graemef.com

Spoke to the consultant (Mr Harrison) today who gives the following update on James:

Mr Harrison is very pleased with the progress so far, and because the traction is working so well, he wants to leave him for another 3 weeks before fitting his jacket.

The jacket will hopefully be fitted on 21^st May and James will stay in hospital for a further week so the physio’s can help him back onto his feet. Naturally he is going to be a bit unsteady after spending 6 weeks lying down. He will spend a total of 6 weeks in the jacket; so will be "free" of restrictions on approximately 3^rd July, which is a week before we go on holiday.

The consultant sees no future problems for James with this injury, but will have some stiffness/restricted movement in his neck, but he is young and this may fade with time. He should have no problems going back to a full, active life, but it is recommended that he "think very carefully" before undertaking any extreme/contact sports for the rest of his life. Knowing James this will be a little difficult, as he is very active, loves new challenges and anything a little dangerous!

Once we are back from our holidays I would like to arrange a small party for James and his school friends/family so watch this space for details nearer the time.

Once again, thanks for all your support and messages of goodwill; James will get back to you all as soon as he can but unfortunately he has broken his mobile so he is incommunicado at the moment.

Can I wait for Half-Life 2? Not much longer!

In the meantime, here are some screenshots of what’s to come… (via FlexBeta)

Whilst looking for a product name generator, I stumbled on this lot. Hours of fun.

Well, what can I say, James has been absolutely on top form the last 4 days or so and it has been lovely to see his great strength of character shining through again. 

He is being cheeky to all the nurses and keeping me in stitches with a running commentary on just about everything going on around him.  Next set of x-rays will be done on Friday but we have been led to believe that he will not be out of traction until about 21st May, but the x-rays are just to see if everything is keeping in place as it should. 

James’ school friends (and teachers) will be pleased to know that he will be sitting (or lying!) his SATS exams and he is being given tuition each day by a selection of teachers (today was maths and he said he learnt loads) and now wants a private tutor instead of going back to school! 

I topped up his phone with £30 today so expect lots of txts/calls from him over next few days.  Keep those comments coming, although it does sometimes take a couple of days for James to read them as Graeme doesn’t get to visit as much as he’d like due to work/home commitments (i.e. I keep him chained to desk or kitchen sink!). 

Anyways, love to all who have posted comments and James hopes to see you all soon.

I was getting a fair bit of comment spam (just like email spam, but in the blog comments…) on my old site, so I have enabled user accounts on the new one.

Anonymous comments are still allowed, but they are moderated. There will be a delay between an anonymous comment being posted while I check that it’s OK.

Comments left by a registered user are unmoderated and show up straight away.

Hope you don’t mind!

He was in good spirits yesterday. He says he’s in no pain (except when he has his daily injection into his stomach), he’s just "extremely bored."

Anyway - here are some pictures, as promised:

It’s so good to see James smiling again!

Fark links to a touching reaction from the Tron costume guy:

"I’m an Internet Phenomenon. I’m on the tiger; I might as well grab his ears and enjoy the ride."

BBC: Telewest is to offer the UK’s first 3Mbps broadband service, as rival NTL doubles the speed of its services.

Whoa! That’s the first I’ve heard… I don’t think I’ll be upgraded to 1200Kbps for the price I’m currently paying (£19.99/month) when ntl are charging £37.99 for 1.5Mbps!

I hope I’m proved wrong.

Update: Here’s the important bit from the official press release.

At entry level, the 150Kbps service increases to 300Kbps (£17.99), the mid tier service increases from 600Kbps to 750Kbps (£24.99), while at the high end the 1Mb service increases to 1.5Mb (£37.99).

It’s been a while since I took A-level maths, but IIRC an increase from 600Kbps to 750Kbps isn’t "double." Still, it’s better than a poke in the eye.

As a Pocket PC newbie, I’ve been trying to find out what the essential applications every iPAQ user must have. Jasmeet has just posted a very useful list which I’ll work my way through.

Jasmeet seems to have a HP iPAQ h4155 Pocket PC like me, and that comes with Windows Mobile 2003 which includes the .NET Compact Framework, so I’m not sure what that’s doing in the list.

The other thing I’m slightly concerned about is that the device seems to be called "Nikki"… Perhaps I will grow attached to my PDA in the same way, given time. It’s near drowning yesterday did bring us closer together

OK, I know we’ve been pretty poor at providing James’ many fans with up-to-date pictures of how he’s getting on, but I gave Lynn the camera this morning and asked James’ friends (who are you, BTW? ) to make sure she took some photos with it today. If she hasn’t then I will personally take the camera up there myself this evening and take some myself!

Thanks again for all your comments and emails for James. Please, when you tell people about James mention this website - hopefully that will help cut down the endless phone calls we get from people asking for updates! When we have news, it goes here!

Unfortunately, by the nature of the injury and the amount of time it takes to heal there isn’t much news at the moment, although emotionally I think James is finding the waiting difficult. He still hasn’t really come to terms with his injury and is depressed about how long he is going to be in hospital.

Thanks again for your support! It all helps.