Oh cripes!

I've just had a glass candle explode! (obviously the candle was made of wax but it was one of those that is in a glass, if you know what I mean). Typically, it exploded in the lounge between me and the cupboard where the vacuum is kept and I had bare feet!! (rolls eyes). Anyway, I picked my way across and I think I've hoovered all the little bits up. At least it was one of my cheap ikea candles and not one of my nice ones - maybe there's a tip in there - watch out for cheap Swedish candles!!

Anyway, apart from that excitement, I've had a really lovely day, and no sis that's not because you went home! ;-) hahaha! No, it's because I met up with my great friend Janey, her husband and little boy. Thanks so much guys for meeting me and for my tea and cookie! It was really lovely to see you, and to have a cuddle with Oscar (that's her son not her husband!)

I've just watched Faster, one of my Love Film films. Didn't really enjoy it as its not my usual cup of tea. I'm not really sure how it ended up on my list. Didn't even have a fit actor in it! ;-)

It's sad to hear that Neil Armstrong has died. Although I wasn't born when he took his famous small step, I have always been fascinated by space travel - as a kid I remember wanting to be an astronaut! Space Camp will always have a special place in my 80s film loving heart! I can still sit through Apollo 13 and The Dish over and over again without getting bored! This evening I've read this quote from Neil Armstrong a few times and I think it sums things up for me on my current adventure:

"I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine"

RIP Neil Armstrong

Xxxx

Pre-chemo jobs done

Well, I think they are all done anyway! I've been to have a dental checkup - all fine. I've made sure I'm stocked up on all the lotions and potions I need that the hospital does not provide, eg super strength moisturiser and gentle shampoo (thanks Lucy!) and this morning I went to get my hair cut and coloured. With the drug combo I'm on for chemo my hair thins but I'm lucky that I've always had a lot of hair and so ive never had any bold patches. My eye lashes fell out a few weeks after chemo finished last time tho - saved a few £ on mascara for a while there!! With my hair, unfortunately the grey hairs always remained stubborn and only the grey ones fell out! Typical!! Anyway, with only having (hopefully) 8 weeks of treatment I am hoping that having had my hair coloured this morning I'm hoping that not too much grey will show through before I can get it coloured again in October after treatment! We'll see!!!

Yesterday I met my friend Lucy for a bite to eat - we went to the newly opens Whole Foods Market just off Piccadilly. It was great to have a mooch around and the food was yummy! I would have loved to have stocked up with lots of lovely organic products if the ££ and arm strength (to carry it all) would allow!! I was surprised to see that some of the fresh fruit was grown in the USA! Surely the transportation costs and logistics would make it more feasible to source produce from the UK?! Anyway, still a great shop to mooch around.

Have a fun weekend everyone! Don't forget the waterproofs!!

Xxx

Be gone curse!

Well another afternoon was spent at the hospital today! It turned out from X-ray number 1 that the end of my PICC line hadn't flipped down into the correct position overnight. This meant another trip to venous access - why is it at the other end of the hospital to the X-ray department!!??!! Anyway, we got there to be told that there would be an hour wait. Mum and I then decided to go and get a drink from the cafe and sit outside rather than remain in the waiting room. (Yes, we'd decided to risk just mum coming with me again - curse be damned!!) On returning to venous access, I was taken through. The original plan was to insert a guide wire through the line they'd put in yesterday and then remove the line and thread another line through over the guide wire and hopefully into the correct position. Well, best laid plans and all that - the nurse practitioner pulled the PICC line out too far to be able to put a guide wire through - she was only meant to retract it a few cm but got carried away and pulled out 36cm of the 40cm they'd put in and as my veins were so deep it had popped out of the vein (they could tell this when they inserted the guide wire and it made me cry out in pain - it's not meant to hurt!). Anyway, the next plan was to start again from the beginning. Oh well!! Luckily the nurses took pity on me and let me have some cold spray on my arm to numb my arm before they injected the stingy local anaesthetic, normally reserved for the children!! :-) it worked a treat, although i'm not sure it would be very pleasant if I was cold sensitive from oxyplatin! Well, the second line went in ok and this time they used ultra-sound on both sides of my neck to check that the line hadn't gone astray again! Apparently, they hadn't seen in years what happened yesterday! I must be special!! Hahaha

