The 7 day (head)ache, opposed to the 7 year itch

Well, it's been a good few days since I last posted, but I have a fair excuse (well, I think it's fair anyways).  I have basically been feeling like utter crap!  Since the Saturday before last Saturday, I was presented by the health fairy with a constant banging headache, that wouldn't shift with pain killers.  

My sister and bro-in-law from Nottingham were coming to visit.  I was just having a rest to be on full strength when they arrived and the plumber turned up (he is plumbing our extension).  He announced after being here about 10 minutes that he needed to pull up the lounge floor.  Great, thanks for the warning, we now had no downstairs rooms we could use (other than our teeny tiny kitchen).  My sis arrived but they just came upstairs and alternately entertained the kids or sat and chatted to me.

The plumber then announced out the blue that we needed to get a new radiator.  I was in no condition to, so my wife Sam had to take on the suddenly urgent task!  She wasn't too pleased!

Despite feeling like 20 builders were trying to drill their way out my head, I managed to go to lunch with them.  It was lovely to see them and be with them but my head banging constantly and feeling super tired was getting to me.  Sam finally joined us and had some food and then I had to end the party and return home for a lie down (wuss bag!).

The headache continued with no respite until today (Monday).  It was improving over the last two days and faded away this morning.  Despite having got through 8 outpatient and 3 inpatient chemos, this headache came closed to breaking me.  Anyway, it's gone now, so hurrah!

Me and My Chicken Legs!

I'm out and discharged from hospital.  I feel really tired and lethargic and can hardly walk due to my wasted leg muscles.  I walk like a badly coordinated 96 year old.  That's not the worst bit, getting up to standing is a swine.  Don't even ask about the worry I had when I sat on the toilet (yes, I thought I was stuck and was going to need help to get up.  I just managed it though.  Not fun).  As soon as I was released I tried to start getting some walking done and to go up the stairs a few times (that's a killer).  Next morning the few scrawny muscles I did have were throbbing and I could hardly move my legs at all.  Standing wasn't only difficult it was bloody painful too.  So, as good as high dose steroids are for somethings, they are bastards when it comes to scoffing muscle tissue.  I now officially have chicken legs (or chicken bone legs to be more precise!)

On the plus side, I now have a stem cell harvest date and a scan date.  Fingers are crossed that the last chemo session (which I found really gruelling, more in another post) seemed to have worked (please, please).  Anyway, I now have to give myself 3 daily injections (yum, yum) in my soft white belly.  1 is called Fragmin and is an anti-coagulant, the other 2 are GCSF which is the drug that makes my poor tortured bone marrow release stem cells.  I have 2 of those because they don't do a single on in a big enough size.  Doh!  

Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now...?

Grrr!  I'm not patient any more (although I am a patient, boom boom, puntastico!).  The doc has been to see me and checked everything off the list:  no puking, no fever, temperature under 38 for 24 hours, looking well, not dizzy, weight ok, etc, so-on-and-so-forth.  

The question was then raised again, "so, can I go then?"

She froze a moment.  Did a quick computation.  Not sure what it was.  

She said, "Possibly".

How bloody useful is that?  Still, if Hitler thought that way the 20th century may have been different:

"Fuhrer, shall we invade Poland?"

"Hmmm, possibly"

Many lives may have been saved and the Charlie Chaplin look-a-like may have lived a few more years preaching his own brand of hate filled rubbish.

Anyway, short dictators aside, she then said that she would need to run it by the consultant and get the go/no go decision.  Just to make sure this didn't go on all day, I ask when she could do that and let me know and she said in 30 minutes.  That was 2 hours ago.  I may restart digging my tunnel (code name Charlie, after tunnel Alfie was discovered by guards and after tunnel Blinky collapsed).

The wait goes on.  The trouble is, it could put my temperature up and result in me not being allowed to go!

The Incredible Puking Man

So they told me when my last bit of treatment was done, I'd pretty much be able to go home.  I was an excited kitten.  Sleeping in ones own bed and all that.  Well, the last slow bag of fluid crawled into me and I had a good nights sleep, all ready to be up and out the next morning but, shock horror, I had changed...

