Hampstead Heath Mens' Pond

(The following was written before Christmas and I hoped to conclude it with another swimming expedition on Christmas Day but when we arrived at noon the pond was inexplicably closed. Liverpool, of course, drew 1 - 1 at the Emirates.)

We were about to set off with heavy hearts to Waitrose with a huge festive list drawn up by my wife from the absolute authority of her sickbed (birdflu - much like manflu only "much, much worse").

I suddenly found myself saying to my son 'are you up for a swim on the Heath?' A tentative 'yes' later and we were entering the almost deserted concrete compound of the mens' pond on Hampstead Heath (one affable regular - swims every day) and looking for the dryest spot in the 40 watt sunlight.

According to the blackboard the water temperature was 4'C. The voices of caution clamoured in my head urging retreat - "you're 57, out of condition, you'll die etc... " luckily a more primal voice prevailed and I found myself descending the ladder off the jetty into water that smoked and felt like liquid fire. Not a soul in sight. The lifeguard ensconced in his hut, door closed... a single cormorant low in the water - and me somehow free of the ladder, head held high, describing a modest circle in the leaden water then back up the ladder - trying desperately to conceal unseemly haste - and onto the coconut matting of the jetty practically screaming with pain.

Considerations of pride and loss of face vanquished by the overwhelming sensations and alleviated only by the schadenfreude of watching my son going through the same ordeal. About 30 seconds later I felt warm and absolutely at ease. So much so that I dived in, swam a little further... then out. My son did the same. Suddenly the matting felt warm underfoot and my whole body felt lit from within.

We dried off, dressed and had a vigorous walk over to Parliament hill to exorcise the last vestiges of cold and it seemed that the whole of London was aglow. Scarves, dogs, parakeets, sparrowhawks, kites, smiling women... then back to the sanctuary of the car and off to Waitrose on Holloway road... only to run into the build-up for the Liverpool match around the Emirates.

We took the sensible course, abandoned the shopping expedition and returned home empty-handed to wolf down free-range eggs, bacon and potato cakes with big mugs of tea.
Luckily, I've not been held to account yet 'cause Sue's still asleep, so I'm about to slip out and watch the match in the hostile environs of the Arsenal Tavern - "needs must.." etc.

But at this moment I feel like every cell in my body and soul is alive.

I've done this before around this time of the year; once to escape the hemmed-inness of Christmas Day, and it never fails to banish the blandness and invigorate the soul. I must remember this next year. Waitrose can wait till tomorrow. Now, hopefully, I'm about to see whining wenger's finest controversially beaten in a contentious and visceral battle.

Peace to all men

Oldham Recovery Community (From Oldham Chronicle)

From tiny acorns, addiction can be conquered...
Date published: 19/08/2008
ADDICTION can be expensive not only to the purse, but to the things we value most. Relationships can be destroyed, jobs and homes can be lost, health can suffer, and the secrecy which surrounds addiction can wreck trust and lead to a life of crime to fund the habit. Reporter Marina Berry took a look at a new service which has just started in Oldham to support those who want to beat an addiction.

OLDHAM drug and alcohol addicts determined to kick the habit can take part in a national pilot scheme to give them the best help money can buy — and it’s all free. The town has been chosen for a 12-month Government-funded trial to test the success of treatment akin to that offered by The Priory and the Betty Ford Centre. A 90-day treatment package is based on a time-tested 12-step model used for more than 60 years to battle addiction. And it is the same type of treatment which high-profile celebrities fork out up to £4,500 a week to take advantage of — although theirs is residential and Oldham’s is run on a day care basis.

The service operates from an un-signed town centre office, in Church Lane in a bid to aid anonymity. It houses a team of three top counsellors, chosen for their reputation in helping people battle addiction, and Terry Maddocks, who has the title of group facilitator. Entitled Acorn Recovery Communities, it works alongside Oldham’s Drug Action Team and social landlords Threshold Housing. Help is open to anyone with an Oldham post code, and starts with a four-week RAMP (reduction and motivation programme) course. By the end of the course, people have to be completely drug or alcohol-free to move on to the 12-step programme, known as primary treatment. That involves intensive group therapy, under the guidance of counsellors such as Nick Mercer (pictured), who also has a private practice in Kensington, London. He was head-hunted for his reputation in the field, to help the service get under way.

