph albums finally complete and labelled.  Trouble is, I don't seem to have any time to do anything.  A couple of hours in the morning for housework and chores, then off to Bayside.  But after that, it's hard coming in at three o'clock in the afternoon and feeling motivated to start in on jobs - ironing, paying bills, sorting out paperwork. 

Much easier - and more enjoyable - to take the dog for a walk, watch a bit of TV (eg the French Open is on as I write this, and I find every match rivetting), do the crossword and the sudoku.  Hey presto, suddenly it's dark and too late for chores.  The day is over and once again, I didn't do much.  And my day's list (I am a great list-maker) has almost half the items still not ticked off.

You might want to know where does "write up your blog" fit into all this?  With the chores that I put off?  or with the sudoku and walking the dog, something to look forward to?  Hmmmmm, tough question.

        

There is good news and bad news.

The good news (yes, I was surprised there is such a thing as "good news" too!) is that if you have MS, you have a significantly lower chance of getting cancer.  Researchers analyzed the medical records of more than 20 thousand people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The study found that for people with multiple sclerosis the risk of cancer was 10% lower than in the control group.  There is some debate as to whether this is due to people changing their lifestyle after diagnosis, but latest thinking is that it is something to do with the condition itself.  (I've lost the link about all this, will post if I track it down later.)

Some bad news is that although there is a fairly effective treatment for the "relapsing-remitting" form of MS (Don has the untreatable "progressive" form), the treatment carries some risk of heart damage and quite a high risk of leukemia.  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090430101441.htm

More good news - and this is quite thrilling - is that there has been improvement for MS patients who have been injected with stem cells of their own fat tissue.  Not just "improvement", but an actual REVERSAL of the disease, to the extent that they are seeing regeneration of the myelin sheath that gets destroyed in MS. http://www.privatehealth.co.uk/news/april-2009/fat-tissue-multiple-sclerosis-30465

So we are trying to get Don into an exercise programme, because his muscles are wasting away through lack of use, and if by some miracle there is a chance for him in the future, he needs to be strong enough to actually benefit.

Why did I call this blog "trivia"?  Nothing trivial about it.  Leukemia is devastating, the possibility of a cure is life-changing.

        

A couple of days ago, I booked the wheelchair taxi and brought Don home for the day.  Trying to do this a couple of times a week nowadays.  We had lunch, sat out on the deck for a bit, then we watched the movie "Notting Hill".

If you have seen the movie, you will remember there is a point where Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts are parted, and it looks like it is all over between them.  As he mopes about London, the background song is:

"Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
It's not warm when she's away;
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
And she's always gone too long, any time she goes away."

I was only half listening, until Don turned to me and said very quietly, "That's how I feel about you."

People sometimes look a little askance at the notion that I go to the nursing home every day to be with Don.  Well, that's why.

        

For some time, Don has been pressing me to arrange a trip to Griffith (in the Riverina) because his 97-year-old mother is in a nursing home there, and we haven't seen her in over a year.  I've tried not to be brutal and say, You simply cannot travel any more!  But I had a sudden inspiration, that in fact if there was something drastic such as a funeral, well there actually is a way.

I told Don that I ought to phone his neurologist and discuss getting permission for a course of methylprednisolone if there is a sudden need for Don to leave the nursing home, eg when his mother dies and he wants to attend the funeral.  It would be an 8-hour drive each way plus at least one night away.

In my opinion, methylpred is like a miracle drug for multiple sclerosis.  When Don, bedridden, was put onto a course of treatment last year, he was standing (with assistance) the next day, and was shuffling along the corridor (with a walking frame and two assistants) a couple of days later.  It was unbelievable.

Only problem with methylpred:  It doesn't last.  Average duration of the improvement is 9 weeks.  And there are considerable side-effects, eg it depletes the body's calcium (so he is still on calcium supplements 13 months later), possibility of organ damage if used long-term, and the mood swings during the course of treatment are terrible - swings from anger to despair to weeping with joy, emotions out of control completely.  And growing evidence of an actual deterioration in the condition subsequently.