Into the incredible puking man!  I was woken at 6 (as normal), loaded with anti-sickness drugs and then proceeded to spend the morning feeling nauseous and doing some power puking.  It was horrible and very disappointing.  Apparently, Cisplatin (the drug I had been receiving for the last four days) is a mighty puke maker but the effects could have been dampened by the steroids, which were now done. 

So, that was the morning, then in the afternoon to seal the deal my temperature went climbing to 39 and I felt like crud.  My head ached and my body felt heavy and weak, so no going home.

Today, I woke up, feeling a bit weird.  Temperature was 38.4, so they won't let me go today, but I've been improving throughout the day and not been sick, so with luck, I may get out tomorrow.  I must be feeling ok, as I've got the lappy on and am typing this.  

Anyway, just a quick post.

Oh yeah, if there is anyone with a blog out there in the blog-o-sphere who wishes to swap links with me, let me know.

I'm greedy and I know it, but I still want more...

Many thanks to all the well wishers who have sent me messages.  I love all the comments I get, unless they are hideous death threats due to my writings about the prophet (not done any, so should be okay there, unless the Johovas Witnesses read my previous post and get militant).  

Now, just being greedy and believing that laughter is the best medicine, if you can plug your best joke at the end of a well wishing comment, then I'd be well happy.  If you can uplift me and make me laugh, then that's double bonus points!

On the subject of jokes, are you like me and find that you can only hold a maximum of 2 jokes in your head at once?  That's the way it seems to work with me and it is always the last two I've been told.  So the real bummer is when you had a great classic belly busting wheeze-matic joke all lined up and then someone comes along and tells a stinker and boom, it's lost in the joke aether.  Listen to what I'm stuck with as my number one joke right now.  It's not good and I don't know where I heard it.  Sorry if I knock anyone elses number one joke out their brain with this one, but I've got to share it and how bad it is:

Q:  What is white, green and then white?

A:  A frog sandwich

Come on, I mean, it shouldn't even count!  I should never have lost some complex, yet amazingly funny joke that reduced all who heard it to tears of mirth, for that, so help please!

No sleep till Brooklyn!

Well, chemo has slowly dragged on.  It hasn't made me feel bad particularly.  I've been tired and not wanted to leap tall buildings in a single bound but the previous CHOP chemo made me feel worse.  The rub here is that you are wired up 24/7.  There are 4 lots of a drug called Cisplatin that you get for 96 hours, accompanied by loads of fluids (as it is a bit of a nasty sucker to your insides if let loose on its own).  Now, the annoying thing about constantly getting fluids fed in, as I've gone on about before is that they start to bloat you out unless you can get rid of them.   They give you some drugs to help get rid of them, but it's an ongoing drudge.  Anyway, the 96 hours is getting near to an end and my grumpy mood (obviously noticeable as my wife has bought me a Mr. Grumpy t-shirt.  Thanks love).  Also, both a plus and a minus are the large steroid doses used on this chemo.  Plus side, I've always responded well, so yay there.  Downside, if they are given late they can stop you sleeping.  Mine were given late, as the infusions were going on so long (on and on and on...!  You can tell I'm not the most patient person in the world).  So, first night, no sleep, just mad thoughts that wouldn't go away.  You think of one thing and go off on a tangent and then another and then another, until you pull back and think "I WANT TO GO TO SLEEP!" and then a thought about sleep, e.g. a film that had sleep in the title comes to mind and away you go again.  Thankfully, I seem to have adapted and was able to sleep okay last could of nights, apart from the regular wakings up to pee in bottles (all urine out has to be measured and compared to fluid in, to make sure it's not welcome to bloats-ville).

That's fluids aside, ooh, lovely fluids.  Or so you'd think!  That brings me to blood.  Apparently my red count was getting low, which would help explain why I was getting tireder.  Now, I really appreciate people who give blood (and I'm glad I got over my cowardice and did myself, before getting ill), as I have now been a recipient (sorry to upset any Jehovah's Witnesses that may have stumbled onto this page, but blood transfusions are the least you've got problems with!  Wow! That was a bit harsh.  A brief aside.  Whilst at home, between treatments two 60+ year old JWs came round to convert me, after hearing their arguments I gave counter arguments to their claims and they were not very happy that I did not just gleefully accept their rather "intriguing" version of the way of the universe.  Have a look at their beliefs, I was amused.  Perhaps I'm over stepping the mark now and should get back to business).  Anyway, I was told I would need a new little cannula poking into my hand as my other 2 lines were busy.  Joy!  A new hole and a hand I can't use properly.  They said as soon as the blood is in we'll take the cannula out.  Cool!  I thought, so that's not so bad.  

