never did no harm, never did no harm...

Some pictures from the 8th Juxom Street Christmas Party:


The Statue John Diet is sure to be huge in 2006....


Our hosts contemplate their gifts....


...but Mik shows them how


The Ultimate Olympian's training for 2006 was well underway...


see you in 2006!

Another sterling effort boys.

----

Before heading down to Oxford on Friday night, I went to see my neurologist for the lastest installment in the saga of the Weirdy Tingles (which starts here, carries on here, here, here, here... oh heavens... there's loads of it. You get the idea....although be sure to check out my brain)

There's basically been no change: I still have a weakness across my left shoulder and pins & needles down my left hand as well as a more general numbness across the rest of my body and down to the soles of my feet. The MRI scan revealed that this was caused by a myelitis on my cervical spinal cord. The last time I saw the neurologist, we had decided that we would "wait and see". This visit was the follow-up.

Well. It's still a myelitis and these are my options:

1) Have a spinal tap. This would most likely only serve to confirm the diagnosis and little more, so there's not much point in putting myself through it.

2) Blast the swelling with steroids and try to make it disappear. I'm not keen on this because of the side-effects of the steroids, but apparently the actual inflammation itself is likely to have gone by now, and my symptoms are being caused by the nerve damage.

3) Take pills to alleviate the symptoms i.e. the weakness, the tingling and the pins and needles. Again, some nasy side-effects, and to be honest, although I find my symptoms frustrating, and to some extent limiting, it's not exactly crippled me... so....

4) Wait and see.

So... we now wait until the spring. There are probably two different outcomes we are looking out for here:

a) it goes away, and we all shrug our shoulders and hope it never comes back

or

b) I get new symptoms, in which case it's the first sign of something else.

So here's hoping for the first of those two options....

---

Ok. I still need your votes for Earworm of the Year.

• choose the 5 tunes that have been buzzing around your head the most over the course of the last 12 months
• Put them in order 1-5
• Write a couple of words about each one
• Send them to me at the email address in my profile
• I'll score them up and do a chart.
  

I'm going to post the results a week on Friday, so you've got a few days, but don't leave it too late!

---

Phew. That was a bit of a long one. As you were....