Nick explained how the centre treats people with any addiction, and is based on a model developed by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous because, he said, it works. “When we speak about a problem honestly it takes the weight out of it. The idea is that one addict helps another,” he added. “We create a space where men and women can come and be honest about their problems. “There are a lot of people who drink heavily or take drugs but it doesn’t impinge on their quality of life. “But if it stops them going to work repeatedly on a Monday morning, if they lose their marriage or health, or they need a drink just to ‘feel normal’ then there’s a problem,” said Nick. He explained why sessions are held in groups. “Addicts are masters at defusing situations which threaten their denial — that is how they live in the world. “They will tell me things in a one-to-one situation, then say it’s just our secret, which means they are still in denial. “But if they walk through that door prepared to speak in front of a group, then there is a part of them that wants to get well. “It’s not our expertise as consultants that matters, it’s them feeling safe enough to start to ‘get real’ and speak the unspeakable in front of a group. “Every single one of us has something we find difficult or embarrassing to say. “By speaking about it, it won’t go away, but the ghosts get more ghostly and the voices get fainter. It almost becomes an asset to recognise and accept our history instead of denying it.” Nick added: “Our clients have hit rock bottom, they have endured harsh conditions and, up until then, their illness has been a secret. Only they can beat the addiction — not us, and to join the programme they have to be totally abstinent. People who come here are clean and sober. “Various research has shown that if you can keep people in treatment for 12 weeks, their level of success is greater. “They leave the programme with an understanding of what they do, rather than having something foisted upon them by us,” said Nick.

The programme involves a structured daily session from 9am until 4.30pm, with recommended weekend meetings to offer support to others on the course. Nick has lived through the problems of addiction himself. He signed up to the same type of programme to help kick a heroin addiction at the age of 37, then embarked on a journey which took him through university to gain an MA in English before training as a counsellor. He said his experience as an addict help him understand what his clients were going through. “You can’t persuade, compel or coerce anyone into treatment. “They are only there because they want to be. If that’s the case, there’s no ceiling to what they can achieve.”

Acorn Recovery Community, Oldham... John Hopkins and Nick Mercer

This week sees our agency being recognised once again for the work we do with alcoholics and addicts in Greater Manchester. On Tuesday we were visited by Baroness Massey, the current Chair of the NTA. I describe the service users as alcoholics and addicts because I want to differentiate from drug or alcohol dependence which is primarily a physical attachment, whereas our service users recognise that their dependence resides primarily in the mind and they invariably identify themselves as addicts. This is an important understanding as the clients’ assessment of their condition is the fundamental building block of their ongoing recovery.

The agency has changed dramatically over the last 4 years and these changes have been difficult. Change, however is what we ask our service users to do every day and we consider ourselves expert in this area. It is ironic however that some of the most skilled professionals who facilitate this process baulk at a cup out of place or a change in the rota. I suppose these recent years have been a salutary lesson to all the staff and have put them in touch with the highs and lows of the change process.

Excitement, fear and anxiety are emotions synonymous with change so, naturally, these feelings have ebbed and flowed within the agency during this time. The staffs’ increasing ability to understand, contain and manage this process of change has been reflected in a dramatic improvement in service user outcomes. The old adage you can’t give it away if you don’t have it springs to mind. I remember vividly the initial resistance to opening up the agency to still-using addicts. It is just four years ago when service users would get no treatment at all unless they were completely abstinent from all alcohol or drugs. I realised then that it was essential that we gave those in active addiction something achievable i.e. hope in the form of an exit strategy. Today we provide 600-700 people with therapy a year and a huge proportion of these become abstinent and enter our primary programme.

The changes in the way we work have developed through looking carefully at what we do and taking an objective perspective of the treatment system as a whole. It became apparent some years ago that agencies such as ourselves could not work alone and if we continued with a policy of passive reliance on other agencies for referrals then we would rightly wither on the vine. The responsibility to get out there and promote recovery became essential to our survival … though one in which we were best placed to act. Again, we found ourselves required to demonstrate something we asked the clients to embrace on a daily basis – the taking of responsibility, a vital part of the recovery process. In 2002 we identified a need for many of our clients leaving custody. They were provided treatment in the day but would return to unsafe environments such as local authority housing or bail hostels in the evening.