To my surprise, Don didn't even consider my bright idea.  He just said matter-of-factly, "No, when the time comes, you will have to go with our son and represent the family. I won't be able to leave here."

He has accepted the sad reality with his usual equanimity.  Thanks Don, for making it easy on us.

        

Disposing of the dead rat on my doorstep is, of course, quite gross.  But trust me, nothing is more dreadful than lying in bed at nights listening to rats scampering about in the ceiling, all night long!  As happened when we lived in Sydney inner city (Camperdown).  Cockroaches we were prepared for, and aircraft noise, and fleas.  But rats!!  And they seemed indestructible.  We tried poison, blocking up the entrances with steel wool, talon baits, the exterminator.  And I had to ask the next-door neighbour to remove their pile of mulch from the corner nearest our house, which is where the exterminator said they were breeding.  She was deeply offended and didn't speak to me again.

No rats in the ceiling here, I'm pleased to say.  Thank you, cat.

        

"Till we meet, till we meet,
Till we meet at Jesus' feet;
Till we meet, till we meet,
God be with you till we meet again."

If only I could be so certain.  If only we today had that rock-solid belief that we would in fact "meet on that beautiful shore" and be together with those who have left us.  The old-time religion that never doubted for an instant, how I long for it. 

Today marks one year, the worst year of my life I have to say -- without, I hope, any self-pity.  It is a simple fact.

I asked Don what he wanted to do today: come home with me and spend the day quietly together, probably pretty gloomy and down, or stay at the nursing home, where there would at least be people milling about and we could push the grief thing out of our minds some of the time.  He didn't hesitate.  "I want to come home."

Good.  Because sometimes (quite often, actually) you don't want to get away from the grief.  Especially at the beginning.  This is a poem written by someone whose little son died at 5 months:

I don't WANT
To do anything
To make me better.
I like it down here.
I don't want to climb out
And leave him behind.

So we came home and I read some cards and emails that people had sent, and also read some of the cards we received a year ago that we couldn't quite bear to read just then, and then I played some music (Till we meet again, Through the love of God our Saviour all will be well, and Where is my wandering boy tonight) - and then we had lunch and then watched a comedy I taped (One Foot in the Grave, if you must know, and yes, I know it is corny stuff) and Sunday's Insiders programme that he had missed.  And then we did some of the crossword and then the taxi was there to take him back, and he said he was very tired and ready to go back.

Thank you friends for remembering, and for your emails and phone calls and cards and flowers and faithful prayers.  Last year Ross's dearest friend said to me in a strained, breaking voice, "I didn't know there could be such pain in the world."  Exactly.  And I think of our dear, beloved son every single day, still with pain.  But it does help, to know that we are surrounded by such love and care, by those whose hearts are breaking with us.

Barclay prays gently for "those we have loved and lost awhile".  Comforting, that.  So I am not sure and certain, in the way that our forefathers were, but I want to believe, and I do half-believe.

Oh dear! I hope I don't have all my readers in floods of tears by now ... I'm just writing as I feel.

Thanks Ruthie for the flowers:

        

Don is remarkably accepting about his condition.  (He puts this down to his background of Presbyterian Calvinism...)  Doesn't complain, doesn't go on about all that he has lost, all that he can't do.  Yes, there are times of real despair, such as my blog post about a year ago, Psalm 46.  And he suffers from depression, which apparently is an intrinsic part of multiple sclerosis, although I am sure that the depression is also a normal consequence of living with the limitations of MS and the frightful future one faces.

But you can take facing reality only so far.  And lately, I have been having some very difficult visits with Don, because he wants me to drive him to Griffith in the Riverina, to visit his mother.  She is 97 years old, and is in a nursing home, and they tell us she has not been well.  Actually she is in better shape than Don in a lot of ways, as she is able for example to get herself to meals independently, with the aid of a walking frame.  But now it seems she is deteriorating.

At first I just did the usual thing of being rather vague, and expecting by next day it would not be raised again.  Don has raised the idea a number of times in the past, but has not persisted.  But now he will not drop the idea, and is insistent that we go to Griffith for one last visit to his mother before she dies.  And is quite pressing about it, and practical too, wanting me to bring a suitcase so we can pack his things, and working out what time we would need to leave to do the trip in one day, stay one night, and then drive back the next day.

