On the way back...

I've been in a very dark place for a while now - something to do with being in constant pain, and having constant nausea, not to mention the lack of energy, the cold sweats, and, nearly forgot (!) all those loverly burns! 

Of course the kitten has been an absolute godsend, keeping me company, purring away while ripping my hands to pieces (I look like I've started self-harming!).  When I've been too ill to scrape myself off the sofa, I've managed to get to the kitchen to feed him, so he's forced me to make a physical effort.  So it hasn't been all bad.  Also have the shiny new laptop, a hubby to die for (oops - really should rephrase that!), and wonderful kids.  And I am still here.

So these things have helped somewhat in digging me out of the depression I'd been stuck in, like sinking sand.  The haircut helped too, but yesterday I must confess to crying for much of the day.  I was sad because I packed all my teaching files away; my career is now in 9 large boxes on top of the office cupboards.  My briefcase looks forlorn and un-used.  I was mourning my life because my life as I knew it, my life prior to November last year has gone.  There was no teaching of fastrack this summer, and no modules to be written/updated for September.  No more wages.  I have to re-evaluate who I am, where I'm going, and what I'm going to do with my life (and of course we don't know how much life I've got left either - much as no one wants to think of that fact, including me.

Only I have to live with it every day.  And it is very stressful.

Which is why I wanted to keep up with my riding.  That time each week where the only thing to be considered is your relationship with the horse you are riding/handling.  It's like meditation because the mind is concentrated on one activity 100%, and I love it.

Well, today I finally got back in the saddle, and even lasted the full half hour, although I had to take it easy and work at a walk now and then.  It was fantastic.  I was grinning from ear to ear, cantering around the school, sitting in balance and riding as well as ever.  What a relief (I thought I might've had to start from scratch again due to such muscle wastage and loss of fitness).

I am officially on my way back from the chemo and radiotherapy, and although I don't see the oncologist until 23rd July, and there won't be a scan for ages after that, I think as long as I can get out and ride, I'll be able to cope a lot better with whatever they say.  At least that's the plan at any rate.

How are you?!

I know I shouldn't complain, but after 10 months (OMG!) of illness, it is really starting to piss me off when people ask how I am but aren't content with a short response, i.e. once on the subject, they won't get off it again. Don't get me wrong - I know it's because people care and are interested, and that is wonderful. I do want people to ask how I am, and sometimes I want to talk about the whole illness thing, but there are times when I've forgotten about it for a short (and blessed) while - times when I just want to say, "Well, I've been better," and leave it at that. I don't want to think about the next appointment with the oncologist, or when the next scan will be, let alone what happens after that!

You see this living with cancer business is just so challenging. When I've been too ill to do anything, too ill to think straight, I've just been getting through the hours/days/weeks, but in the last week I've started picking up again. I have such a long way to go, but can now go to the supermarket, or do a bit of cleaning. It's a long and lonely day when you're ill - the rest of the world are living their lives, going to work, going out and about etc. I am stuck in all day and might not speak to another person (apart from my mum and dad!) from 8.30 am till 3.30 pm. It is depressing, especially when you're well enough to want to do thing and go places, but not well enough to actually do anything about it. So the upshot of it is, when the phone rings, or someone visits, I don't want to focus on this horrible thing I'm having to live with. I don't want to face the reality of my current situation, because I do enough of that when I'm alone for long stretches of time - it's sometimes difficult to focus on anything else as every thought of 'the future' begs the question, "How long is my future likely to be?"

So do ask sick people how they are. Do listen if they want to talk about it. But please remember that they might not have the4 answers to questions like, "So what happens next?", or might not want to face it at that moment (and why waste good company talking about cancer/doctors/treatments/bowel function/etc.?). I mean, I'd like to hear about how you are too!

Oh dear. I do hope I haven't upset anyone with my little rant! Please don't stop asking me how I am!

POSTSCRIPT

The amount of people who read this post, and rang me saying, "I won't ask how you are..."!!! I should try to be clearer, obviously. It isn't the asking how are you, but the going beyond the call of reasonable duty. It's the incessant digging for yet more information that I just don't have - and the unspoken, well are you going to live then, or what? question that sidles in alongside interrogations that would put the Spanish inquisition to shame.

I didn't mean to put anyone out, and the funniest thing of all, is that the people who have wound me up so don't even read my blog! It's people who should know better, who should've spoken to my parents and found out that way, the ins and outs of the cat's backside that is my current state of health. Those who read my blog know that I tell you what I know already, that I write it down so that I don't have to go over it again and again like endless re-runs on UK Gold!

I'm preaching to converted here and I thank you all for letting me have my little rants!

A turning point - fingers' crossed...

Today has been fabulous!

I got up and booked a riding lesson for next week! First one in 10 weeks it'll be! Sooo excited!