The provision of safe secure abstinent housing was provided in the form of Acorn House in 2002. Acorn House has provided a steady state contract via Supporting People to give the most vulnerable the opportunities to reintegrate into mainstream society. The provision of abstinent houses has expanded and has seen partnerships between registered social landlords such as Threshold and Addulham Housing. The increase in provision will see residential treatment beds increase to over 100 by 2009. This provision will be spread over Manchester, Stockport and Oldham.

The changes undertaken have been in response to identified need but they have also been strategic and evidence based. I can remember years ago working for the Probation Service in Manchester and being excited by the “What Works “agenda. I foolishly believed that the powers that be would look at effective practitioners locally and we would all try to emulate their good practice. More recently the monitoring of services has become an integral part of any social care agency. However, the obsession in drug treatment appears to have been with engagement and retention rather than what is actually done.

Over the last two years we have seen around 80% planned discharges from our residential facilities. For the purposes of this article I define a planned discharge as 1 year clean and sober, moving into independent accommodation and in education, training or employment – a formidable achievement by anyone’s criteria. Since 2002 there has never been any case of anyone committing an offence while resident. These outcomes have been one of the main reasons we have moved toward an integrated treatment and housing model. The agency has also developed wrap around services and has trained recovery coaches and mentors to assist in the recovery journey.
Though the model has developed to address local need it is underpinned by the theoretical model described by William White and Ernest Kurtz. The Recovering Community model contains 3 key elements which have become a mantra to many of the staff. The core components of the model are;
• Pre Treatment Engagement
• In Treatment Enhancement
• Post treatment Recovery Support.




The reason we are in business revolves around the quality and effectiveness of our core treatment programme. For many years Acorn has been providing intensive therapy combined with a robust family group. All service users are provided linkage to local recovery support services such as Narcotics Anonymous. Oak House addiction Clinic is part of the Acorn Recovering Communities Project - formerly ADAS, the Alcohol and Drug Abstinence Service. The change of name coincides with the change of philosophy. For over three years the agency has been working with still-using addicts providing pre-treatment engagement in the form of the Reduction and Motivation Programme, RAMP. Acorn sees abstinence as being a part of the recovery journey but not as an end in itself.

The agency delivers the RAMP from various sites in greater Manchester including HMP Manchester Strangeways. The prison programme runs daily and has provided many inmates with insights into their addiction. One of the main aims of the RAMP programme is to encourage entrenched drug users and alcoholics to consider a life without substances and continue their journey into tier 4 services. The prison program has the capacity to provide 360 inmates with treatment a year and estimates almost half of these will enter further therapy at another prison or within the community.

In the community the agency runs the RAMP from primary sites such as community drug and alcohol teams and detox facilities and works in partnership with other agencies such as Lifeline in Manchester.
The agencies expertise however lies in its primary programme which has been running for 11 years since 1997. The primary programme is established and provides quality therapy to many of the most socially dislocated members of the greater Manchester community. The success of the agency has seen rapid expansion recently and the addition of another primary treatment site based in Oldham. The Director of Treatment, Win Parry, was formerly treatment director at the Priory and has over 25 years experience in the field. In addition to the director’s professional experience the 3 treatment managers have over 50 years experience working in the treatment industry and combined with Win Parry provide the agency with a huge repository of skills and knowledge.

The newest and largest of the recent projects is The Oldham Recovery Community. This innovative scheme is managed by a team led by Nick Mercer. Nick has worked in a variety of challenging prison environments where a too rigid adherence to the dictates and time-scales of traditional treatment would have rendered meaningful work impossible. He is at ease with delivering a flexible inclusive model that maximises the effectiveness of the recovery window. I asked him to summarise his views on effective treatment. This is what he said:

“Simply, you have to kindle a spark of hope in those whose predominant mood is often resignation or despair. You have to give them a glimpse of a world that is better than the one they currently inhabit… and you have to convince them of their eligibility for inclusion in that world. You can only do that successfully if you can produce a microcosm of that world in the treatment environment. Therefore, the aim of treatment is to produce a safe and healing environment that makes concrete the concept of recovery as a passage to freedom and a richer life, accessible to all who’ve exhausted the validity of self-medication as a meaningful life choice. It is a place where the inhabitants can begin to taste the fruits of recovery for themselves.

Most counsellors would agree that ‘the therapeutic value of one addict helping another’ is the single most powerful component of primary treatment. It is the immersion in an active peer group imbued with ideas of service and selfless action (the antidote to the narcissism of addiction) – that holds the client in the crucial 1st day of treatment. This is especially important in a day programme where the onus is on the client to return. It is the ultimate manifestation of service user involvement.