Well, although the nurses in venous access were confident that the line was in the right place, off to X-ray we went again to check! We certainly clocked up the steps today. Another gown was put on and X-ray number 2 of the day was done! This time the radiographer thought the line was in the right place but he wasn't confident enough to let me go home without me being seen by venous access again!! High Ho high Ho it was off back across the hospital again!! Grrr! By the time we'd got back the nurse had looked at the X-ray image and thought all was fine so I could go home!! At last!! Although it was a bit of a faff having to go back again today, Maria, the nurse practitioner who supervised yesterday and today, was great - keeping me distracted with chatting about all sorts of random things, from why the weather is so changeable here compared with her home in the Philippines to how to curl your eyelashes with a pen!! It was great! :-)

Anyway, hopefully that'll be it for hospital visits until Tuesday - chemo day!! Now I'm going to enjoy my free days with my friend, the PICC, back in my arm. Pity the weather looks like sticking with the rules of a British bank holiday - don't forget your brollies if you're heading out and about!! ;-)

Take care y'all!

Xxxx

The curse strikes again

I really should know by now not to go to hospital with just mum - something always goes wrong! Well, today we went to get my PICC line put in ready for chemo next Tuesday. Anyway, all seemed to go fine as far as I could tell and I didn't feint!! I had the chest X-ray to check that the line was in the right place but unfortunately it wasn't. Instead of going up my right arm, across the top of my chest and towards my heart it goes up the vein on the left hand side of my neck! Oops! Apparently in 80% of cases in active people the line will flip into the correct position thanks to gravity and movement. Hopefully this will happen with me. I am heading back to the hospital tomorrow to have another chest X-ray to check it has. If not, I'll have to either have the current line fiddled with to get it in the right place or have another line in put in. Fun fun fun!! Oh well, it's better to have a PICC line in rather than have to have needles every time I have chemo and blood tests!

In other news, I had a lovely day on Saturday. It started with meeting my friend from uni, Anne-Marie, for lunch and an afternoon relaxing in St. James' Park. Thank you so much for coming up to London to see me! I'm so lucky that my friends are willing to come to see me, with Anne-Marie this week and Sarah coming from Plymouth a few weeks ago.

On Saturday evening I met with friends in Richmond to celebrate Sam's 30th birthday with a surprise party! We were thankful to be able to escape from the heat of the pub onto the Green which had turned into a big, communal beer garden for the surrounding pubs!! We did manage to have cake in the pub though, although the cake had melted to about half it's height!! Hahaha! Two of the balloons that we'd blown up popped in the heat as well!! The other advantage to sitting on the Green was that we could have a chip supper from the chippy down the street!! :-)

Last night I met some of my friends from work after their training day for a good catch up over a few (soft) drinks in the new beer garden that one of the local pubs had opened. It was great to see them and hopefully I'll see them again soon.

One final mention must be to baby Callan George - welcome to the world! Congratulations to Nikki, Ian and Ewan on the new edition to your family!! I'm looking forward to coming for a cuddle soon!

Signing off for now!

Xxxx

Almost chemo time again

Well folks,

I saw my lovely oncologist this morning to discuss what happens next. After I told her about my operation and what the Guildford surgeon had said on monday, she left it up to me as to whether I wanted chemo. I told her that I don't want to turn around in 10 years time and regret not giving this everything I've got so I want to have more chemo. I'm not sure what she would have said if I'd said I didn't want any more chemo, but I think my sis would have killed me if I didn't have more chemo just to make sure!! Anyway, my oncologist thinks that only 4 cycles of chemo, along with the 4 remaining doses of cetuximab, is needed, so all this could be done with by mid October!!! Crazy!! I guess I'd then have to go back to work!! Hahaha

well, anyway, chemo & cetuximab cycle one is due to commence on Tuesday 28th August. I was surprised that I could get an appointment for the bank holiday week, which is always crazy busy!! I'm not sure that the chemo day unit realise that I'll be there a minimum of 5 hours (most likely at least an hour longer with all the saline flushes I have to have between chemicals)!! I must remember my good book otherwise I'll have to help Sarah revise for her exams!! ;-)

With chemo restarting I have to have another picc line put in next Tuesday! Time to get practicing wrapping my arm in cling film again!! Hahaha! At least I know what to expect this time (not that I'm promising not to feel feint when they insert the line again!) and I know full well what the benefits of having the picc in are.

