Hey All,
My son and I got offered a new state house the other day. This is great because I will be settled in a place we can afford and can make a home of it.
I have lived in eight different places since the cancer lark(?) started up and am finally staying in an old people's home where I must be the youngest by 30 years or more. Needless to say, I have nothing in common with anybody, except maybe Coronation Street but they all have TVs in their rooms so don't come out to the lounge to watch it.
Will be glad to get my own computer set up and my own broadband connection. This computer is so secure that I can't download a thing else I would be chatting in the chatroom.
I am feeling beeter than I have in a year, and the dent in my head is not such a problem: that is I am tolerating it better, but small children still feel the need to comment.
cheers
Janet
FormerMember
Congratulations, lovely news. Keep blogging. Best Wishes. lindaj
Yep I do live in Auckland and I know Ponsonby Road for gay and fabulous reasons rather than shopping ones. I don't think I could afford to shop seriously in Ponsonby Road except that I do spend a lot of time and money in the womens bookshop as the owner is an old friend.
I am hoping not to have any side effects from the radiation as it will be minutely directed. Mind you my ex mother in law had it after a mastectomy and was burned so badly that she had to be in the new city hospital for 10 days.
The city hospital was very good to me and put up with me being a patient there for two and a half months.
Are you in Auckland Renee... it would be nice to meet some more kiwis here
I live on Waiheke Island - and I see in another part of your blog that someone from Dunedin has posted - nice to meet others from Kiwiland - though actually I am a Pom, born and bred in Manchester but have been here in the land of beauty for 41 years.
I finished radiotherapy two weeks ago today - breast cancer with me. I stayed at the wonderful Cancer Society motel in Grafton, fairly adjacent to the hospital whilst I had my treatment. Unlike your mother-in-law I came through mine quite well though I am actually terribly tired and a tad burned and blistered! Nothing like the hell you have been going through.
Unfortunately I had just commenced my treatment when my husband had a mild stroke and ended up in Akld Hospital so it was a bit tough having the treatment then back to spending time with him 2/3 times daily. He had surgery on the carotid artery right side of his neck eventually - now we are both home recovering, albeit slowly!!
Whereabouts is your State house going to be?? For the English people out there the NZ State house is the equivalent of a Council house in the UK - and they are very nice here - usually scattered amongst privately owned homes - not like the estates in the UK I remember from my childhood.
I do actually live in Auckland though not Ponsonby Road (couldn't afford it). The old people's home is in Mount Albert and the new house is in Te Atatu South.
I will be having the radiation at the city hospital in Grafton after living there on ward 83 for months.
My evil ex-husband lives on Waiheke which makes the place tainted for me. He has wife number 3... A little taiwanese chick who looks about 13 when he looks like Santa incluing a flasher raincoat (not that he has anything much to flash: most people would laugh). You may have seen him around on the island or the market. He tries to ingratiate himself with everyone until they start to see through him.
I know heaps of women in the lesbian community on the island who are fighting breast cancer and I sometimes see them when I go to see Dr Falcov in oncology.
Can't say I am looking forward to the radiation however expert they claim to be. It is my brain and I would hate to lose my intellectual mojo. Brains are too important to bugger around with. I am, however expecting the radiation to kill off the remaining tumour and then I can get on with my new life post cancer. Falcov only reckons he can slow things down and maybe give me a couple more years... and that I am in denial expecting more.
I have a huge brain tumour about the size of a grapefruit (doncha hate it that people compare tumours to citrus fruits!!!!). Surgery took about about 30% but it infiltrated to much important tissue to take more without leaving me very disabled. The bloody thing has been growing unnoticed for 12 years and it was only in the six months before I went into hospital that I started to have any symptoms. Then I had 11 weeks in that filthy hole of Middlemore locked up as a psychiatric patient with no effort whatsoever to find out if there was a physical cause. I had to bully and fight for an MRI and it took all of the 11 weeks. I think that heads are going to roll over this treatment. When I can find the energy again for anything much.
As it happens I am feeling better than I have felt in years but I don't know why. Now I need to grumble until I get my car back: I hate buses and I am scared of them having been thrown to the floor more than once when the bus has jerked off withouth waiting for me to find a seat.
I suppose it's ok to call an academic "sweetie"??? Joshing of course.
Sorry Waiheke as a place has soured for you - we have only been here for a year so I don't really know the local 'identities', though they are many and varied. I may have crossed paths with your charming ex and not know it. My daughter and her husband have resided here for a few years and have a huge social circle - perhaps he's one of their friends and I would never know it!!!
Basically I'm a bit of a Westie at heart - spent most of our NZ life living in Titirangi though we have made short sorties into Paihia and Matakana - and four years living in Fiji. Te Atatu South is a lovely suburb and hopefully you will feel a lot more settled once you can feel stable domestically again.
You have had shocking treatment by the sound of it - no doubt you will know exactly where to place your complaints when you are feeling well enough to do so - Health and Disability Commissioner's office - or it would have been useful to speak to a Patient Advocate at Middlemore where most of the unforgiveable treatment happened. I, too, have heard it's a hellhole of a hospital.
I wish I could reassure you about the radiotherapy - I find I feel like an apprentice in this stuff and you are the master - you seem to have been through so much that is hell I can only hope for you that this treatment is going to give you back a very large chunk of your life and intellect - not that you have lost that, far from it!!!
I am not feeling at my best tonight, very tired - but in my 75th year I suppose I am an old bugger (did I really say that???) - get a very heavy arm when typing for a while - probably where the lymph nodes were removed - so I am going to come to a close wishing you the happiest festive season that is possible for you at the moment with so much concern on your mind. Will you be with family Janet????
You will keep us all informed about how you are faring I trust??
