Flagging

Just want to sit around and do nowt today; I find this easy in the main but have the odd little voice in my ear: shall I just get the fish out and chop a few shallots for dinner? I could easily wield the broom on that bit of fluff and the crap that's come in from the garden. So far I have resisted and dozed a lot; done the Killer Sudoko and answered a few emails - just with holding replies: I will get back to you when I can be arsed in a nutshell.

Energy will return I know along with what work ethic I still have wherever ethics reside; but for now I'll just go and have a sit down.

March Hair

Went to Will's Wigs which is wonderfully alliterative. The woman I saw, who had a lovely knitted cardie on that I might try to whizz up for myself, had been doing wigs for 10 years; this was obvious as, although she brought in a big tower of boxes, it was the first one that she tried on that I walked away with. It's amazingly OK and I am wearing it now. It makes me look younger I would say and more like my sister-in-law Ruth (see picture) who is a super head (teacher) so she clearly knows a lot about head type things. The second one made me look uncannily like her, which started to feel weird as I like my brother-in-law a lot. So after telling me I had a very small head, not a lot to go in it you see, and doing a bit of trimming, the wig woman sent me off with my washing instructions and some spray and I am now slightly blonder and slightly bouncier.

Very bouncy in fact, I am beginning to wonder if I am pregnant, not cancer-riddled, as this morning I decided to clear out all the cupboards and chuck away all the very old stuff. I mean how many packets of Dry Toor Dhal and Gram Flour do the average pensioner couple need for a lifetime? Less than we had so the stuff from 2006 is now in the bin alongside sheets of gelatine that expired in 2001, granite like muscovado sugar and some strange Cappuccino stuff that I don't remember ever buying. I had to have lots of rests so I am probably not just about to give birth but simply basking in the steroid glow. I have stopped the course now so will no doubt be less enthusiastic tomorrow. But for today, the sun is out and and I have new hair and clean cupboards.

Post-chemo days

I am alright but not right to put it in a nutshell. I feel quite cheerful which is a good start and don't actually feel ill as such. There is no doubt though that the nasty chemicals are trying to get me down. I know that the 11 anti-nausea tablets I take each day are working away because I can feel them. It's like a skirmish going on in my stomach, the slight, sometimes more, feeling of sickness is never far away and it sort of gurgles like indigestion sending warning messages up the tubes. The tablets are winning you feel, but the chemo is there just waiting to catch you out.

It's a bit the same with the tiredness; I feel OK, I go to cut down some dead stuff in the garden, or climb up to the top floor for some reason and realise I can't do it for long. Something happens around my hips, deep inside my legs and it's no go. As this is not far from the gurgly stomach I feel there is a revolt going on below my waist (that is the bit that sticks out most between breast and hips isn't it?). It's worst if I try and bend at said waist, all hell threatens to break out then.

Finally and sadly my recorder playing is suffering and I may not make it to this year's proms after all. It's the breathing, you would think old Leio would have done his darnedest by now to get my lungs down but he is saying chuck that chemical at me and you will regret it in the pulmonary region. He is right so I am puffing and panting even more.

These are all side-effects described on the chemical warfare leaflets so I glory in being the norm. The leaflets also remind me I am toxic for seven days and that my bodily fluids are definitely a no-go area. I think I might get one of those hazardous waste signs and stick it on my new headdress it can only serve to impress.

Today the challenge is to visit my niece as it's her birthday, do the shopping and then make a proper Sunday dinner for Luke, Aleks and the girls. Luckily that just means chucking a piece of meat in the oven and peeling a few veg and even I can manage that. I will be helped by my trusty sous chef, Stewart, of course; that's him over there the one in the nice orange overalls and the protective mask.

Home again, home again, wiggety wig

Got back last night, earlier than last time due to less pump breakdowns (pesky machines that control the flow of the chemo etc going into your veins). I am feeling fine considering and am in love with the medicine beginning with O that controls your sickness. I refuse to try to learn all of the names of the drugs, life is too short and it only encourages them to come up with longer and longer and more and more ridiculous monikers.

