Hankin Redden Blog

  144 – The Cancellation Prize: 11 January 2025 This photo shows the complete list of friends who came to wish us Happy Christmas on 25 December 2021.   Margaret's sister Maurine Redden had visited me in hospital and given me the three stuffed toys.  Our 2021 Christmas was extremely dismal. **** Before getting home after my final hospitalisation on 15 July, my mind was very focused just on staying alive.  I knew Margaret had incurable cancer, but she had been granted a miraculous reprieve from death in March 2021.  I hoped this meant her death sentence had been removed.  I was wrong in thinking this, but in July and August 2021, I was unaware just how wrong I was. Once I got home and my health began to steadily improve, I became more observant of things that were happening in our lives apart from Margaret's cancer and my own health. When she told me on 8 February that she was severing all ties of friendship with me, Anne Ryan pointedly said that even t...

  143 – Moving Away from the Drain, Part  1 : 10 January 2025 1st photo Anne Ryan and the wooden chest I restored for her; 2 nd photo, the Jarrah table. **** My Third Time in Hospital - July 2021 After the disappearance of Dr Kannusamy on 8 July, Dr Aiyappan took charge of my hospital medical care. Dr Aiyappan ordered an extensive range of tests and scheduled a colonoscopy for the following Tuesday - 13 July.  The colonoscopy found nothing of note.   Dr Aiyappan was determined to find out why I was so ill. and by the morning of the following Tuesday – before the colonoscopy – he had worked out what had gone wrong.  I was being attacked by my own immune system.   Our immune system contains white blood cells which attack intruders such as diseases.  A significant number of the white blood cells which make up the immune system are a type of white blood cell called eosinophils. My body was producing an extraordinarily high number of eosinophils...

  142 – Moving Away from the Drain, Part 1: 9 January 2025 This was me on Tuesday 9 September 2019 in Ireland, two months before I started losing weight under the supervision of a dietician.  Note the size of my stomach.  I weighed at least 105 kilograms then – 30 kilograms more than I weighed when I went into hospital in July 2021. **** My Third and Final Hospitalisation - July 2021 My final hospital admission took place on Saturday 3 July.  I had rung the rooms of my lung specialist on Thursday 1 July asking for an urgent consultation with Dr Aiyappan.  Dr Aiyappan was on holidays, but the rooms promised to tell him about my plight.  Dr Aiyappan rang me no more than 2 hours later and promised to find me a hospital bed.  Dr Aiyappan persuaded the hospital to admit me once again, this time on the Saturday morning.  I was in extremely bad health when admitted and Dr Aiyappan saw me in the hospital even though he was on leave.  Under his order...

  141 – Circling the Drain, Part 8: 8 January 2025 This was me in November 2015, three years before my November 2018 Chain Saw operation.  I was in relatively good health then. **** The deterioration of my health in June 2021 was significant and I approached ever closer to the Death Drain. The extent of me deterioration is highlighted by this Table of my scheduled exercise compared to the exercise I was in fact able to do in the three weeks after my hospital discharge in June 2021.  This Table cannot show my ever increasing pain and my ever increasing difficulty in doing the exercise I actually managed to do.  I used unrelenting willpower and forced myself to do exercise in that terrible month of June.  I was barely able to do the reduced exercise I in fact did. Saturday 12 June 2021 to Friday 19 June 2021 Date Scheduled Exercise Actual Exercise Saturday 12 June 1 hour walki...