Well, with about 10 days to go until the chemo, I've got various pre chemo jobs booked, like having a check up at the dentist and getting my hair cut and coloured - I wonder with potentially only having 4 cycles of treatment if the grey hairs will have time to make a reappearance before I can get it coloured again after chemo?!?! I'm also hoping to meet up with various friends, starting with Anne-Marie for lunch tomorrow! Can't wait to see everyone!!

Well, I think I'd better try and get some sleep so that I don't get too dozy in the sunshine tomorrow!!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Xxxx

P.S. here's a pic I took today - not quite the Saltire:

Liver check-up

This morning I had my appointment with the liver surgeon as a follow-up to my surgery four and a half weeks ago. We got to the hospital in Guildford about 45 mins early thanks to little traffic on the drive down from London. Of course this meant that the doctors in the clinic were running an hour late!! There was one particularly disgruntled woman who kept complaining about having been there since 9am (it was 10.30 by then). Turns out her appointment time was 10.20!!! I think you just have to go with the flow a bit when it comes to waiting for hospital appointments. The doctors aren't intentionally leaving people waiting. They are generally just timetabled to do too much in too little time I think. Anyway, whilst we were waiting (Dad came with me again - thanks Dad!) my assigned clinical nurse specialist, Laura, came by and asked how it was all going. She told me that as far as she knew all was fine and that she'd not see me again!!! Well, the doctor (one of the registrars on my surgeon's team) called us through. He told us that the whole tumour had been removed. It had been tested and was shown to have been cancerous - most likely a secondary tumour to the bowel cancer. Apparently, there are times that it comes out that the tumour is not cancerous but it's better to take out the growth than leave it!! They don't biopsy such things, not just because of the risk of bleeding but also because the act of biopsying the tumour can lead to a 5-20% risk of the cancer spreading!! Yikes! Glad they didn't biopsy! The doctor took a look at my scar and felt my tummy while I coughed and said it all looked good. He is referring me back to my oncologist for possibly more chemo. They don't want to see me again at Guildford unless there are any further problems with my liver, so hopefully that's it for trips down the A3, well unless there's shopping and not hospitals involved!!! :-)

It's such a relief not to have to worry about that anymore. Now for cracking on with my last round of chemo!!

On another note, anyone else at a loss as to what to do now the Olympics has finished??!! Bring on the Paralympics!!

Xxxx

Wow ... It has been a while!

I can't believe that it has been sooooo long since I last posted on here!! Sorry folks! I bet you are all dying to know what I have been up to and how it is all going (not)! 

Well ... 

It is now 4 weeks since I had my liver resection operation and I am so pleased and surprised with how things have been going. The first couple of days I was out of hospital were tough and my poor sis had to put up with my winging. Warning, blunt fact ... I wasn't sure whether I was constipated or whether I just had bad diarrhoea, so I was on all sorts of things trying to get more comfortable - prune juice is not very nice!! I was also having hot sweats and shivering. Luckily, my core temperature remained stable and so doctor sister decided to take up a watch and wait practice. Thankfully I was feeling much better on day three of being at home and was able to eat proper meals and I didn't have to have any more Fortisip (a high nutritional milkshake type drink that is good for you, but as a result tastes absolutely awful and just leaves a sticky coating around my mouth and down my throat!!) There are still three bottles of banana flavour Fortisip in the fridge if anyone wants any!!!! 

