Wednesday, March 4:

As this is a "blog in waiting" at the moment and I can really not add to my ailments any more without being very boring I thought I would just keep you in touch with my home life and its mad moments.

I will have no more medical news really now until I see my Carpal Tunnel doctor on March 12 when I hope he will inject both my wrists so that I can function properly and until something more permanent can be done for me on that score. I have had these injections before and they do work a treat for several months if you're lucky. Meantime, life has to go on and there certainly seems to be plenty of it around this house.

Alan is in the throes of a Cigar Box Guitar phase – yes, it is as it sounds, you make a guitar out of an old cigar box and any other bits and pieces you can find that may help out. Now, Alan has no skills whatsoever in the DIY range not even in the "flat pack put together" circle either so there really was only me and one other who might be interested in this.

Actually I like anything like that at all. Something for nothing appeals to me quite a lot and building an actual working thing from scratch seemed fascinating. It was also a good "thank you" to Alan for all that travelling and waiting – and believe me there has been a great deal of it!

As always I like to run my ideas through Cliff, my brother, and being a carpenter and a very good one at that, he was also quite interested in the idea, too! He, of course, was going to be the "other" interested person and I thought he would be able to give me some good tips on how to build. It became something more than that, however, when Cliff got personally interested and excited about building a guitar from nothing, too!

To cut a long story short, Cliff had built one before I could get my materials together – a sort of prototype – and we went from there. My effort was indeed just that and I'm still working to get it right while Cliff has built three or four in varying degrees of beautifulness and outstanding workmanship with a finished quality second to none.

The idea will be to sell these if we can – pocket money for holidays in these hard times. Somehow I think Cliff might have a better holiday than I but I'm not giving up yet. Just wait until I get those injections and my hands are working properly again (that's my excuse, anyway!).

Meanwhile Laura is almost at the end of her college life and with no tutor on hand for two months (she left for better things) I have had to become the fount of all knowledge. Actually I've searched for and found the handbook on how to teach this course and am now settling in to my new found career as Animal Management BTEC tutor Year 3!

Laura's tutors always seem to leave whenever she is at 95% of the way through her academic course. It happened at primary school, secondary school and now college and that is not a good pattern to get into. It sort of sets up a 95% quitter phase in Laura's mind, you know, almost but not quite and I really do not want that to be a mantra for the rest of her life.

Ironically, her driving instructor did exactly the same thing, too, and we had to move quickly on that one. It cannot be Laura's fault at all, well, not with the academic things, but I can imagine the driving instructor might have had a bit of a challenge!

I am at her mercy as her passenger now and keeping quiet is hard, everyone has different ways of driving though and after all she did pass her test first time, so perhaps I should stop trying to press that imaginary foot brake!

Last night I reached up to my sprouting hair to give it a good scratch as it was particularly "tickly" and to my horror brushed off a spider. Eeek! I don't mind spiders, but on your head, in the night - no. I convinced myself it was only a tiddler and that it wasn't going to come back for the kill and managed to go back to sleep, although ironically Alan dreamt of spiders too, in-between his teeth!, but at least it was only a dream – he didn't have one sitting on his head, did he!

I vowed next morning to give the bedroom a good going over and was just assembling my Mrs Mop equipment when...I saw it, sitting on the floor looking at me, yes, huge, big swively eyes and long antennae and the biggest legs I have ever seen.

Tarantula, Huntsman, Black widow? No...it was an enormous cricket – yuck, yucky yuck – and it had been sitting happily on my head just a few hours ago! OK, you're asking how an enormous brown cricket got in the bedroom, well...Laura keeps fire bellied toads in an indoor terrarium and they eat...you've got it, live brown crickets, which we keep safely in their own "home" with lid firmly on.

So, one must have escaped being eaten alive (wouldn't you try?) and thought it would give me a taste of what it was like! Note to Laura. Please keep those monstrous and evil-looking hoppers well locked away! The toads are great fun and could even be classed as quite cute but their food leaves something to be desired.