Then J came over to visit which is always lovely.

And my new laptop arrived and it is completely fab and better than I thought, and I'm using it now to blog. Feeling very spoiled rotten.

I had a haircut too, as the chemo and radio had all but killed it off. What do you think? It hasn't been this short since 1982!


So all in all, things are on the up. I've had less pain today, been out for over 4 hours, and still haven't had a nap despite it being almost 1am. Tomorrow I may be knackered but it still feels as though my body is at last, starting to mend!

Carpe Dium or something like that

I've done it. I've really gone and done it. I've decided to make the leap from desktop pc to laptop!

But what next?!

Well. I've been improving a little more each day, and Sunday managed to get myself up to the local retail park to look at laptops. I was like a child in a candy store; my eyes coveting the new shiny true life screen thingies, 17" widescreen, dvd/rw, and even a choice of colours (Dell).

But I resisted a spur of the moment purchase because this laptop is to replace the main pc in the house (which is so slow you can cook a three course meal, eat it, and clean up while it's booting up!). It has to be an improvement therefore, and be good for a few years at least (though the last one is about 8 years old (is that a record?!) and has a paltry 512mb of RAM.

I was unsure about Vista too. I've just reached the point with XP that I know my way around the system now, and can fix most problems. I've heard Vista has lots of bugs and issues, but try as I might, I couldn't find a new pc without it.

When I got home I was knackered but still in research mode so I spent a few hours online at Toshiba, HP, Sony, and Dell, to name but a few. I toyed with the idea of a Mac but realised I'm hooked on Windows because it what I started with. I love HP but they need to sort their website out as I ended up frustrated and left! Dell won hands down.

So I did it.

I got one!

A shiny red one (so sad - swayed by a choice of 6 colours!!!), an Inspiron 1720. I love that you can then change the tech specs to suit your needs, though my first attempt at a build came in at over £1500. Oops! Eventually I got it down to within my price range and happily spent the last of my wages (perhaps ever) on a laptop, docking station, carry case, and Office 2007 (I've been wanting to upgrade from Office 2000 for simply ages!).

I'm going to justify this purchase by taking it around the house and garden, and writing my novel on it!

So something good is happening, and feel better, and I even had a poo so no tummy ache this morning!!!

I'm easily pleased, aren't I?!!

P.S.

Thanks to all of you who have kept reading through what has been an exceptionally 'dry' period in my poor little blog's life!

bugger

Am most disgruntled with current physical state. On Wednesday, having no food in the house (hubby working, me on sofa with hot wheat packs), we rang for a Chinese - the healthy option of veggie special fried rice - only the fat content caused a gall-bladder attack! Brilliant.

Thursday started out with more promise and I even made it to my favourite bookshop where Stephen Fry's autobiography Moab is my Washpot was waiting patiently to be collected, gathering dust. I realised that I have been proper right poorly for 8 bleedin' weeks! Anyway, my favourite bookshop is rather special, not simply because I worked there while doing my degree, but because purchases are wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. In the winter a real coal fire blazes in the downstairs sales floor, and there is no till - just a purchase ledger and pencil, and an ancient wooden cash drawer. I remember panicking in my first few weeks as percentage discounts and so on all have to be done in your head and mental maths is not my forte by any means!

The owner is a tall, lean gentleman, smartly dressed, and with a exceedingly large grin. The staff are wonderful - knowledgeable about books, helpful and warm. Such is their reputation that they have customers from as far afield as Geneva.

The building is an old Victorian (I think!) house with 3 floors and an attic. Downstairs is reserved for new books and anything not on the shelf can be ordered speedily. Up the narrow creaking stairs, with cabinets stuffed full of second hand treasures in every available nook and cranny, there is the Children's Room, where owls have been known to visit for Harry Potter launches, with space for children to sit and browse. The owner's office is on this level too, and up more stairs there are more and more rooms, stacks of books, hallways lined with shelves... it's like an Aladdin's cave. I never made any money working there, as I'd spent it on whatever little stack of treasures I'd discovered that day!

But I digress. After the bookshop, and a big bear hug from the owner, I did a few other outstanding errands and then went shopping with my mum. Bliss. Outsidiness. Only a few feet into the first shop and my gall-bladder kicked off again - this time from humous we'd bought not expecting a tub to have a whopping great 28g of fat! I don't know how I managed to drive home but I found swearing loudly with a long slow rhythm really helped. After much crying and rocking, swearing and howling, several doses of morphine and a diclofenac, it subsided. All this, plus diarrhea, frequent cold sweats, constipation, colic, some vomiting and nausea... leaves me thinking...

... I must still have some awful karma to address from a previous life!