"How, long to put the blood in?", I asked.

"About 2 hours, 4 at max"

Blimey, I thought to myself, that's a fair while.  My thoughts were interrupted though...

"Per pack and we're giving you 3"

Lordy!  Upto 12 hours to shove some blood in!  And it ended up taking longer.  Man, this blog is turning into my personal rant zone.  I'm sure earlier posts were all happy and positive and talking about flowers and trees and other crap.  Rah!  Mr.  Grumpy is in town!

Oxford say "no!"

I've been allowed to escape for the weekend, which is cool and the gang.  I'm sat at home, watching my own TV, sat on my own settee and it's great!  No hospital till Monday, but then they want to start the next chemo (4 days early.  I liked the idea of chilling and feeling good for a few days, but hey ho).  Was a bit downbeat today when my consultant said that because I didn't respond to RICE, the cancer squad in Oxford did not consider me for the stem cell transplant and high strength chemo (which is the best shot at really blasting this thing apparently.  It blasts me too, but I get to recover, whereas it should be no more (hopefully)).  The bastards!  The good news though was that he (my cool consultant dude) rang the cancer terminator team in Hammersmith and told them my situation and they had a different plan.  They would go for a cycle of ESHAP (which is what we had in mind anyway) and if I respond at all, even a little bit, they would go for the stem cell stuff.  Hey, Hammersmith gang, I love you.  Oxford turds, you can go and university yourselves!  No, I'm not bitter.

Okay, okay, alright already!  I'll tell.  The hedge incident.  I'd better talk about it now as otherwise you'd have to wait a week or so.

Anyway, this hedge.  Well, we had this hedge and it was a monster.  It ran from the end of the garden, down to near the front "garden" (I put garden, because I couldn't think of a better word to describe the space where the cars park that sits in front of the house.  There is a little bit of grass and a few weeds there too, so it is garden-ish.).  Anyway, the headline to take from this is that it was a long hedge.  Now, not only was the hedge one long mutha f*cker, but it was wide too and as everyone knows, it is all about the girth.  It was about 4 feet wide, so it happily ate about a 4 foot chunk of our garden, for no reward.  Oh yeah, it was also about 7 foot high.  The good side of this is that it meant that we were well shielded from the mad, crazy and insane hound lady and her hounds.  All seems pretty okay so far, when you think about, we have a 4 foot barrier protecting us from infection from the loon next door.  The thing is, it was one ugly thing and after about 3pm the garden suddenly because dark, as the hedge blocked it out.  There were also rumours that various members of the faery folk have been spotted living in it and if there is one thing that I dislike, it is squatting imaginary creatures (apologises to anyone out there who believes in such things)

Nope, the hedge was a pain, not only because it was ugly but because it had to be cut every few months.  If you do it yourself it takes yonks and if you get someone in to do it, it cost a wodge.  For what?  Stupid hedge.  Also, hound lady used to constantly complain about the hedge, demanding that I came and cut it on her side (as she was a pensioner, which is fair enough).

So, here I was walking towards my house when hound lady intercepted me and started moaning about the fence.  No, not that fence, but the fence that was on her side of the hedge.  A fence I never knew existed.  She was saying that it needed repairing and some panels replacing.  Obviously, any mention of fences from her, filled me with fear.  Sam and I had been talking about getting rid of the hedge and if I had to repair a fence I never see or even knew existed, then I might as well get rid of the hedge and fix up the old fence.  I told her this plan and she was ecstatic.  I couldn't believe it, I thought she would moan.  So, on a high, I called in, you guessed it, Steve the fence man.  He was a little reluctant to do anything that was within 100 metres of hound lady, but the hedge extraction operation appealed.  Oh man, this is going to be a long post as there is a lot of ranting to fit in.  Sorry, I may have to save the rest till another day.