I suppose for a perfectly realised vision of a successful continuum of recovery we need look no further than the organic world of 12-step fellowships where total abstinence is simply an aspiration (rather than the essential requirement it has to be in primary treatment) and ‘the desire to stop using or drinking’ is the only requirement for inclusion. If we can successfully replicate the spirit of this philosophy in Oldham then we have the makings of a community of recovery that can have a profound impact on the society in which we live.”

August Bank Holiday - Update on the Pissporeids

Through the citified light of roof top london I saw one spectacular shooting star - a vapour trail after image etched on the inside of the eye - and that was it. So much for the Perseids... and the Leonids, and Halley's comet, and Telstar and the Kohoutek comet and all the rest of the no-show bastards of antiquity.

Well, almost - the Hale-Bopp comet delivered, hanging in the sky for months with a fiery silver tail over Bruno Allordi's Accordion shop. Gone now - both of them.


( Childhood cluster on the undressed splintery pine vertigo of the old fire escape in Ivanhoe Road waiting for Sputnik or somesuch to pass over, freezing incomprehension circa 1957. My father, "Is that it?" "No, its a plane"... hopes raised and dashed in zeitgeist rhythm, a consistent tradition of natural disappointment )

Hence my lack of surprise at the discovery of a huge immeasurable void close to earth (see below). It just confirmed all my previous experience. So much for the promise of outer space.

Meanwhile, here on earth I hear the greatest performance of Mahler's 3rd Symphony I'm ever likely to at the Albert Hall on Wednesday. Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival orchestra (plus Anna Larsson to sing Neitzsche's "O, Mensch"). Then, Friday, I hear Pierre-Laurent Aimard play Ligeti's piano studies - he turned the piano into an instrument of awe and terror culminating in "the devil's staircase" which left the whole hall spellbound as the basso profundo thunderous climax ebbed away into a breath-held silence.

Then, this morning, up to Hampstead Heath for a similiarly terror-inducing dive into the rain-replenished freezing (slight exaggeration - 17'C 63' F) depths of the almost empty men's pond.

So, to alleviate the mindnumbing horror of the expanding void - a picture of Rupert and Sue

Great 'cosmic nothingness' found

Astronomers have found an enormous void in space that measures nearly a billion light-years across.
It is empty of both normal matter - such as galaxies and stars - and the mysterious "dark matter" that cannot be seen directly with telescopes.
The "hole" is located in the direction of the Eridanus constellation and has been identified in data from a survey of the sky made at radio wavelengths.
The discovery will be reported in a paper in the Astrophysical Journal.
Previous sky surveys that have traced the large-scale structure of the nearby Universe have long shown, for example, how the clustering of galaxies is strung into vast filaments and sheets that are separated by great gaps.
But the void discovered by a University of Minnesota team is about 1,000 times the volume of what would be expected in typical cosmic gaps.
"It's hard even for astronomers to picture how big these things are," conceded Minnesota's Professor Lawrence Rudnick.
"If you were to travel at the speed of light, it would take you several years to get to the nearest stars in our own Milky Way galaxy; but if you were to go to this hole and enter one side, you'd have to travel for a billion years before you would get to the other side," he told BBC News.
The void is roughly 6-10 billion light-years away and takes a sizeable chunk out of the visible Universe in its direction.
Dark evidence
The team used data from the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory's VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) to make its discovery. The VLA - which stands for Very Large Array - is a collection of 27 radio telescopes in New Mexico.
The finding is said to fit neatly with observations of the Universe's "oldest light" - the famous Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, the study of which has earned several scientists the Nobel Prize.
This is the radiation that comes from just 380,000 years after the Big Bang when the Universe had cooled to such a degree that hydrogen atoms could exist. Before that time, scientists say, the Universe would have been so hot that matter and light would have been "coupled" - the cosmos would have been opaque.