Never mind. Maybe it's a lesson or something to build strength and character? No matter how bad it's been, I have only ever thought of life, of wanting to live, of not giving up. I look up (no idea why 'up'!) and inform the universe, firmly, that I don't care what it throws at me, I still choose life. I want to live.

Although following this PH Diet, and existing on raw veg, fruit, no tea/meat/bread/dairy does make me a bit shaky in my resolve. (Actually, I've not gone all out but have cut out those foods 'almost', so that 80% or more is the healthy alkaline stuff, and 20% is acid producing.)

Today has been the best day so far... everything's been calm with the old body; not too much pain anywhere, no nausea, able to go out looking at laptops (hmm!) and had a visitor to boot. I was in a very good mood...

... and then I checked my email and realised that the novel racer's meet is next week and I can't go to London because I can't even have a riding lesson, or drive for more than half an hour, and I need a nap in the afternoon still.

Bugger! Next time!

A new diet perhaps?

Last week was a wonderful as it was hellish! It seems I'm a long way from being back to 'my old self'. Try as I might, I can't get through the day without a 3 hour afternoon siesta (sounds better than nap). And constipation! Christ the pain of that - you wouldn't believe! And please don't suggest anything - not prunes, not figs, not nothing 'cos I am sick of hearing it!!! I even had my mother phone me one day to say, I was just talking to so and so, about your bowels, and they suggested x, y and z!

Life is rolling along, quite literally, without me. I am a pitiful couch creature who can't summon up enough energy to do anything beyond actually getting ready to do something! Shower, dressed, make-up, knackered. I missed my dad's 70th (surprise) party. All I do is watch America's Next Top Model onLiving, followed by Ally McBeal on Zone Romantica! Sad, isn't it. And I'm not being hard myself - I'm just bored stupid with being ill. Having stomach cramps now on top of it all. I had a week or so back there when all I could think of was death, and then a week of trying to forget all about it. Now I'm back to taking positive action: change my diet for only the healthiest foods and possibly the PH diet (see below). I need to get well enough to be able to ride again, cook meals, wash my own hair, help little one with home-work and please lt it be soon, take her out somewhere other than the supermarket!

But it isn't all bad. K came over on Monday and we had a lovely afternoon. I didn't even nap that day. Tuesday I saw the doc again, and she seemed to think I was coming along really quickly. Compared to whom, I wondered.

Wed L came over, laden with lots of strange brown glass bottles filled with various potions - colloidal silver being one of them. The diet looks quite difficult to follow in the first months when you are re-balancing the body, but gets easier after that as you re-introduce previously banned foods (in much smaller quantities!). It means cutting out all foods that create acid in the body, so that the body becomes alkaline - then all the fungi and parasitic bacteria can't grow and interfere with health. You end up eating 80% alkalizing foods and 20% acidifying. If anyone's heard about it before I embark, do let me know. It's called the PH Miracle, and I have nothing to lose. The alkalising foods are all green vegetables, most grains and nuts and pulses, grasses and some fish (trout and salmon). Acidic stuff - all dairy, meat, fish, and most fruit (but not lemons or grapefruit?!).

Bramble is growing fast and becoming quite naughty when in a playful mood. I've just had to give him a tap on his rear end and lock him in the kitchen because he kept biting me while I'm on the lap top (you guessed - on the couch!). I let him out when he cried and he purred and has come over the keyboard again, but this time a telling him to get down worked. But for how long ha ha ha!

I had loads to say but am all worn out again now! Will endeavour to write more regulary as soon as I am able but Christ knows how long that'll be!

*Bramble is sitting next to me, resisting the urge to attack my fingers but I won't wind him up any longer!

Coincidence?

I am still alive! Hurrah!

It's been 9 days since I last blogged, and 3 since I last puked. I've done very little except keep going. People have visited me and that's been fantastic, but the thought alone of sitting at the computer made me retch. Literally.

But I'm back. There's a steady improvement, and besides, there's a wedding today, and I've been looking forward to it for months. I'm going to go and see how long I last.

Coincidence?

Last weekend I had this urge to call a friend who I haven't seen in years. It's been about 6 years since I saw L in the flesh, and 3 years since I spoke to her on the phone. I wasn't even sure she'd want me getting in touch after so long...

... but I called her mum anyway, and got her new number. Turns out she's also been thinking of me, and wanted to call but had no number for me. Weird, eh. And then, even more weirdly, it turns out L knows a bit about cancer and in particular, a diet that is supposed to help fight it. She's coming over to see me next week and bringing the book with her. Fab.

I needed to get back on track. I've been a bit down and increasingly irritated at being stuck in all the time, not through lack of wanting to do something/go somewhere, but from a real, physical exhaustion, nausea, and general bodily discomfort. Going out was hellish because my body failed to regulate its temperature and I'd go from cold sweat and goose-bumps to burning up and back again in a ten minute cycle. Horrid.

