This is going to be a quick, well, quickish, update, just for my own records really, and v boring. Sorry!
But before I start - I don't have as much trouble with the Mac site as a lot of people, maybe because I wasn't using the old one for that long before it changed, but why in the name of the blessed Ada Lovelace, are private messages listed under 'community home'?
Okay. Summary: I am not quite bald, but it won't be long, I think; my older brother is lovely (my younger one is a capital L Loser); my left lung appears to be on the mend; chemo has given me nasty shooting pains and affected my taste buds.
It all could be worse, though some of it could be better.
This seems to be a pattern: Sunday, the day after chemo, I was pretty much fine; woke up all bright and perky (Allbright and Perky bitched about it a bit) and even contemplated a trip to one of the big Tescoses in which this area abounds. Common sense set in, and this was downgraded to a trip to Homebase to buy Judy a new bookcase for her study. Once home, Judy set about making it; I went to bed.
Sunday night - not so wonderful. Mostly a lot of weeing. (Funny how we talk about poo all the time, but wee hardly gets a look-in.) Judy pointed out that I'd had a lot of fluid put into me the day before, it had to go somewhere. Of course, some of it already had gone somewhere, on the way home, thank god for Sainsbury's having a customer loo - and, LM, I do apologise over the yin/yang poo; from past experience, I suspect the balance will reverse very shortly. Anyway, that meant a very disturbed night, and I barely woke up in time to have a bath before my brother arrived. The mobile hairdresser got here shortly after, and set up a mini-salon in the kitchen. She was very good - not squicked out at all by my hair coming out by the handful (once again, when I got out of the bath that morning I had left behind Guy the Gorilla) - and gave me a nice sort-of pixie cut. I doubt it'll last long, my hair's still coming out, but it'll do for the moment.
(Strangely, hairdresser-lady grew up just round the corner from here, and remembers when our estate was fields where one of the neighbours kept goats. How things change. Although our next-door neighbour has chickens. There is something intrinsically comical about urban chickens. But I digress.)
Oh, while I was with the hairdresser, my GP's receptionist phoned to say that she - the doctor, that is, at least I hope it is - had filled out my hospital insurance form, and was going to 'waive her fee'. We hadn't actually registered that there should be a fee, but whatever. I should hope she'd waive it, given whose fault it is that I got so ill before I got any treatment. Yeah. I'm gonna let go of that in a hurry!
Tim brought the news that, when he emailed Jeremy - that's other brother - to tell him that the sale of our mother's house appeared finally to be going through, Jeremy's response was "Good, then we can all delete one another's email addresses" - followed, for reasons best known to himself, by a quote from Richard III which Tim didn't bother to try to interpret, instead merely observing "Tosser." And so say all of us.
My sister Penny sent me a buff from my Amazon wishlist that morning, btw. I'm not sure it'll get used; it feels a bit itchy. But it was a very kind thought of hers.
By the time Tim went, I was very tired and shaky and - you guessed it - had to go back to bed. And worse, the chemo symptoms were starting up: sharp, stabbing twinges in my lower tummy, and in my bum, and in my girlbits which, I have to say, is not somewhere that stabbing twinges are particularly welcome; less unpleasant, but still not nice, a very dry mouth, with everything I eat turning tasteless as soon as I've eaten it. Which sounds a bit like something that would happen to a bad character in a folk tale. Which might account for a lot. If I remember correctly, I had these symptoms the last time, too, and they wore off reasonably soon. I hope they'll do so again. And, of course, if not ... oh, well.
Another pretty bad night last night, thanks to the twinges. Up early to drive to the Churchill - in hideous traffic from Kidlington onward - to see the lovely Dr Naj. Had a chest X-ray ("Oooh, I haven't had one of these for weeks!" I said), and Naj said that it looked as if the left lung had stayed glued down and not taken in any more ascitic fluid. There's still the original pleural effusion on the right side, but they're not planning to treat that - it's too little, although still big enough to have been the thing that mucked up my breathing to begin with. I suppose I should thank it for that, as without that we might never have found the cancer. Um, thanks, lung! I think.
Anyway: I've got another appointment with Naj in December and, if all is well, that will be the last of this. Which I shall be rather sad about. Naj is sweet.
We came home via Bicester; I went to the bank and paid off my credit card bill only-just-in-time, and we did some shopping in the scabby town Tesco; came home, unpacked, and who would like to make a bet on what I did then??
Indeed. And there I have been, pretty much all day.
At this very moment I should be at the Stables in Milton Keynes, bopping along to Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. I'm not. I'm here, typing self-pitying nonsense.
Time to stop. Whining will recommence tomorrow.