THE CMB - OLD AND COLD

Nasa Probes have mapped the Cosmic Microwave Background which is all around us in space
This radiation from the infant Universe shines at weak radio (microwave) wavelengths
The maps show up tiny temperature fluctuations - the mottled colours above
These fluctuations correspond to the early distribution of matter in the fledgling cosmos
Nasa's WMap satellite sees a cold spot lying in the path of the newly found void

'Ancient light' takes Nobel

Today, this light shines at microwave wavelengths at a frigid -270C; and observations of the CMB made by Nasa's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotopy Probe show a particular "cold spot" in the direction of the newly identified void.
The explanation for this may lie in the enigmatic "dark energy" that scientists know so little about but which is said to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe.
Light particles passing through the void would be expected to lose a little more energy than those passing through space cluttered with matter - if dark energy is stretching the Universe apart at a faster and faster rate.
Scientists refer to this as the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect and a corresponding "warm spot" in the CMB associated with an area of space dominated by a supercluster of galaxies was identified some years ago.
"In essence, this latest study gives us a very elegant demonstration of the existence of dark energy in a way which is very convincing," commented Professor Carlos Frenk, the director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, UK.
"We keep getting evidence for dark energy, this component of the Universe which is so dominant, and yet we still have only a tiny glimmer of what it could be."
The reason the void exists is not known. "That's going to be a challenge for people that work on the development of structure in the Universe. It's a very hot topic in the cosmology right now," said Professor Rudnick.

Perseids in anticipation

Well, Its 9.30pm BST and the sky is clear. The meteors should begin to appear from 10pm in the north east. My son's opening the trapdoor so we can watch from the comparative darkness of the walled flat roof. Meanwhile a petrified forest of cypresses found in an opencast coal mine in Hungary - 8 million years old. Thats what triggered the poem about the vanished eskimaux - oh yeah, and Tony Wilson RIP. Sometimes when I'm panicking about the minutiae of here I need these events to drip some perspective into my life. Serves to remind me our lives are a flicker in the vast gulfs between things. In the words of Herman Melville "More of these matters later". Now up to see the shooting stars while Sue and Adam watch "Big Brother" below. Its 10 to 10... 10 minutes to go!

Fear of Work

He realised as he listened to the overture from Tannhauser and read the liner notes that Wagner was 53 when he wrote Siegfried’s Idyll... and that he was 53. What it meant he knew not but, somehow, derived some borrowed glory from it.


“Therefore, I am...” he pondered, “I am what? He? Him?" (confused) Siegfried?"
How quickly", he mused, somewhat clumsily, "we seek us in there – that is ... ourselves".

“I was in the kitchen when he was shot, burned, beheaded, drowned. Yes, I thought... that’s it then... When the wave struck I was upstairs and couldn’t remember why I’d gone up there, stood perplexed in the cluttered room. Then, later, as the tragedy unfolded, remembered and reflected, thought and saw, pondered on the sixth sense that had caused me to head for higher ground and thus ensured my survival.

I took comfort and reassurance from this simple incontrovertible fact. In the dawning realisation that - No, I was not stupid or indeed senile but simply possessed of the wonderful gift of prescience. It has to be said, I was in England at the time. However, the impulse was sound even if the geography was not.”

4.30pm Sunday... So much for Gotterdammerung at the Albert Hall - it started 1/2 an hour ago. Still, part of me's slightly relieved - 5 hrs for the performance and 2 intervals lasting 1hr and 1/2 hr respectively. Nearly 7 hours standing. I saw it last year at the Royal Opera House from a decent seat, Lisa Gasteen as Brunhilde so I doubt even that I'm ready to hear it again. Perhaps in another 10 years.

We spent the morning picnicking and reading books by the river Lea - me revisiting "Junky", well, at least the introduction (Ginsberg). Seems I can only read for a page or so nowadays then I lose interest. I've agreed to work 3 days at the Island Day Programme this week and its hard not to curse myself for my jingoistic eagerness in volunteering next weeks Nick for the Passchendaele hell of primary treatment.

The unit and its team are beyond reproach, the clients, too, are blameless. I've just reached the point once more where I cannot work in a rehab (No! No! No!) but I'm too tight or economically insecure to refuse the work. So I'm making a commitment to myself to do 5 more days and thats it. Two weeks in Turkey then the rest of September to find something new and extend my private practice.

Suddenly the Sunday shadow of the fear of work begins to lift and ennui gives way to energy - so much so that I'm gonna have a justified hour in bed contemplating the infinite vistas of my new-found freedom.

PS I never got my mirror either.

Sunday 11th August 2007

About to head out into the adventure that is Sunday in London. This evening, Gotterdamerung on the proms - 5 hours, unstaged, sung in german. I'll be standing in the arena, just to be sure I get the full affekt.