So I said we would need to work it out with our son David to come with us, as I needed someone else to help get Don in and out of the car, wheelchair, bed, etc.  And that would probably mean bringing our 4-year-grandson as well, so not to be undertaken at the drop of a hat.

But staff told me it would not be feasible even with someone to help, but we would need to hire a lifter and other equipment at the other end.

Eventually I said to him, Look if we were able to go to Griffith and stay overnight, you would be living at home with me, because it would mean we could manage.  So he got a bit cross and said huffily that I was trying to make difficulties, that I just didn't want to go to Griffith.  My response was, that in fact I am more concerned about when his mother dies, because it seems unthinkable for us not to go her funeral, but I'm blowed if I know how we could do it.

        

Must confess I was not particularly looking forward to Mothers Day.  Was all too conscious that last year we had the special meal (roast lamb of course!) but two sons were away - Stewart off on some gig where he was to be DJ,  and David and family at a little friend's birthday party in at Newcastle (yes, I agree, who on earth would schedule a child's party at lunchtime on Mothers Day??) - so there was just Don and me with son Ross, plus a visitor.  But we had such a nice time.

It pierces my heart to realise that that was to be the last special meal with Ross and that he had only another week to live.

But this year was all very different, and none of those thoughts really surfaced when the weekend actually arrived.

We had got an inflatable canoe, just to test out if we would really start going out onto the lake if we had a chance, so that made for a beautiful Saturday afternoon.



And on Mothers Day itself they surprised me with gifts, and cards and loving messages that I treasure.

Don came out for the day (wheelchair taxi) and we went to lunch at a nice bistro-cum-restaurant nearby, sorry no pix of Don or me, but a happy one of David and Dedra, and Gavin had a great time in the play area.

It was a lovely day.  And Don enjoyed it so much he wants me to book the place again and go out for lunch there on a regular basis.

        

The mother of J K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, suffers from multiple sclerosis, and Rowling has been actively involved in the MS Society - supporting, promoting and fundraising - for a number of years.  She became Patron of the Scottish MS Society  but has recently quit from that position due to differences in the direction the society is taking (partly because of a reorganisation that is going on, with conflict over who is to manage the funds, Scotland or London).

When I read that article, the detail that struck me was the throwaway line that Scotland has the highest incidence of multiple sclerosis in the world!  Does anyone know why?  Yes, I realise that the further you get away from the equator, the higher the incidence, but there are countries that are further away than Scotland.

Another MS mystery.  So much research, so little knowledge.

        

Probably I should call this entry "Holidays" or "Breaks", rather than escapes.  Because I love my husband dearly, and I don't really have to "escape".  Maybe "escapades" is nearer to the truth - except I'm not the madcap that that implies.

Last year I sometimes stayed in Sydney overnight - would spend time at the nursing home with Don as usual then leave late in the afternoon, spend the evening with my family in Sydney, and be back in time to be with Don by my usual time the next day, ie not mss a visit with him.  But twice - in August and November - I went away for TWO days to visit my sister, and both times I left the nursing home in tears with the guilt of actually going away and not being there for a day.

And in March this year, I had a lovely break.  I left a notice pinned on Don's notice board to remind him that I was away for two days, so that he wouldn't fret if he forgot.  And spent a great couple of days with family in the Blue Mountains and had a wonderful time.

Here is a photo at the actual waterfall of "Wentworth Falls", which is at the end of the Darwin Walk.  Charles Darwin called in to Australia as you probably know, after he did the world-changing trip to the Galapagos Islands, and he was fascinated at what he discovered while walking in the Blue Mountains along this track.  This year marks the bi-centenary of Darwin's birth, by the way.



(That's me on the left, Ruth on the right)

Well, I made a momentous decision to actually go away for a break - a real break, a week's holiday.  I am going away for one week at the end of June.  On the Indian-Pacific, to Perth, and have arranged to meet up with my Perth cousins who I haven't seen since I was about 10 (except for one cousin, Ann) and have actually paid for the whole trip and also paid for my return flight home.

