Kruger & Sabie Park in winter

We arrived in Sabie Park on 1st July. It was nice to be home after all this time away. The place looked quite dry. We enjoyed nice cool sunny days, but cold nights. We spent the first few days getting the house cleaned & unpacking. No one had been in the house since January, so it was very dirty. 

Sabie River.

At the picnic site.

Me with Cath & Rob.

We have known each other since 1986!

Sean & his girlfriend.

We spent most of our time around the house or at the picnic site. Rob & Cath arrived from Nigeria & it was great to see them again. They had their son Sean with them & his Brazilian girlfriend.

Elephants crossing the Sabie River 

from the picnic site.

Hippos grazing on an island in the river.

Kudu coming to drink at the river.

Saddle-billed Stork

The picnic site is a great place for seeing flyovers.

Immature African Fish Eagle.

This individual was quickly driven out 

by the resident pair of adults.

Adult Martial Eagle.

Large Spotted Genet

One evening we went for a meal at Rob & Cath's house, which was very nice. We also had an unexpected visitor!

 We stayed home until 9th July when we had to return to Pretoria to have my port installed ready for my chemotherapy to start. We returned to Sabie Park on 14th July.

White Rhino

Cape Buffalo

Steenbok

Dwarf Mongoose

Pink-backed Pelican at Sunset Dam

Sabota Lark

As soon as I started chemotherapy I started feeling unwell, but could still function albeit slowly. Somedays were worse than others & I could be totally out of it. We only visited Kruger a couple of times, but one day we saw a great rarity for the park in the form of a Pink-backed Pelican. 

Vultures arriving

128 White backed Vultures came down, 

with small numbers of the other species.

White-backed Vulture

White-headed Vulture

Nice to see this rapidly declining species.

The 22nd July proved to be a red letter day! Mid morning the Vultures started arriving. There had been a Lion kill in the river bed, but try as we might we couldn't see it properly because of the reeds. It was just in front of our house & we were in prime position to see all the Vultures arriving. It was a spectacular sight seeing them plummeting down so close to us.

Thick-billed Cuckoo

We then moved to the picnic site to see if we could get a better view of the kill (we didn't) but we found a Thick-billed Cuckoo! This is a rare species here, normally seen in the summer. Winter records such as this are very rare indeed. This individual stayed for several weeks & seemed to have territory between the picnic site & my house. Great to see such a rare species so well. Normally very difficult to spot, unless display flighting over the woodland.

Bush Squirrels, sunning themselves in the 

early morning sun.

Leopard

A pity that the light was coming from the

 wrong direction for photographs

Tawny Eagle

Martial Eagle

The next few days were spent around Sabie Park because I was enduring terrible side effects from the chemotherapy. We didn't visit Kruger again until 28th July when we did our usual circuit from the hodse down the Waterhole Road & Transport Dam & back via Skukuza. It was a lovely winters day with blue skies although the game viewing was nothing exceptional. The only thing of note was a good sighting of a Leopard in a tree.

A pair of Egyptian Geese on the Sabie River

African Pied Wagtail

Cape Buffalo coming to drink

Blue Wildebeest have had a very good breeding

 season in Sabie Park this year

Nyala is now a regular visitor to the garden

This individual is present nearly every morning

Lizard Buzzard is now an uncommon

 to rare visitor to SP.

Fork tailed Drongo

Retz's Helmetshrike is a regular visitor

 to my land

Ashy Flycatcher

Vervet Monkeys are a constant threat to

general security around the house.

Thick-tailed Bushbaby is a regular nocturn al visitor

We yet again spent the next week at home, just visiting the picnic site when I felt well enough.

The week my life unraveled!

We arrived back in South Africa on 21st June. It was good to be back, but I knew something was not quite right with my body. Just after Rowan's Wedding, (while we were in the villa in the south of France) I started to get really tired & had to go for an afternoon siesta every day. However, alarm bells didn't start ringing until we went to the waterpark with all the family. I then went for a bird walk around the lake but only managed around 300 m before I suddenly got very tired indeed. The ground was flat but I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. I knew then that all was not right with me.

