I've been lucky enough to have some great opportunities to take wildlife photos this summer. In the UK it is always very difficult to photograph wild mammals, on the whole they do a great job of avoiding people. Until just a few weeks ago I'd never managed to photograph wild foxes but then I got the opportunity to spend an afternoon in a hide in Ivor near Slough. It was like a sauna in the hide but the discomfort was worth it. Here are a couple of the shots that I took:
These cute little characters are this year's cubs; for around ninety minutes or so they repeatedly visited the area in front of the hide. It was terrific fun watching and photographing them.
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I was due to start my sixteenth treatment cycle with Trabectedin on Tuesday however my white blood cells had other ideas and my blood count was slightly too low to enable me to go ahead. This is disappointing given that I'm on a reduced dose of the chemotherapy and that I'm only having the drug once every four weeks rather than once every three. This means that I'm receiving significantly less of the drug than the recommended treatment protocol specifies. I will try again on Tuesday next week.
I will have my next scan on August 16th. The result is going to be pretty critical as we need to make a decision on whether the Trabectedin is still delivering enough benefit for me to continue with it. The other option that Katie and I have discussed with my oncologist is to switch treatment to Pazopanib but we don't want to make that decision unless we're absolutely sure that the tumours have developed resistance to the current treatment. It will be an anxious wait between having the scan and getting the results a week or two later.
On the bright side the delay to my treatment means that I will be feeling well enough this weekend to attend a party that some friends of ours are having to celebrate their recent wedding. I really didn't think we'd be able to go and I'm very pleased that we can.