Just a short update today, as I'm not feeling too great. Had my 4th of 5 Mytomycin shots on Thursday, and started the 7th of 8 cycles of Capecitabine. My bloods must be fine, though I forgot to ask for the exact levels. The registrar I saw (yet another new one) said that I should have a scan after the last cycle of Cap and possibly before the last Myto. If the scan result is good, I may not even need that Myto. Timing is pretty tight though: I'm not sure when they are going to schedule the scan (end May/beginning of June?) and waiting for the results will delay the 5th Myto if I turn out to need it. Well, the wheels grind slowly and one just has to get used to waiting.
So my review was uneventful, but the chemo was hard. They couldn't find a suitable vein so there was lots of poking around, which I hate as I'm still pretty needle-phobic, even after all the needles that have been stuck into me. Luckily I had John's hand to squeeze very tightly, and did some deep breathing, and we got there in the end, though not without calling over the most experienced chemo nurse there, my assigned nurse having given up on me. Then I felt extremely dizzy afterwards so we had to go and sit in the café and drink peppermint tea until I felt able to walk to the car park. When we got back to the hotel I went straight to bed, and since then my abdomen has been really swollen and painful with this horrible feeling of wanting to 'go' all the time. And I mean all the time, so for now I feel I can't leave the house. Yesterday I made the mistake of taking some Movicol, which tipped me over the other way, but did nothing to reduce the swollen abdomen. Oh well, this has happened before, it seems to be some kind of cycle, and I just have to grin and bear it.
We were only away in Manchester for 24 hours, but the spring made another leap forward while we were gone. The silver birches dropped all their catkins overnight. The ground is carpeted with what look like little brown caterpillars but are just catkins, and the trees have sprung into green. Robert Frost says 'Nature's first green is gold / Her hardest hue to hold'. I think about that every spring - that gold lasts for about a day, and if you miss it, it's gone. But there are other delights, my favourite by far being the bluebells. There is a secret place in the hills above the village which is only accessible after quite a long walk, and not accessible by road at all. It's a magical small bluebell wood, in the middle of which, on a rise, is a huge oak tree. Underneath the tree, someone put a bench a long time ago - it's a bit rickety and a bit rotten but sound enough. I like to go there at bluebell time with the dog. I lie on the bench looking up at the sky through the branches of the oak and smelling that delicate elusive bluebell smell, while the dog snuffles through the undergrowth, hoping to find squirrels. Once she started a hare there - what a sight that was, the beautiful athletic hare racing through the bluebells. There's no way our old dog could ever catch a hare, so it was perfectly safe. Well, I must make my bluebell pilgrimage soon, though where I'm going to find the energy for it at present I'm not sure. But there's always this nagging thought at the back of one's mind: 'this might be the last time - don't miss it'. What a cheery note on which to end!