It all seems like a dream so far, except that I am starting to get into panic mode and start sweating, when I realise that we are now into May and this is all to take place next month, ie less than 8 weeks away.  How could I even contemplate doing this???

It was all so do-able when it was far in the future and not imminent.  Now, I am aghast that I have planned such a thing.

I haven't told Don yet.  The trip to Perth on the Indian-Pacific is something that we always talked about doing after we retired.  How can I tell him that I am doing it, and he will be staying in the nursing home??????

        

I've mentioned the use of Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) as a treatment for multiple sclerosis, a couple of times in this blog.  It's new, it's still experimental and there is no clinical evidence, but there are lots of anecdotal reports from MS sufferers who used it and found improvements ranging from slight, to what some of them term miraculous.

Reason I haven't been saying much about what effect LDN is having on Don, is because I am all too well aware of the placebo effect. 

Placebo effect means that if you give a person any treatment - any treatment whatsoever - for an illness or condition, then there will probably be an improvement regardless of what the treatment is.  Mind over matter, sort of thing.  The hope and optimism, the belief that there will be improvement - it leads to an actual improvement.  Which is the reason, of course, that when new treatments are being tested, some subjects are always given a placebo instead of the new treatment (without being told), so that researchers can measure what has been caused by the new treatment rather than "beneficial effects caused by the subject's expectations", which is the definition of the placebo effect.

Having said all that, it is clear that Don has improved quite a lot mentally.  I know that I wasn't admitting how bad he was getting, putting a good spin on things and would just say that he was "a bit spaced out" or "sleepy".  But the truth is that it was getting quite hard to hold a conversation because he would either drift off to sleep or get  what he called "clouded in his mind" and lose the thread of even the most straightforward things.  Well, he has improved so much that I am trying to recall just how bad he was on a bad day.  He listens to conversations with interest and alertness and often joins in, laughs at jokes and wants them re-told to others, chiacks the nursing staff  and sometimes remembers their names, gives sensible advice about such things as whether we should think about getting a new car.  Not all of that every day, and sometimes he is subdued and not terribly responsive, but still a complete turnaround from the zombie-like state he was getting into over the previous months.

I and the family are not the only ones to notice a marked improvement in Don.  Friends who visit occasionally or often, the nursing staff, and even ancillary staff such as the laundry workers who don't have a lot of interaction with residents, have commented on how remarkably better he is.  Friends say that he is "more like himself now", those who didn't know him before are saying that he is a different person.

Only disappointment is that his mobility still has not improved, ie he still can't walk or stand or sit himself up.  But I also realise that he is never given an opportunity to do any of those things to check it out, or to practise.  They use a lifter to get him in and out of bed, and staff are not going to abandon the lifter and risk hurting themselves on the chance that he might have more strength than before.  So I suspect that he might have improved marginally, but not enough to get him less dependent.

        

How do you celebrate a birthday for someone who is (a) bedridden and wheelchair-bound, thus unable to go anywhere exciting (b) living in a nursing home, thus has very few needs (c) living in a nursing home, thus has very limited space.

What we did was to book the wheelchair taxi so that Don could come home for the day, and we had lunch together then spent the afternoon sitting on our deck looking out at the Lake.

Not only looking at the Lake, but through sheer serendipity some good friends phoned up and said they might visit - so we not only had visitors for the afternoon, but the visitors came armed with a bottle of bubbly for the occasion, and with our family visiting from Sydney as well, it turned out to be a bit of a party.

The gift he enjoyed was called a "digital photo frame' - sit it on his table in the nursing home and it shows a sort of slide show of all our family digital photos.  Brilliant, eh?

Happy birthday, Don!  (And the BIG one is next year....)

        

I just attended the first funeral since our son's funeral last May.  I thought it would be enormously difficult, bringing it all back, and mentally steeled myself  in advance.

