Thursday 29th May 2008

Thursday 29th May
Pottered around the house while Phil was working and did some of my OU homework. I’ve started the short course about Fossils and I’m finding it fun. My arm does seem to be getting better albeit rather slower than I’d like.

Wednesday 28th May
Phil was training in London for the afternoon so I cooked dinner and then did lots of tidying. As I’m having a chemo break for a week or so I’m full of enery and feeling better.
The big event of the day was that he got trapped on the train; you may have seen the news about the bridge collapsing just outside Liverpool station. Well Phil was on one of the trains, eventually he was able to exit the train and walk back along the tracks and he finally got home just before 10pm. He was very tired especially as he was training again on Thursday morning but unharmed so I’m just glad he’s safe.

Tuesday 27th May
Feeling better and my foot was good enough so that I could put my boots on for the first time. We went out for a walk at the reservoir which we haven’t visited for ages, did about 40 mins which was enough, it’s surprising how quickly you lose I when you don’t go out for a few weeks.

The other thing is that I got a new computer today. My old one has been playing up for a while and so we finally snapped and went put and bought a new one. It’s lovely and I’m typing on it now!

Monday 26th May
Went to visit dad, my arm was still very sore and quite fatigued so mostly slept while I was there. Oops! But he seemed to enjoy the company even if it was mostly comatose.

Sunday 25th May
We were both fairly tired following the ‘lost in the woods’ scenario so we did a bit of shopping but mostly just lazed around.

Saturday 24th May
Went to visit our friend Lisa and went for a walk in Epping Forest. It’s a lovely forest but the walk was a bit longer than we expected cos we got lost and spent hours wandering around. Still I managed it which means that my foot is heaps better.

Friday 23rd May
Just as the diarrhoea and stuff started to get better the PICC line which is plumbed into my left arm got infected. We rushed off to the hospital which was just as well because it was scary just how fast it got worse. Anyway they had to remove the line and put me on some powerful antibiotics.

Obviously I can’t have my treatment on Tuesday; I couldn’t have it while I’m infected and I’ll need to have another PICC line inserted before they can give me chemo again.
Currently I have an appointment for Thursday 5th June to have PICC done and also chemo but it will depend on how the infections gets on.

Wed 14th to Thursday 22nd May
Not much to report for this week, it was a bad cycle with more pain than usual and the fact that my sore foot made it impossible to go out for walks added to both the pain factor and my depression. Feeling sorry for myself which is one of the reasons I didn’t post for such a long time.

At the to[ of this post is a picture of my foot on Thursday which is 10 days after I first did the damage.

Tuesday 13th May
Hospital for chemo, also got scan results which were good. They couldn’t see if there was any reduction in size (I can’t have iodine so my scan are fairly blurry), but there wasn’t any growth. I was a bit disappointed at first but then the Dr explained that as the tumours got smaller it becomes difficult to compare sizes from one scan to the next so in a way it’s positive that they have got small enough to be difficult to check.

Monday 12th May
Went to hospital for scan.

Sunday 11th May
My sunburn had got really red and mottled looking (still not painful but it looks ghastly); it was at this point that I remembered that some booklet we read at the start of treatment said not to sunbathe. Now this makes me look stupid in the extreme but in my own defence we read the booklet in November and it didn’t seem very relevant at the time.
Phil and Mike went off to do some Urban exploring while Shan stayed in to revise, I pottered. I was just getting lunch when I cut my finger; only a little cut but bleeding so I went upstairs to clean it and put on a plaster. Now the next bit of this reads like an Ealing comedy; I washed it under the tap then decided to go into the bedroom to get the Teatree oil so it wouldn’t get infected, on the way rushing so I wouldn’t bleed on the carpet I managed to bash the top of my foot on a raised bit of wood (don’t ask what it was doing on the bedroom floor cos the story would just be toooooooo long and convoluted). Anyway got the oil and went back to the bathroom (that’s when I noticed that there was another bottle of Teatree already in the bathroom) cleaned finger and put on plaster then looked down to see how my foot was!
Ahhhhh! there was this swelling that looked like a huge blister growing larger as I watched, put it in the bath under the cold tap at which time Shan had started to get worried so there was this little voice from the bottom of the stairs “are you okay Jill”.
After hobbling downstairs I put my foot up above my heart level and
Shan got me a bag of peas wrapped in a teatowel which did start to bring the swelling down.
Then we discussed which one of us Phil was going to be most cross with when he got home (it was me) the first thing he said was “are you okay?” swiftly followed by an explosive “I can’t leave you alone for 2 minutes”.

Sat 10th May
Our friends Shan and Mike came for a visit from Oxfordshire, Shan is just finishing her accountancy exams so she revised at home for the early part of the day and they drove down to us to arrive in the early evening.
Our friend Sam was going to come over on Saturday too and go to the farmers market with me in the morning, do some beading/metal work and then stay and see Shan and Mike in the evening and have dinner with us all. Unfortunately she was very unwell so she couldn’t make it (partly cos she felt awful but mainly cos she was terrified of what Phil would do to her if she passed the bug on to me ).
Phil cooked proper chips, Quorn sausages and fried eggs which suited us all.