First, the Redcorn scrapyard at Tottenham for the pre-MOT annual search for the smashed Fiesta door mirror. Meanwhile, a peculiarly apposite poem.


Lament for the Dorsets
(Eskimos extinct in the 14th century A.D.)

Animal bones and some mossy tent rings
scrapers and spearheads carved ivory swans
all that remains of the Dorset giants
who drove the Vikings back to their long ships
talked to spirits of earth and water
– a picture of terrifying old men
so large they broke the backs of bears
so small they lurk behind bone rafters
in the brain of modern hunters
among good thoughts and warm things
and come out at night
to spit on the stars

The big men with clever fingers
who had no dogs and hauled their sleds
over the frozen northern oceans
awkward giants
..........................killers of seal
they couldn’t compete with the little men
who came from the west with dogs
Or else in a warm climatic cycle
The seals went back to cold waters
and the puzzled Dorsets scratched their heads
with hairy thumbs around 1350 A.D.
– couldn’t figure it out
went around saying to each other
plaintively
..............'What’s wrong? What happened?
..............Where are the seals gone?’
And died

Twentieth century people
apartment dwellers
executives of neon death
warmakers with things that explode
– they have never imagined us in their future
how could we imagine them in the past
squatting among the moving glaciers
six hundred years ago
with glowing lamps?
As remote or nearly
as the trilobites and swamps
when coal became
or the last great reptile hissed
at a mammal the size of a mouse
that squeaked and fled

Did they realize at all
what was happening to them?
Some old hunter with one lame leg
a bear had chewed
Sitting in a caribou skin tent
– the last Dorset?
Let’s say his name was Kudluk
carving 2-inch ivory swans
for a dead grand-daughter
taking them out of his mind
the places in his mind
where pictures are
He selects a sharp stone tool
to gouge a parallel pattern of lines
on both sides of the swan
holding it with his left hand
bearing down and transmitting
his body’s weight
from brain to arm and right hand
and one of his thoughts
turns to ivory
The carving is laid aside
in beginning darkness
at the end of hunger
after a while wind
blows down the tent and snow
begins to cover him

After 600 years
the ivory thought
is still warm
© Al Purdy, 2000

Vertex VX 950 PROVE 2 Hep C Trial Conclusion

Quick factual update - unfortunately the low positive on the 85th and final day of treatment was a presage of things to come. The virus came back with a vengeance (1,450,000 IU/ml) one month later. On Thursday 14th June I discussed it with the Professor and elected to wait until (and if) the new treatment is licensed in 3 or 4 years' time or so before I try treatment again (as long as my LFT's don't go through the roof, ie 200 or above). I had a fibroscan while I was there(a non-invasive biopsy) which confirmed mild fibrosis. My latest Liver Function Tests read -

ALT 102
AST 85
HCV RNA 757,969 IU/ml.

Pre-treatment (Dec '06) they were 162 and 129 respectively.

My conclusions? The VX950 clearly worked and was a massive improvement on current standard of care treatment consisting of interferon and ribavarin alone but suppressed rather than eliminated some variants of the virus.

It needs the ribavarin to eliminate these variants - and it needs longer. I've no doubt that if I'd been able to consolidate my earlier apparent clearance of the virus with another 6 months of conventional SOC Peg/Rib treatment I'd be genuinely clear. Initially I was emotionally over-invested in the Vertex... bought into the excessive cure-all hype... 'cause I wanted to believe. But now, from the sober perspective of 4 months on, despite the initial disappointment of the viral return, I'm glad I got the opportunity to take part in the trial. What I gained was a wealth of information, not just about the mechanics of the virus but also about myself - a modest lesson in stoicism.

I had negligible side-effects during and after treatment (none from the VX950) and remain in good health with improved liver function. My treatment at the Hampstead Royal Free Hospital was (and remains) superb. And, although it was never my first priority, I'm experiencing the novel glow of altruism (thrust upon me so to speak) having - albeit unwittingly - infinitesimally increased the pool of available information about hepatitus C.

