Category Archives: cancer

progress report (3)

22 Friday Aug 2008

Posted by in cancer, friends, health & happiness, hospitals, progress

≈ 14 Comments

This morning it was going to be another early morning bike ride to the hospital – this time for pre-op blood tests and two xrays – but I woke up feeling quite queasy and tired so had to go by taxi instead (though I did cycle back). My appointment with the anaesthetist is for September 2nd, the same morning I see the oncologist again (will definitely have my travel scrabble game with me for that one!). And it is supposed that sometime between now and then I will be told the date of the liver surgery.

As for progress …

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what a day!

13 Wednesday Aug 2008

Posted by in cancer, health & happiness, hospitals

≈ 22 Comments

And such a long one. Left home yesterday at 9.00 am and got back at 7.30 pm … all for a ten-minute chat with the oncologist and a two-and-a-half hour chemo session. Do the math – that’s a helluva lot of waiting. I’d gone prepared with a book and a Hello magazine, and Nog & I tried staying entertained by playing Fashion Police (not nearly as fun as it had been in the emergency waiting room) as well as playing Hangman and watching some Olympic events on the big tv there, but it was pretty damned tedious nonetheless. On the bright side, I didn’t have to subject myself to cafeteria food . . .

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chemo prep (2)

11 Monday Aug 2008

Posted by in cancer, health & happiness, home, hospitals

≈ 14 Comments

Getting ready for round three. This time will be very different than the first two sessions because Nog is here. He wants to come with me tomorrow for the FULL DAY just so he can see exactly what I’ve been going through. For future sessions I will probably still do two ‘shifts’. One person to come with me for the oncologist appointment and another for the chemo session…

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discovering the cosmos

09 Saturday Aug 2008

Posted by in cancer, food & drink, health & happiness, life stuff

≈ 9 Comments

I’m coming to the end of my chemo-free week off the meds. My plan had been to do something special every day and make the most of it. And now here it is Saturday and it’s hard to remember anything I’ve done that was special in itself. But today while I was walking around with Peter drinking an icy cold granizado de limón I realised that just being able to do that was the special thing, just like how last night we went out for a scoop of Häagan Dazs ice cream (at the new HD shop that has recently opened just five minutes from my house). When I think about how next week it’ll be back to drinking 40º room temperature water I am sooooo enjoying every icy cold minute I can.

And so tonight I’m making frozen cosmopolitans . . . 🙂

false alarm?

01 Friday Aug 2008

Posted by in cancer, hospitals

≈ 15 Comments

alarm-clock-9.jpg

Tis a puzzlement …

On Tuesday evening I started getting very sharp crampy pains just below my right ribs, which I put down to possible indigestion from inadvertently pigging out at Enrique Becerra at lunchtime. But the pain was still there and getting worse yesterday morning (though I didn’t let it stop me going out to the Alcázar – I just walked real slow) but then afterwards I started to worry that it might be my cancerous liver acting up. So I called Dr A., who said that if the pain was still there in the evening or had got worse then I should go to emergency and have it checked out.

Well, by 9.30 pm I was in agony and could barely walk so Nog & I taxied over to the hospital. . .

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