But no.  Sitting in church (yes, the same church!) I realised this was not about me, not about my family and my grief, not about Ross. It was all about Warren, a beautiful person without a mean streak, marathon runner extraordinaire, deeply committed to his church, his family and his work, carried off before his time to a sudden and aggressive cancer.

I was sorry there were no hymns in the service.  Apparently this was requested, but I believe the funeral is for all of the grieving community too, and for that packed church (standing room only, even with the hall opened up and full) it would have been good to have hymns.  So many church people there, we would have lifted the roof, and it would have been a very fitting tribute to a man who was there pretty well every Sunday.  More than that, it would allow us as a community to stand and express in words and song something of our grief and our hope.

Vale, Warren.

        

It had got to the point that they were not going to agree to Don coming home again.  Reason being that he has collapsed and become unconscious, and ended being ambulanced to hospital, no fewer than five times over the past six months - and every single time the collapse happened when he was sitting up in his wheelchair.   The last collapse was only a fortnight ago when he was home for lunch, and the nursing home were suggesting he'd better not visit home any more.

He has never had a collapse while in bed or in the recliner that he uses in the nursing home.  The only explanation seems to be that he can't sit bolt upright for extended periods, any more.  Presumably the MS is making him unable to hold his head erect indefinitely, and so he slumps, and blocks off his airway.  I am no longer able to "transfer" him to a more comfortable chair, so he has to stay in the wheelchair all the time he is out.

I needed to trial something and see if it made a difference.  The Yellow Pages gave me a marvellous place called Hospital at Home, which sells or hires all sorts of equipment.

Here's what I got for Don:



As you know, one effect of multiple sclerosis is frequent overwhelming fatigue, and the extended headrest makes it possible for Don to rest while he is in this chair.



Or even have a snooze while he is at home:

So we are now back to regular visits home again.

        

There was a news item last week about an MS sufferer who had his walking stick stolen.  He had left it at a service station, and some young hoodlum had walked off with it.  A radio station broadcast a plea for its return, and there was bit of talkback as a result - someone objected that if he left it behind then he must not really need it, someone else hotly came to the man's defence saying that with MS, sometimes you are fine and other times you are bad.  The theft was apparently the culmination of this man's bad luck: he had lost his job, and as a result lost his house, in the meantime he had sold off most of his stuff in a vain endeavour to keep the house, and then - to cap everything! - his walking stick got stolen.

Don't laugh!  Walking sticks seem to be very significant!

Don doesn't use one any more, having progressed (if that is the word I want, hardly appropriate, is it?) to a walking frame and then a wheelchair.  But here is his collection:



Why so many?  Do people really need more than one?  Apparently so.  I took a photo of them all and when I was with Don yesterday I asked him to remind me what they were all for.  Here's what he said:

• Far left is his father's walking stick, great sentimental value, in fact Don has engraved it with his licence number, same as he does with valuable things like the laptop
• Next was the very first one he got, ten years ago - son moving out of his shared house, current girlfriend hands the walking stick to Don and says, Don't  know where this came from, but would it be useful to you? - at which I thought he would have been very offended (we're not THAT old!) - but it was in the days when he started to get inexplicably staggery, and accepted it gratefully.
• The little one was just a knick-knack at a market - too small to be any use, but decorative
• Next was purchased at an aboriginal arts and crafts shop, after a lengthy and companionly chat with the maker
• The dark one on the far right was bought one day when we had gone somewhere without a walking stick and he got very staggery and needed one.

        

Going through some old stuff, my sister found a letter from our mother, Jean Hanna, written over 40 years ago. She shared it with all our siblings at a recent get-together, and we marvelled at the sheer personality that came through in that letter - the humour, the wry comments about people, the exuberance of her breathlessly busy and productive life that she found so satisfying.  Cooking all day for a street stall, manning the op shop for the disabled, studying for her Lay Preachers Certificate, up till midnight writing sermons, providing a bed and a home for a few days for a neighbour's children on the spur of the moment -- and all this in the single week that she was writing about.

Your parents are always old, or at least "the older generation", so it gives me a slight shock to realise that this letter was written when she was almost 20 years younger than my brothers and sister and I are today.

