Category Archives: life stuff

progress report (1)

05 Saturday Jul 2008

Posted by in cancer, health & happiness, life stuff, progress

≈ 19 Comments

Day six since the first chemo session.

Quite a bit to report. First of all, I actually woke up feeling hungry today! So I had my first proper brekky in days. The only unpleasant lingering side effect is quite painful lower abdominal cramps, which started yesterday. I’m assuming this is a reaction to having had severe dire rear since Tuesday (probably TMI but WTF) and so I won’t rush off to emergency unless they either get worse or continue after the weekend. Oh, and my hand still hurts. But other than that I feel almost normalish.

To wit, I even ventured outside today with nursemyra for some lunchtime tapas at a new place called Cava Europa. Afterwards I was pretty tired so we came back to casa az , got all floppy in front of the electric fans and watched a DVD.

While I was at lunch I got a couple of text messages from Nog. He’s spending the day at a theme park called Terra Mitica – 52 kids and 4 staff! At one point he wrote to tell me he’d been on a couple of rides just to show the kids he’s not a wuss. 🙂

Yesterday there was a ‘changing of the guard’ when Pipocas left for a ten-day trip and La J came back from doing the Camino de Santiago and moved in next door. And not a moment too soon because the cat box was getting seriously whiffy (La J helped as I wasn’t able to change it this week because of my dodgy hand – no strength in it). So it’s nice to know that there is now a friend and next-door neighbour there to help me with practical stuff, especially when I can’t get out of the house.

Oh, and … does happy dance … I found out yesterday that the lovely Sara & Steve (aka strangelittleangel and Blues Shark) will be coming back to Sevilla the first two weeks of September! This is such wonderful news and I can’t wait to see them both again. I just hope I’m not in hospital during their visit…

So that’s my first progress report. I’m hoping that I’m over the worst of the chemo side effects now (until next time) and that the next two weeks will be less stressful and scary. But I still plan on taking things easy and paying attention to what my body needs. As Sara says, it’s a very steep learning curve.

prognosis & treatment (1)

28 Saturday Jun 2008

Posted by in cancer, friends, health & happiness, hospitals, life stuff

≈ 20 Comments

It was question and answer time at the hospital yesterday. And I have to say that I was very impressed by how honestly my oncologist Yolanda answered my very direct questions.

The day got off to a bit of a frantic start. Not only was Nog packing up to leave for his month-long job teaching English at a residential camp for kids in Alicante, but Pipocas found out she might have to leave the hospital earlier than planned and, if I was going to start chemo, this would mean that I’d be left on my own. And so on the way to meet Pipocas I stopped by the girls’ apartment – woke them up! – and asked daisyfae if she was still okay about coming to the hospital just in case, as she had previously offered. She was, and so off we went.

And three hours later my whole life changed.

It kinda went like this. I thought I had a choice about either operating now or later, but it turned out that the very specialist surgical team that does the liver op stuff is way booked up (also it’s summer holidays) and so my only option now is to start chemo for a cycle or two (3-6 weeks) and then have surgery. The chemo will start on Monday.

Further questioning led to me asking about my REAL medical condition and prognosis. And I mean, a LOT of extra questioning. Yolanda wasn’t giving anything away but what finally came out was this. . .

  • that I’d had a very aggressive tumour that metastasized very quickly to my liver
  • that after liver surgery there will be a 50% chance of the cancer returning
  • that with chemotherapy this will be reduced to 45%
  • that once I finish chemo I will need to be tested every three months

Pretty scary stuff. Yet somehow I feel more ‘at home’ knowing where I stand. This is much better than going through the chemo and liver surgery and THEN being told the odds. Which aren’t particularly in my favour, are they? I was surprised at how little difference having chemo made.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t feel like giving up and dying. But I also don’t think that I can “fight cancer” by doing anything more than following the prescribed treatment and continuing to enjoy my life. It’s a very serious illness. I’ll either get better or I won’t. Dammit.

still adrift …

19 Thursday Jun 2008

Posted by in cancer, friends, health & happiness, home, hospitals, life stuff

≈ 13 Comments

Yesterday I was supposed to start chemo …

Since my operation in May I have been pretty much been living in limbo. It wasn’t so apparent during the first couple of weeks that I was recovering from surgery, but as soon as started feeling better I also started realising that this was just the first step. I still had to find out if the tumour that had been removed (along with a metre of my colon) was malignant and, if so, whether the cancer had spread.

Two weeks ago I was told the tumour was indeed malignant and a week later I had a CT scan to see if I was ‘clean’ or not. And yesterday I found out that I’m not. Or maybe I’m not. The CT scan showed a small lesion in my liver that may or may not be cancerous. [editor’s note: gaaaaaaa!!!]

I was told I would need a PET scan and if the lesion turned out to be malignant I would then require more surgery, followed by chemo. But in the meantime I was still scheduled to start chemo this Friday (I’d put it off for a couple of days so I could meet nursemyra at the airport today without feeling ill). But it still didn’t make sense to start chemo and then stop it for surgery – if it came to that – and then start all over again a few weeks later.

And so I went down to the nuclear medicine department to see about getting a PET scan. Happily I know some people there so it turned out that I can have a PET scan this Saturday and get the results back by Monday (yay!). And when I told my oncologist this she immediately agreed about putting off the chemo till next week, until we find out if I’m going to need more surgery or not.

So if all goes well and I only need the preventative chemo (fingers crossed!) then that will start on the day after daisyfae arrives, which would also be better timing.

Meanwhile, I’m back in limbo.

the 100 thing challenge

16 Monday Jun 2008

Posted by in life stuff

≈ 13 Comments

How To Live With Just 100 Things

Excess consumption is practically an American religion. But as anyone with a filled-to-the-gills closet knows, the things we accumulate can become oppressive. With all this stuff piling up and never quite getting put away, we’re no longer huddled masses yearning to breathe free; we’re huddled masses yearning to free up space on a countertop. Which is why people are so intrigued by the 100 Thing Challenge, a grass-roots movement in which otherwise seemingly normal folks are pledging to whittle down their possessions to a mere 100 items.

I like the idea of getting rid of possessions that I no longer use, especially if they can be of use to someone else. But I have a really hard time getting around to culling my stuff. Especially clothes. I try to use the old rule of ‘if you haven’t worn it for two years then out it goes’ except that I often find after a couple of years I rediscover how much I liked wearing something and it gets a lot of use once again.

I could certainly never get down to 100 possessions unless things like books, CDs and DVDs were counted as a collective unit. As well as stuff like dishes and cutlery.

Could you do the 100 Thing Challenge? Would you even want to?