. . . and cats with cancer, it’s been quite an exhausting week.

Since Azar’s tumour explosion last Friday he seems to be slowly on the mend, though he gets “moments” when I can see he is in distress and probably in serious pain, and I don’t know what to do other than stroke him and talk a mile a minute in my softest lovey-dovey voice… he really does like to hear me talk. Anyhow, he and I are just taking things one day at a time (as if there were any other way).

You may recall that last Friday was, along with the exploding tumour incident, also the day for my monthly chemo port cleaning, which I almost put off until today (when I had an oncology appointment) so I didn’t have to make two hospital taxi trips in one week. But I decided not to leave things to chance (would be ironic for me to die of a blood clot after all this) and did a record there-and-back-again in less than an hour, basically taking taxis from door-to-door, so I wouldn’t have to leave Azar for long. I usually walk up to the main road and save myself a couple of euros in each direction. But I digress…

Because I’m really talking about cancer. And cats. And as much as I like to live in denial between PET scans, when one starts a-looming I start to get quite freaked out. As in, oh gawd, I’m still fat and drink too much wine and don’t eat my veggies and am doing everything wrong and am sure to be “punished”… except that Pat did everything right and now she’s gone. And Jed has been doing everything right and now he’s on chemo for life. And so, during this pre-PET freak-out period I stop living in denial, which reminds me of why I do it. Because IT’S HELL if I don’t. And this will now last until I get the results of my next PET scan.

I had a 12.45 appointment with Dr Ana today. Finally got into see her at 15.15. I actually hadn’t seen her since July 2011 because when I went for my 6-ish month review last January she was away and I saw someone else. So she didn’t know about my emergency op of last August. I told her and she looked it up on the computer and said “well, looks like they took good care of you”. Then she looked up my last blood test (July) and said it was all normal other than my thyroid whatsits were low and I should talk to my GP about that. And THEN she said… “so, do you want another PET now or do you want to wait a year?”. Well, thank you doctor. I said that until I hit the five-year mark I wanted to be tested every six months. Hey no problem. Out came the form, it was filled in and stamped, which I then brought down to Nuclear Medicine. Of course by then it was so late in the day that everyone had gone home, so I left it on Isabel’s desk with a note and that was that. And then I raced home in a taxi because I’d called Peter and he told me Azar looked like he was having problems.

Now, what should have happened today was me showing up at the hospital at 12.45 and, after a reasonable wait, I maybe would have seen Dr Ana around 1.45 or 2.00. Then I would have popped down to Nuclear Medicine to drop off my PET form and had a nice visit with Ricardo and Isabel. After that (as had been planned) I would have met Pablo for a nice lunch at a little tapas bar in his barrio (he lives not far from the hospital) where we would have had a glass of cava to celebrate me going to see the onc ALL BY MYSELF (first time guys!) and then I’d have come home and, happily sated, would have got back to work.

Instead, I didn’t finish with the onc until 3.30, and tapas bar kitchens close at 4pm, but Pablo (such a sweetie!) sent me a photo of a bottle of cava, saying he was putting it on ice and sent another pic showing the lovely late lunch he was preparing for us. But then I called Peter and heard about Azar… and dammit. I just had to go home. Where I found Azar curled up in his “safe place” under the tv table looking very forlorn. But in the end I don’t think it was anything worse than being in pain and needing the Big Cat (that’s me) to make a huge fuss over him. He’s now had a fresh bandage put on, has been fed with the syringe and looks as content as can be on the sofa. Honestly, I can’t think of anyone else I’d give up free cava for!

But hey, guess what? I am actually still a very high-risk-of-recurrance stage IV cancer patient. Which isn’t how I normally feel, but I sure felt like that today sitting in that waiting room for over two and a half hours. And now I’ll feel like that until I get the next scan results.

Meanwhile, lest I’d forgotten, I received a totally unwanted and, frankly, exceptionally crass email this week from someone called Lavinia Aparaschivei, a self-styled “relationship coordinator” who runs a website called Masters Channel. Click on that link if you dare. It’s full of the most grotesque “feel good think positive” garbage you probably couldn’t even imagine. How the hell this email ended up in my inbox is anybody’s guess but I felt totally slimed by it. Here’s what (in part) it said…

I just read about your amazing cancer survival story. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. Life is a gift and too many people take it for granted!
You can be an inspiration to many more. If you’d like to reach a greater crowd we provide a great platform in which heroes, people like you an me, get the chance to tell their amazing life stories. We provide this platform in pursuit of inspiring other people who are facing a difficult time ….. in pursuit of helping them overcome their struggles.

Well you know what? Fuck you Lavinia, and all of your kind, who think you can send emails to people and assume you know ONE FUCKING THING about the person you are addressing, let alone what they are going through. You and your website totally disgusted me. And I can just imagine what Pat would have had to say about you, which actually made me smile a bit.

There, that’s better. Now I think I’ll have another glass of wine, cuddle Azar a bit, and then get back to finishing some work on my blogs.

How’s your day been?