If the result of these trials is an effective 6 month treatment for people with genotype 1a/1b hep c (with or without Ribavarin)- a result that currently appears highly likely - then Vertex will have achieved a major breakthrough in the treatment of Hep C that could spell the difference between life and death for thousands of people. If the result is simply a more effective 12 month treatment with improved outcomes... the same applies; though having analysed all the available information, my money's on the former, ie 6 months Peg/Riba plus 12 weeks VX 950 with massively improved outcomes for genotype 1a/1b sufferers. Having said that, thats my last word on Hep C for the next few years. Best of luck to all my fellow trial participants.

Now out into a late summer london basking in glorious sunshine leavened by a cooling breeze. I'm off work, and its Friday!

Prove 2 VX-950 Vertex Trial Results Update

I finally got my result for Day 85, 29th March (see previous entries),the last day of the 12 week arm of the Vertex VX-950 PROVE 2 trial.

29th March Day 85 HCV RNA PCR TAQMAN 1220 IU/ml

And 2 weeks later (the so-called 'safety check' visit) -

11th April <30 IU/ml no HCV RNA detect

So, what does it mean?

Well, I was clear of the virus from the 29th day then, bafflingly, unexpectedly, produced this faint positive on the 85th day, 5 minutes before my final dose of VX-950. I'd had my last shot of interferon a week before.

Professor Dusheiko was "absolutely happy" with this reading, I'm reliably told by Dr Fleur.

"He believes its simply the expulsion of dead viral material and has seen this phenomenon before".

Now, in all honesty I'd normally be struggling with that... except for the fact of this negative result(no virus detected) 2 weeks later, (11th April).That lends credence to the professor's theory. From all the research I've done, I've never seen a case where its slipped back like that during the medication, only to disappear 2 weeks later when the medications ceased and all the defences are dismantled. It doesn't make sense. Unless he's right... and its gone for good - and its taking its dead with it. Lets hope so.

The only other factor which may have a bearing. Once the medication ceased and I was no longer prevented by the protocols of the trial I re-commenced my TCM (traditional chinese medicine) the following Monday with a herbal rescue package from the legendary John Renshaw at the Blenheim Project.

Now, I've no way of knowing exactly (or even approximately) whats been happening in the cellular labyrinth of my own body - however, I felt from the moment I started the trial that it had worked, and, equally curiously, when I ended it I was beset with viral dreams and plagued by anxieties that it was back. I experienced the old symptoms once more - sweaty, feverish, cold and aching, angry and obsessed. And none of that makes sense in frontal cortex daylight, even if it was back.

And now? Nothing. I feel great. Better than I ever have, more energy - physical and mental, more hope. Awash with ideas, unafraid. In short, its gone. Whatever malign hydra held me has been sloughed off. Time to trust my intuition again .... And the first thing my intuition tells me is to get down the Blenheim on Monday and get fully armed with herbs and acupuncture ... and a couple of months supply of John's own liver-friendly vitamin capsules.

Epping Forest, an antidote to Work

It may look like a convoluted form of narcissicism (the photos)but it helps to balance and exorcise the more pathologised aspects of my life ie the addiction treatment work (which I'm heartily sick of) and the ghosts of Hep C which I am equally heartily sick of. Courage - of the heart.

I walked out of work today in the middle of the morning meeting, over a "clinical" decision I didn't agree with. Got out onto the Kings Road and in the mixture of illicit 'delicious 'cause unexpected' freedom and survivor guilt at leaving my colleagues behind, there was also the sobering realisation that I'm done with this fucking work - at least in this front-line primary treatment incarnation. Our old clinical supervisor, Andrew Akers, once told me burn-out was a necessary part of the job. "Its like Masai 'slash and burn'," he said, "it encourages new growth and prompts change". Well, yeah, I hear that; its not like I haven't been here before,7 years working in prisons for RAPt, the last 3 of which spent taking a 12 step Programme to young offenders - a thankless task eventually (and probably pointless - the jury's still out for me on that one).

Before that Lorne House, Turning Point, a residential drug project for young people in Hackney, no discernable ideology other than whatever confused superstitions and prejudices the benighted crew of well-meaning inadequates (for the most part) who manned the place brought with them. And before that the 493 Project (Addaction needle exchange living off the fat of the HIV money - for a time; gone now). People coming in on crutches and Zimmer frames brought low by the new-found ability of Temazepam to shape-change once safely ensconsed in the femoral vein and metamorphose into a half-brick. I've clearly reached my shelf life.

And all the time this forest, 20 minutes from my house, continues, as its always done. These from yesterday -