I do prefer single rooms in hospitals as I have said before but this stay has brought new insights into the camaraderie of cancer and the amazing way that cancer patients behave. For some reason we are a ridiculously cheerful bunch; perhaps it's something to do with the cells dividing all over the place and sending us a bit scatty. If you added up the life expectancy in my six bed bay of cancer women you probably wouldn't get to the 2012 Olympics but there was nerry (Shakespearean term for "never a" but I don't know how to spell it and I am getting above myself clearly) a moan and lots of laughs and a very gung ho sort of "we may not have long but we are going to enjoy it" type attitude. My neighbour for a day was a more hopeful case and turned out to be an English teacher who had worked with Stewart; one woman had had breast cancer then got a sarcoma in her ribs, had herself all reconstructed and now has it in her bones and lungs but she looked fantastic and kept snogging her husband of 30 years, so she has got something right; another saw through at least two property deals while I was in and is rushing over to Alicante to sign them off after her biopsy on Monday - she was given 6 months, three months ago; the third was just a nice laughy woman despite asthma, diabetes and lung cancer and on the last day a German woman with five kids who wore her bald head bravely came in and brought more spice to the mix . There must be some miserable buggers amongst the cancer community but I have yet to meet one.

So the sun is out and I may do a bit of tweaking in the garden later, the only appointment in near future is with the wig maker; I get it free so I may as well have a go; but do I stay as me or go for a whole new look; I should have asked my cancer buddies it would have been another excuse for a laugh anyway.

Tattoos

Terribly sick last night but on stronger stuff now so feel better. I am not sure if I can trust myself to eat which by now you will all know is a big change for me. Maybe I will lose some of the zillion pounds that the Biobank folk reckoned I was out by. I felt a bit crap last night:sick, no hair and I lost my glasses in the xray dept. This morning glasses are found, I haven't been sick for 12 hours and so what if I am bald, some of my best friends are slapheads and I find I am still me underneath it all.

The young woman who sweeps the floors and brings round the tea, god love her, has a tattoo on her arm which reads ...forbidden to remember, terrified to forget. Well that has resonance for sure. There's a nice young man on today perhaps I will ask him if he has any appropriate tattoos to show me. I'll have to be prepared to keep my dinner down though.

Bed but no hair

Very quick post everyone; I have a bed today; goodness knows why I am so excited they are hardly Malmaison or even Travel Lodge. In readiness Stewart clipped my hair this morning down to number one. Yesterday I vacced it rather than washed it but today it had to go. I am afraid I look nothing like Sinead O Connor, more like that fat chap Lucien Freud used to paint, Lee Bowry was it or if I am really truthful it's Gollum I most resemble.

So I will slither around my bed muttering "my precious, my precious" and watch out for the fires of Mordar.

And the little one said roll over

I shouldn't be writing this, I certainly shouldn't have to. I should be in the hospital having had my bloods taken and be waiting for the chemo drip to be put up this afternoon but I am not. Ann the bed manager called this morning. She is lovely and we are now on first name terms. She is a nice person doing a very nasty job and she said they didn't have a single spare bed; there had been emergencies and people transferred from their other hospital, (Selly Oak for the locals). They will call me tomorrow to see if there is a bed and of course I will be a priority, and I think yes, along with the emergencies and the other people turned down this morning. I asked if this was safe as I was supposed to be on a course of treatment, so much every three weeks etc and she said this was normal and it would all just roll over; and I think yes when someone rolls over and then falls out of the bed, no doubt, just as the song says.

Now it may not matter if I miss a day or even two, although I would like to see the evidence! But does it matter that I will now probably not be able to go with Harry to see Alice in Wonderland on Saturday as I will still be feeling rough? Does it matter that my calculations about whether I will be able to meet up with my American friends on a rare visit to Paris in April are now thrown out? Does it matter that we have had to tell the garage that Stewart now can't pick up our car tomorrow morning? Does it matter that according to my doctor I can expect to live for about another 9 months on average and this is one wasted day of that nine months or 19 or whatever it is? Yes it ****ing well does matter; all of it.

Wake up people YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH BEDS! And don't tell me that the new hospital will sort it because I was there don't forget when the reduction in beds was announced and I asked would this affect patient care and I was fobbed off as usual by the Oh but we will manage it all better nonsense. This is happening to me and my fellow cancer sufferers now people, here, not in a third world country, not in some distant rural locality but in BIRMINGHAM, in the second city of a relatively rich country in a REGIONAL CANCER CENTRE, people!

If I had hair I would tear it out, instead this post is going off to my old gang. So Andy, David N, Cynth, Elisabeth, David C and Julie what do you say? Is this a service to be proud of? If it was your Mom etc etc...