Websites I have found useful:
Breast Cancer Care
Cancerhelp.org (the patient information website of Cancer Research UK)
Netdoctor.co.uk
Scarf Studio (scarfs and bandanas)

Laura always comes home with something whenever she does work experience. The toads were the latest acquisition but before that she was at The Blue Cross, where she hopes to work full time one day and from there we had to have two very large rabbits that were unwanted. One of them is so gigantic he's bigger than Tango and he's a huge ginger tom!

The other unwanted animal we managed to avoid was a dachshund who had been orphaned by the death of his owner and who came into the kennels where Laura was doing some summer work. How we didn't end up with him I don't know but I do know that Benson – our terrier- would have probably tried to eat him!

All our animals have come to us by way of being unwanted, orphaned or injured apart from the cats and even they have a story to tell about how they arrived here. It was no wonder really that Laura chose to work with animals, isn't it?!

Tuesday, March 10:

When I finished my radiotherapy the last words the radiologists gave to me were: "Remember the effects go on for at least two weeks." I knew this because I had read all my leaflets and as you all know had been very good at following instructions as I was terrified of that "burn" I had read about and indeed, several of the ladies I had spoken to in the waiting room said they had suffered it to varying degrees. Silly them, I thought, they really should pay attention!

Ah well, those words have come back to smack me in the face now because during this second week the effects have really blossomed. If you are about to go through radiotherapy please do not be alarmed by reading this. I would hate to be responsible for someone's nervous breakdown, but...it has actually been worse afterwards than it was during the treatment.

Underneath my breast is extremely red and sore – not to the point of being unable to stand it – but definitely sore and at the same time itchy. I have put nothing on it except the aqueous cream provided and it really does help, especially if you keep it in the fridge! I'm not kidding; it's like having central heating in one boob.

I keep imagining it like a pressure cooker, and the nipple, well, I can't decide how to describe that but if you have ever breastfed, think back to those first few days – ouch! At the time of writing my nipple has actually formed a small scab on it! I'm a bit fed up, to tell the truth. I have been walking about – very carefully – for the last week with no bra at all and it has been infinitely more comfortable. It is even better if I bend down and let it all hang there with the breeze blowing round it, although walking about like Quasimodo isn't very attractive, but then neither is a scabby nipple!

I think I had expected it all to just get better and that each day I would wake to an improvement. Well, it hasn't been like that and my impatient nature doesn't help. Having my mind back in working order is good but my mind expects my body to follow its crazy plans without hesitation and it just won't! No.

It's a flat refusal from the muscle department in that I can hardly get out of bed. I have to plan an exercise (like shopping or hoovering) with military precision with built in "rest gaps" otherwise I just cannot make it through the day. It is intensely frustrating and acutely embarrassing hiding round the wine department of Sainsbury's pretending to study the bottles because in reality I cannot move any further.

This total torpor is usually accompanied by a slightly nauseous feeling which isn't good when you're food shopping! I have learnt now to do the shop in several trips over the week or, better still, plead illness and let Alan do it all!

Cancer treatment seems to spring surprises on you, things they don't tell you about or you just don't think to ask and this was one of the reasons this blog was born. I can tell you that whatever you have to go through you will do it because you have to and you want to.

Rather like giving birth you want this thing out of you and despite all the effects it may heap upon you every step is one step closer to "outing" it. After the event, like chemotherapy, the memory lessens a little and the mental pain diminishes - that's probably because you haven't got a brain any more – no seriously, it gets better after every phase and although I haven't got there yet I'm sure that one day this will all be a fuzzy memory!

I wanted to write it all down for those people who haven't got there yet, either.

Not to put them off or frighten the living daylights out of them but to be truthful and say these things might happen to you, they might not, but whatever your treatment brings one thing is certain.

You're getting rid of cancer, getting your life back to live the way you want to and you're winning. I tell myself this many times every week – it works!

Part 54 next week

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