My aim before the operation was to try and keep walking at least a little each day and to get down to Tooting Bec to watch the Olympic torch relay go past on Monday 23rd July. This is about half a mile from where I live. I was really pleased to find that I was able to walk a lot more easily than after my bowel operation, which I think is certainly helped by the fact that it is not my lower abdominal muscles that were cut through - this time the incision runs from my breast bone around the bottom of my right ribcage to my waist, so the two scars won't actually meet up! Because of where the staples started, I wasn't able to wear a bra whilst the staples in. I was also walking scrunched over to stop pulling on my wound. It meant that I was getting a bad back. I was going for a walk every day though, with Sarah taking me around the block. I got more and more confident that I was going to be able to walk to Tooting Bec and back. We had the folding stool at the ready for me to sit on whilst waiting for the relay to go past. Before the trek up the road though I had to have my staples out at the GPs. The nurse seemed to think that the wound was healing well (sister doctor had said that already, but reassuring none-the-less). Having staples out feels probably much as you'd imagine! Thankfully there were only a couple of more stubborn ones! After leaving the GPs, we walked down to Tooting Bec and picked out spot in the shade next to the chip shop to wait the hour until the relay was due. I was thankful for the stool, and for the iced lolly that Sarah bought me - thanks sis! It was pretty busy and getting more so! A friendly policeman from the Borders and Lothians force told us that they were only going to stop traffic on the other side of the road, so we were best off crossing to get a better view. Thankfully we followed his advice and moved to the shade of the bus stop. We had a good view when the torch relay came through and even saw the flame being 'kissed' to the next torch bearer a few metres away! Here's Sarah's photo of it (I somehow missed the key moment with my camera!):

I was so pleased to have seen the torch, but more so, that I had been able to meet my challenge of walking there and back!! 

Next challenge was to be able to walk the mile (approx) each way to be able to visit my pregnant friend Nikki by the end of the week. I was therefore taken out for a walk each day by Sarah to make sure I was going to be able to do this! My slow shuffle was getting better all the time and thankfully the hot weather lead to pleasant evenings to be able to do this! It was really nice to be able to catch up with Nikki before her baby turned up! 

Now, as an armchair sports fan, the London Olympics being whilst I am off work has been a godsend! And as it turned out it was probably a good thing that I hadn't won tickets for anything! I had managed to get Sarah almost as addicted as me to cycling watching the Tour de France in that first week of me being out of hospital so we decided to go to Putney on the Saturday morning to see the men's road race speed by on the way down to Surrey. First though we tuned in for the opening ceremony - wow!! I thought it was brilliant and was so enthralled by it. I think my favourite bit was the NHS / Great Ormand Street Hospital bit with all the kids bouncing on their beds - looked loads of fun! From the top floor of the building I live in you can get great views across London, so Sarah and I decided to go up there to watch the fireworks at the end of the ceremony. We couldn't make it out totally, but still we managed to see some of the lights. Stupidly, we only took our iPhones with us and not our cameras, but here's some  fuzzy fireworks pics: 

Anyway, back to our road race viewing plans. We decided that to make sure we could get a good spot we needed to be in Putney an hour before the cyclists were due through, so it was an early alarm, well relatively considering we had been up watching the opening ceremony until the early hours!! ;-) Along came the trusty stool again and my Olympic scarf had arrived so I could wear that around my shoulders! I took my camera with me this time and set it on sport mode for continuous shooting! This meant that I got quite a few photos as the cyclists speed through in one big bunch!. Luckily from our spot on the Upper Richmond Road we had a great view as they came around the corner from Putney High Street. Here are some of the pics: 

OK, so they zoomed passed at around 1000mph but looking back at the photos, I think I have identified three of the Team GB squad (please let me know if I have got this wrong). 

