Too tired and sick to post yesterday, so let us travel into the distant mists of 24 hours past ...
*wibbly-wobbly time-travel music*
I've now got the date of my next appointment at the Churchill - which I suppose will be to discuss chemotherapy. (And what of my pleural effusion? What of that? Has it been forgotten again??) The appointment is for 12 September - almost three weeks away. No urgency, then.
Now, I do realise that, if we were playing the balloon game, the fat, white woman who nobody loves would be the universal choice for first out of the basket, but this is me, dammit, and I hold my life a little dearer than that. At least, most of the time I do. When I'm feeling particularly sick and pooey, I wish I were dead, but only in an emo-teen "and then you'll be sorry!" sort of way.
I will give them the benefit of the doubt, and work on the theory that they want to make sure I'm completely over my operation before they start. Yes. That must be it. I really don't want to start doubting these people's competence. I'm rather depending on them being good at what they do.
My lovely brother (there is another, of whom we do not speak) and his wife (there is also another sister-in-law, who we avoid like the bloody pox) dropped by on their way home to Bristol yesterday - Wednesday, that is (this time-travel business is hard). They stayed for maybe an hour, hour and a half. It was wonderful to see them - I get almost no visitors at all, I really must start pointing out to people that cancer isn't catching - but I was flagging badly by the midpoint, even letting Lovely Brother do the talking which, like Butch Cassidy, is what he is good at.
Sister-in-law MEG is, of course, a cancer survivor herself, and being able to talk to her really brought home how much there is a need for local support groups. For example, she said that at one point during her illness she was only able to eat Chipsticks. Well, there have been days when all I can eat are Japanese rice crackers, so that was reassurance, right there, that this wasn't weird or scary (except for where it is), just a Thing That Happens. She also told me that, in extremis, you can get protein drinks prescribed by your GP.
She's due for reconstructive breast surgery shortly. I have to say that, given my half-a-day experience of surgery and its ludicrously disproportionate recovery time, I would not haveanything done to me that did not absolutely, imperatively have to be done - but it's her body and her decision. I would be quite happy to donate her a bosom (except that that would, of course, require surgery, see above), but it doesn't work that way. I hope it goes well for her. Nice relatives are hard to come by.