My head was also getting lost in negative thinking, allowing fear to take over. The translation work came just at the right time, and I managed it even though blogging has been nigh on impossible. It forced my mind to think of other, non-cancerous things. I had a break from thinking it about it at all.

So things are good. I'm healing, and actually going to a wedding - did I mention that I'm going to a wedding??!! (Outside... woo hoo! People in large numbers... Whey hey!)

Here's some pics to sign off with:

First up - my back and the lovely burn from the RT - let's hope it's done a good job on the old tumour too! This was taken last week. Thanks to everyone who came and rubbed cream into it for me!


And then some lovely ones, also taken by the little one - she's really getting into her photography thanks to Amanda!

Sleeping is what he does best...

...but then he wakes up and wants to play...

Cute eh!

what the oncologist said part III

Wednesday morning marked the end of radiotherapy with a visit to see my oncologist. He was pleased with the fact that I am so sensitive to rt adding that it's a bloody good job we didn't go for combined chemo too! I'd have been far more ill if I had. He also said that the reduced pain in my shoulder was a really good sign, but we won't know anything until the next scan. That's 8 weeks off, due to the swelling the rt causes.

So it's a case of get better each day until I can swim and ride again, and write that blasted novel!

Good news on the translation front too. Despite being finished at midnight on Sunday by a very queasy, writhing translator, and finding typos on the Monday morning (therefore having to correct and re-send)... it was accepted and they are really pleased with the work. I'll have another piece to add to my writing cv, albeit another weird addition!

Well - am a bit knackered now - lots of visitors and lovely phone calls - so going to get off and rest (more bloody rest!!!).

Kitten is growing fast and still adorable - will post some pics asap.

on the mend

Yesterday I felt the first stirrings of restlessness. It was a restlessness that said, "I quite fancy writing something, or having a nice hack!" That was when it struck me - I'm finally on the mend. Phew.

I can't tell you what a crap 6 weeks I've had. Vomiting everyday, pain everywhere, relentless nausea. And now, burns from the RT, but after a week of living on Angel Delight, mashed potato, and mashed up egg with butter, it seems to be healing up. I've been steadily improving every day since Sunday, and last Monday feels like six weeks ago.

I finished the translation work too! My friend is pleased with the work, and I was just grateful to have something to think about other than death. Really - my head has not been in a good place recently. Anyway, I got think about Scarlatti and Bartok for a while instead, and was able to forget the whole prognosis question too.

But of course it never goes away fully. It sits there at the back of your mind - like someone on death row waiting for a reprieve that may never come. Each day becomes precious, and each hour wasted with your head down the loo is a disaster. No one knows how long they've got left, but having an illness that threatens your life makes that all the more obvious.

So you have to try to ignore it and replace every negative thought with one that reinforces the belief that I'll live. For long long time to come. See my kids grow up. Grow old. I live each day with hope and am trying to turn it into a belief so concrete that the universe has no option other than to match reality to my thinking. With an inoperable tumor, there's no other option really, is there?!

That's enough from me this evening... off to cuddle up to Bramble and watch a bit of late night telly!

update - rt over!!!

It's been ages since I blogged. I knew it was ages but didn't realise just how much time I'd lost!

Today's post is a real effort, though I am better than I have been - vomiting every day for the past 6 weeks has really taken its toll on me, I can tell you. Add to that hot and cold sweats, a touch of depression, and you have a recipe for existing between sofa and hospital. I can honestly say this has been then worst month so far. When oh when does it start to get better?

At least I have a little project to take my mind of things... I am in the middle of translating the blurb for a friend's debut album (from Spanish to English). It's fairly straightforward (thank god for the year at music college and the music dictionary!!!) so am doing little chunks at a time, in between playing with the kitten* - and all whilst prostrate on the sofa to alleviate this persistent nausea. I've only got till Saturday so better crack on I guess!

So. RT is finally over. I thought, up until session 10, that the only trouble I was going to have was travelling and nausea, but no. After 20 sessions I have a lovely burnt patch on my chest and back, and a really burnt oesophagus... so that weight I wanted to lose? No problem! I'm bloody starving and can only get half a weetabix down before the pain is so bad I have to stop. Brilliant!

The pain in my left hand is worse too, because apparently RT causes swelling. Hence no scan for two months till it all settles down again. Fingers crossed I am finally on the mend because I'm not sure how much more of this I can endure without totally cracking up.

Any way - not wanting to moan too much, I look forward to the post that says I've been riding again, or even just left the house!

*Bramble is settled in completely. He sleeps on the sofa with me when he isn't running around like a mad thing, has used the litter tray unfailingly, and seems to love people. He was definitely one of my better ideas!