The year after we left school, the year we turned 17, my best friend's father died suddenly of a heart attack. Of course I was shocked, and sympathised with my friend Carole.  But it was not till years later - after my own father died, in fact - that I realised I had had not the faintest inkling of what it must have been like for her, to lose her father.  When we met up at a school reunion two years ago, I expressed to Carole something of this, and how little I had really understood at the time. She said yes, it was hard, and shocking, but that she and her father were going through that very difficult teenager-versus-strict-father stage, quite a distant relationship.  What she really regrets, she says, is that she was never able to know her father as an adult, as a friend.  To only have seen him from a child or teenager's perspective - to have no memories of the real person that she would have come to know in later years.

Vale, Mum.  You were not just a brilliant model for us all, but you became my best friend.  I still miss you, every day.

        

I sold another batch of books on ebay, and several people have been curious to know which books sold and which did not.

Again, I sold exactly half of the books I listed.  First time around I sold 10 out of 20 books.  This time, ebay had a promotion offering free listings for March (usually it costs 30 - 50 cents to list each item) so I bunged on another 16, and sure enough, I have sold 8!  So it seems 50% is a good rule of thumb when it comes to books.

I was surprised with what did NOT sell.  Probably I have an assumption that internet people are more into self-help, spirituality sort of stuff.  Hence I expected that Caroline Jones "The Search for Meaning" would be first to go - but no, not a single bid, not even at 99 cents.  Ditto Steve Biddulph's "Stories of Manhood".  And I did think that there were enough animal lovers out there - dog lovers in particular - to get "Great Working Dog Stories" for 99 cents.  But no. (If you wonder about everything being listed at a starting price of 99 cents, well the free listings only applied to 99 cent listings, but it's best to start low in any case.)

But Kerry Greenwood "Queen of the Flowers" was a winner, a little paperback that everyone was bidding frantically for, and eventually sold for $15.90, plus postage of course.



Kerry Greenwood is an Australian writer of whodunits, heroine Phryne Fisher, and set in Melbourne in the 1920's.  I was given it for Christmas a couple of years ago, and although it was quite readable I wasn't sufficiently keen to go out and read more Kerry Greenwoods, so I was most surprised that she apparently has such a following.

People also bid for "World of Tears" the story of Father Chris Riley, and Ian McEwen's "The Innocent" but everything else just went for the basic 99 cents plus postage.

One book I was surprised but pleased to have no bids for, was "Shackleton's Forgotten Men".  It's fascinating and I think I prefer to keep it.

When Shackleton set out to cross the Antarctic in 1915, he had a small support party that went to the opposite side of the continent and crossed towards Shackleton's group setting up a lifeline of depots for the coming party.  Of course, Shackleton got frozen in and didn't come but they weren't to know that, so they went ahead anyway. It's a good read.

        

Remember last century when they used to put leeches on sick people?  Oh, wait, it was the century before  last, wasn't it.  Well, the wheel has turned full circle, and we are back to parasites as a possible treatment for MS.

You can check out this link for yourself   http://ms.about.com/b/2009/03/11/hookworms-a-natural-multiple-sclerosis-treatment.htm

"Hookworms, little tiny parasitic worms, are being investigated as a possible treatment for multiple sclerosis. The idea is this: people infected with hookworms experience a suppression of the immune system. That suppression may be enough to slow the rate of relapse or even modify existing symptoms.

What happens in the study, being conducted at the University of Nottingham and funded with 400,000 pounds, is that people with multiple sclerosis will be infected with 25 hookworms through a patch placed on the skin (it is painless). Nine months later those worms are flushed from the people's bodies. The good news is that it is very safe and very cheap"

The article is followed by the story "Is Worm Soup Our Future" http://ms.about.com/od/newsresearch/a/worm_soup.htm

Hey, if it works, we will do it!  Desperation measures, to be sure, but who cares.  Only, read the fine print before you get too excited, because this is a possible treatment for only the relapsing-remitting form of multiple sclerosis - which Don does not have.  But I asked him today if he would give it a go if it's possible and he nodded and said, "Anything!"