Friday 11th May

Friday 11^th May

Our daughters 18th birthday!!

The kitchen was decorated with balloons, banners and badges (curtsey of the boys last night) and she had cards and presents to open this morning, all exciting and a bit emotional (thanks big bro, the sentiments in your card made us both cry!!)

She drove me into town and I walked from Beaulieu to the hospital arriving just after 9am, and got myself settled in the chemo chair. I had the usual concoctions of anti-sickness, steroids, and piriton that precede the BIG GUNS. The whole process today took until 3pm, a little tedious, but I was quite sleepy today with the drugs. I had my friend from ‘Houston’ who brought in some beautiful flowers (and a newspaper) to help me pass the time this morning, and son no1 came with hubby in the afternoon.

My daughter had planned to spend time with me, but she started a cold on Tuesday and we both agreed not a very good idea to visit the hospital, particularly the Oncology department!

‘Meanwhile back at the ranch’, sons no 2 and 3 were feverishly putting the finishing touches to the ‘games’ planned for the party (or should I say panicking about the game plan-plan what plan?)

Arrived home about 3.45 and first visitors were AR and his mum, AR also 18 today (and may I say such a lovely photo of them both in tonight’s JEP!!)Quickly followed by N&P and then PDLH and AL, cups of tea, bucks fizz and birthday cake all round!!

We had a scant 45 minutes to lay the table, sort out furniture, and put the order for Chinese in before the ‘class of yr. 13’ and co. arrived  and started the ‘party’, luckily AV arrived and then so did the Calvary in the form of Mrs SW and Master SW.

We stuck it out till 8.45 then had to beat a hasty retreat to the sanctuary of TH and SH for a bit of peace and quiet- but only till 10.30pm.

The party went extremely well everybody seemed happy with the food and games, and very little mess was soon cleaned up (think the 8 rolls of loo paper for the ‘Mummy’ game filled a bin bag!)

Well done to all the boys and the girls who made the party a big success, I know my daughter loved it and that’s the main thing :-)

They gave me my results from the earlier blood test at the hospital, originally my CA125 which is an ‘indicator’ of cancer cells in the body was 762 or thereabouts and when I went 3 weeks ago it was 629, going down but not enough for my liking! Well today it showed up as 94- double figures whoop whoop!! (In ‘normal people it should read 35 or below)

I also had the CT scan results and a little more mixed, mostly clear but I do have a 2cm enlarged lymph node in my abdomen and a very small 7mm node in my right armpit, this info is being sent onto the Marsden where there will offer an opinion, and I have a follow up Ct scan after next batch of chemo (standard).

Should the ‘nodes’ appear to be shrinking  then they were obviously ‘bad’ and are being severely dealt with, and kicked into touch by chemo, but if not maybe they’ve been there all the time and it’s normal for me(!).

Attempted sleep at 11.30pm far too tired to write blog, only to find my legs have other plans (yet again) but this time I am prepared, so toast and tea and anti-inflammatory drugs at 1am and now blog writing!!!

“The quickest way for a parent to get a child’s attention is to sit down and look comfortable”

Lane Olinghouse