3 Too Many

“The secret to being happy is having a good sense of humour and a dirty mind.” – Unknown

 Nice sound sleep for 6 hours, but woke up at 5:30am ready for the day – just straight wide awake.  Make a cup of tea and take my meds – head and body feeling OK today, which is a great feeling.  Maybe the Cyclizine (anti-nausea) was causing some of the body pains.  I guess we’ll have to watch this space to see if it was.  Then again as I am now on a higher dose of pain killers these maybe now doing there things.  They have said to expect to have to take more stronger ones and probably at strong doses from now on anyway, as the cancer will be starting to have an effect on my general health.  They weren’t specific about how but possibly toxins and chemo residue (this will be in my sytem for about a year from when I finish it in December) will be building up more and causing pains, etc.  Also the steroids have also done their thing and stopped the head pain (they work by reducing the swelling in my brain – after all I do have a couple of extras taking up space so I don’t have any spare room for swelling).  Head back to bed with my drink and catch up on the overnight news on Stuff.  Jacob comes through about 6:30 and we head downstairs. I decide that I may as well seize the moment to to show him how to use iTunes to load music on to his iPod.  Lachlan comes down then about 7:30 and the boys play on the PS3.  I sort through the movies that Shaz has lent me and copy them to my portable hdd. 

Sue finally gets up about 9am and Jacob cook us breakfast of bacon and egg muffins.  Very nice too.  Then we get ready and head off to the US Classic Car show at Woodend.  Have a lovely stroll around some very nice works of art – that is the best way to describe some of these cars.  The money and effort and detail that has been put into them is amazing.  Head off for home about 1 as Sue has an appointment at 2 she needs to be at.  Boys and I stay home, and they play on the tramp instead of driving me mad.  While I attach the answer phone and cordless phone to the wall so that they are no longer cluttering up the breakfast bar.  Sue gets home and we plan to all go for a bike ride, but my stomach and back start to ache terribly so flag the idea.  More pain killers will fix it, but by the time they kick in it’s geting to late.

The steroids have been doing their usual with getting the brain ticking over about lots of things.  Including taking me to some very dark places.  It is not fun but thankfully I’ve managed to bounce back from them and are in a good headspace again.  What I have been thinking about is just really how fortunate I am to have such a wide network of support from many different places around NZ and the world, as well as the awesome support from The Press and Fairfax, staff management and the company’s as a whole.  The support and backing from not just my footy team but the whole Halswell club, and other clubs as well.  I really could not wish or hope for better.  Your strenght of support and encouragement are true feeders strenght that I use in my battle.  I have been thinking about how much harder this fight would be without you all.  We all know the battle is going to be lost eventually and that is when your  strenght will be needed for each other.  I get the easy bit from then on  

A lot of people say that I am doing so well, and on Saturday I had the Nurse and Oncology Doctor both say that to me again.  They checked all my blood results (they took bloody gallons of the stuff off me on Friday including 2 tabasco sauce sized bottles and 5 vials) and said that they could not believe that they were so good.  They said that they were actually better than a lot of normal people, which is encouraging to hear, and makes me feel better about facing the next chemo round.. Maybe I won’t be hit down as quick this time.  The previous round I was borderline on blood levels to do it and I crashed on the second day, the time before that was day 5 and a day in hospital.  Fingers crossed!  I’m just doing the best I can – no special secret diets or pills – just a stubborn attitude and an acceptance that while I have cancer I will not be giving in to it without a fight – this is my body and I did not ask for the tumors so they need to get used to me, and they may have just picked a very hard body and mind to break.  Though on Friday with the tremors and how I felt, I really thought that they have scored a sucker punch and introduced some visible signs/reminders that they were there and very real.  Still look in the mirror most mornings -yes I’m a vain bugger, but after all I’m a Leo so of course mirrors are our friends and fond it hard to believe that I have 3 bloody tumours in the right side of my noggin.  Got to make light of the situation some times else it would get to hard otherwise, so if I make a joke or two about it, then please join in or have a laugh with me as it helps hugely.  Enough waffling for now.  Keep up the good work folks – it is fantastic to have!!  And humbling to receive. Also meant to attach this pick the other day.  The hospital ensured that I wouldn’t get a fine for not wearing a Pinkie wrist band.

Even the hospital supports the Pinkies
The nurses said it is to apparently identify the patients that are known to flurt with the staff (actually its because I’m alergic to some drugs and is a good warning sign).

Still in pain, and eat a small dinner, tidy up then do the blog, stare at the TV do some ironing, and run a scalding bath.  M&D time and bed and rest ready to take on Monday.  Hope all have had a great weekend and the hangovers are not to painful.  I can’t drink as I’m about to start chemo tomorrow, so have to be ‘clean and dry’ else I would’ve happily indulged in a bourbon or 5 last night.  Take care have fun and be careful, as I want to see you back here tomorrow.  Have a great evening/arvo/day.

Kia Kaha.