Going for my liver biopsy.

So we arranged an appointment with our local doctor who referred me to the local hospital. There I underwent two CAT scans & an MRI. These revealed that I had metacystic colon cancer, which had travelled to my liver. I then underwent a liver biopsy just to make sure & this confirmed that the cancer was also in my liver. The stage was 4 A, so my outlook is particularly poor. 

Metacystic cancer cannot be cured, treatment happens in order to prolong life. I then got all my medical papers together & a course of chemotherapy was started in Nelspruit. Both Delana & I decided that Sabie Park would be our best place to be. Nice & quiet & yet with wildlife all around us. 

My chemotherapy course was an infusion every month for six months, which was conducted in the hospital & took around six hours. Whilst undertaking the infusion I felt reasonably OK but shortly afterwards it really hit me hard: chronic fatigue, loss of balance & really feeling terribly ill all the time. The other side effect was constant diarrhea, which really drained my energy levels further & in the first month I lost 15 kgs in weight. I was also on a course of oral chemotherapy for three weeks, then a week off before the whole cycle begins again. 

Clare flew out for a week to help look after me. It was great to have her around & she really helped a lot with nutrition etc. Delana as usual had been wonderful & basically did everything for me for the first couple of months. Sometimes when I was suffering my back was giving me a lot of pain & I could hardly move around. Other times I couldn't speak or eat anything. Eating or trying to eat was a real problem for me. Everything tasted like mud & made the diarrhea even worse. It was a very hard time in my life. 

After the third cycle the oncologist decided to warm the infusion to room temperature instead of the much lower, colder temperatures used previously. This seemed to lessen the side effects considerably. The doctors ( I have two) are very kind & explain everything to me. However, I don't believe they have been totally honest with me regarding the side effects. Go & live your life they say! This is while I can hardly walk, have chemo fogged brain & feel totally terrible all the time. 

As the chemotherapy has progressed, the side effects have diminished somewhat & I now can walk a little & enjoy a bit of birding. I finished my course of chemo a couple of days ago & so far have enjoyed two good days. I go for another CAT scan on 27th November to see if the course of chemotherapy has done some good & reduced the cancer.

I received relatively good news from my results on 27th. The two large tumors on my liver & colon had shrunk dramatically & there was no further spread into my lungs, lymph nodes or kidneys. Good news indeed! I had a chat with the doctor & we scheduled a PET scan in Cape Town on 6th December. This will determine if I can have an operation on my liver to remove the tumor. If it is just one tumor in one place then the operation is on, but if the tumor has spread in several parts of my liver then there is no point in operating. The liver operation will significantly alter my prospects of living a little longer. Fingers crossed!

We drove to Cape Town from Pearly Beach on 6th December. We arrived at the hospital early, but they managed to fit me in before my appointment time! Nice! I had two radioactive isotopes infused in my body & waited an hour for it to take affect. Then it was into the PET scanning machine which was no problem at all. The scanning lasted about 20 minutes, then I left the hospital with the promise of my oncologist in Nelspruit getting the results in two days time. And that is exactly what happened! Very efficient! 

The results of the PET scan were far better than I could have reasonably expected. First, the tumor on my liver has ben reduced to scar tissue & it appears that the cancer is no longer active there. This will be confirmed by another MRI scan later. This also means that I no longer have to have a liver operation. Second, the tumor in my colon has reduced by a further 1.2 cm, which means that it can now be removed by an operation. This will take place in Pretoria by surgeon Haynes, the same person who conducted my liver biopsy. This operation will take place sometime in January. I also feel a lot better in myself. I can now walk properly again & go birding. I have a much more normal life these days. I still get very tired from the oral chemotherapy & sometimes feel dizzy, but in general I am OK. 

We are in Pearly at the moment & this means I can take gentle strolls around the village & foreshore. Sea watching is also possible from the veranda. Looking forward to Clare coming out for a week over Christmas. 

An East Coast Boat Trip off the UAE

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France: Rowan's Wedding!

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