1. Sir Bradley Wiggins

2. Ian Stannard

3. Chris Froome

It's just a shame I didn't get Cav and David Millar - they shouldn't have been peddling so fast!! Now the theory for the rest of the day was to go home and shout at the TV whilst Cav sprinted across the line for the gold medal. Alas the rest of the world didn't cooperate and the medal went to someone else! Oh well, it was the start of what has turned into nearly two weeks (so far) of getting increasingly square eyes!! I have loved shouting at the TV and watching so many different sports. I'm not sure what I think of boxing and taekwondo, where the aim is to hit / kick the opponent in the head to get points but I do respect the athletes for their commitment to their sport. And as for dressage .... horses dancing to music is just bizarre, but we won a gold so I can't complain too much! The cycling though has remained my favourite and I was jumping up and down at the TV when Wiggo won the road time trial and all the golds in the velodrome were fantastic!! Here's a photo of my sis celebrating Wiggo's victory (complete with Sainbury's carrier bag sideburns!): 

I think that the BBC have done a brilliant job of showing everything and generally the presenters / commentators have been fab, with Clare Balding and Mark Foster in the Aquatic Centre and Jake Humphrey and Mark Cavendish in the velodrome my faves, but Gary Lineker is getting on my nerves a bit!! I just can't believe there are only three more days to go and I wish I could have got to more events, but I am really looking forward to going to the Paralympics in September - I have wheelchair basketball, swimming and athletics tickets!! Go Team GB!! 

Now just to prove that I have not been just slouched on the sofa, I have been carrying on with my walking most days and over the weekend I walked 5.5km each day around the park. The showers did get me, but it was great to be out amongst the trees and wildlife again:

I also met up with an old friend for lunch last Monday. She is in London working as a games maker and so it was a great opportunity to get together after too long! I loved hearing about what she was up to at the Olympics and we had a lovely walk around Victoria and Green Park. I even saw the back of the Beach Volleyball Arena: 

Thanks for meeting with me Vicky, and I hope that you enjoy the rest of your summer!

Now, back to the cancer stuff ... I am still progressing well after surgery. I came off painkillers (ibuprofen and paracetamol) totally about a week ago, having been on maximum daily dosage for about 10 days after coming home and then easing off. I was also given a box of Tramadol when I left hospital, but this has left me fuzzy headed in the past and so I only took one each of the first couple of nights I was home. I have also had to inject myself each night with an anti-clotting drug to prevent me getting a deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism! Now the thought of having to inject myself really didn't appeal, especially as a recovering needle phobic! I had to show the nurses I could do it before I left hospital, which I did, but I must admit that for the first 10 days at home I chickened out and Sarah did it for me. I did buck up my courage after that though and have been giving myself the injections the last week. I was very glad last night that this was my sight when tipping out the box though: 

The last one!!!

I am now done with adding a new bruise to my thighs each night and having to put up with the f**king painfully stinging of the drug (Fragmin) going in, which tended to last a minute or so afterwards - brought a tear to my eyes often!! I'm not sure if there are any ways to stop this but I found that going quick with the injection certainly got it over and done with quicker. I can now start smothering on the arnica cream to hopefully help the bruises! I have just got to remember to take my sharps bin back to the hospital on Monday for them to get rid of!! Thank you so much to Yogi Clare for all the work you did with me on my needle phobia - I certainly couldn't have got through the last 4 weeks without it!! 

I am now back at my parents for a few days of mum fussing!! It also means that Dad and I can shout at the tv together!! :-) On Monday I had my routine 6 month check with my original (bowel) surgeon. He hadn't realised that I had had my liver surgery and so was pleased with how well I looked. He had a look at the wound and said it all looked good. All in all he was happy and I next see him in 6 months! Next Monday I head back to Guildford to have a check-up with my liver surgeon (or one of his minions) and hopefully that'll then be me discharged from his service and solely back in the hands of the oncology team at St George's for my 12 weeks of post-op chemo. I see my oncologist on Friday next week to hopefully start making plans for this. I am not sure yet when it will all kick off again, but hopefully around the end of this month or the start of September so I can have it all done and dusted nicely before Christmas. 

Right, I guess I had better sign off there and let you all get on with your lives!! Thanks for reading! I'm off for my shot of aloe vera juice and my wheatgrass juice! 

Enjoy the rest of the Olympics - go Team GB!!! 

xxxxxx

P.S. Just wanted to show you the yummy tart that Sarah made me as a surprise for the start of the Olympics: