Flickrmeet

on the shields ferry
Originally uploaded by Pig Sty Ave.

( Photo - courtesy of Garry )

Regular readers will remember that occasionally I shuffle off to flickr with other like minded people. No animals and few children are harmed in the process and I always enjoy myself in a quiet shy way.

This time it was to South Shields, across to North Shields and back again. You can see my photos here.

The thing that strikes me about this picture ( me second left) is how thin I look. Hadn't realised. Need more pies!

Then in the evening I went over to dinner with friends M & C in Sunderland. They certainly helped with the feeding me up! A lovely evening chatting and catching up ( we all used to work together). Got home fairly early and slept the sleep of the er... sleepy.

This morning, I'm packing up for the trip to mum's tomoorrow and sorting things for starting the new job in Birmingham on Wednesday. If I get it all sorted I may pop over to Dawdon for another flickrmeet before meeting J off her train. Busy busy....

And then to the Morrissey gig!

More in a day or two. I'm feeling good.

Back Home

I'm SO tired! Had to decide whether to write this slightly less coherently tonight or leave it till the morning. Decided on the former - but you have been warned...

I got the next train from Durham fine - and had an uneventful journey to Nottingham. Only thing was that when I was first taken ill in November last year, it was in a Virgin Train Toilet - something about that purple toilet bowl reminded me about all that. Seems so long ago.

The Conference was great. I mean, it was interesting, I wasn't at all out of touch ( depressing in a way - shouldn't something more have happened in three months? ) it was good to meet old friends ( some like N, who read this blog... ) it felt good to get my head working again - and of course, to be with J was brilliant. ( We first met at a conference like this about 11 years ago.) But it was also very tiring - we didn't make it to the after dinner speech last night.

Up sharp this morning and did the morning at the conference. But by lunchtime, Meadowhall called and we escaped in J's hire car to Seriously Shop. ( This usually happens to us at conferences!)

I wanted to get some new clothes for work, starting with a jacket. We soon got the idea of what I was after and after an hour or so found ourselves in Cecil Gee, looking at a very nice Solbiati blue linen pinstripe jacket. Which miraculously became a very nice Solbiati blue linen pinstripe suit. ( Once I'd had a slight panic attack about trouser size to allow for The Bag...)

Deal Done.

Then to House of Fraser, for a cuppa where, miraculously I found I'd also bought a very nice linen suit from there as well!

We decided to quit while we were ahead and drove back up to Durham in a couple of hours. Said goodbye there. J's off to Birmingham tomorrow to meet an old friend but back on Sunday. I'll meet her off the train.

So - a good, but exhausting few days - and more to come next week. But as must seem obvious, I'm feeling much stronger and on top of things. Still no real chemo side effects. Feels good to have myself back. Long may it continue!

Now I'm off to bed - I don't care how early it is!

Back on Durham Station

Well, here I am, back on Durham Railway Station having missed my train by 2 minutes! Plus ca change..

I was up nice and early and got to the Chemo Unit in plenty of time but even though Nurse Sarah had me all rigged up, there was a long delay while we waited for the drugs themselves to arrive from Pharmacy...

Anyway - that's 3/24 - or 1/8th of the whole treatment.

I got to the station in time to see my train pull away, but I refuse to get stressed about this stuff. Not today anyway.

Another train in 20 minutes.

The Bain Of My Life...

Yep - my check up with Bagburster Bain this afternoon. The appointments were running an hour late - but so do his operations...

An amiable but brief session. Bit of a chat, bit of a prod, bit of an er..examination and he said he was pleased to see me looking so well. The anastomosis is doing well now with no sign of the abscess and he said that when I have my next check up in August, if all is still well, we'll be able to set a date for the reconnection!

It's odd , but although I know myself that I've been feeling much better over the past few weeks ( Apart from a bit of a blockage for a while yesterday - that's courgette off the the list then...) it was good ( Just typed "god" by mistake...) to hear it confirmed by him.

No side effects at all from the chemo at the moment. Number III first thing tomorrow morning and then straight on to a train to Nottingham for the conference with J . ( She's driving down earlier and meeting me there. ) I'm quite looking forward to it as it's my first work-related thing for more than three months and I'm keen to know how I'll be. Will I understand what's going on? ( Actually J says I'll soon remember how I dull I find some of this stuff...)

So. I'll try a mobile blog while I'm away - say how it's going.

Oh - and the Weekly Music Chart in the sidebar was updated yesterday.

It was Morrissey….

Three Months

It's three months today since my operation. I'm not sure how I feel about that - it seems longer in a way. Also makes me think how long I've still got to go with this - another six months of chemo and then the reconnection. I really would like all of this done by Christmas and then I can start 2007 as a kind of clean sheet. ( Apart from the 3 monthly check ups/scans of course...) But I also know I shouldn't wish this year away - it has had good things already and it will have more.

Enough philosophy.

Strangely enough I feel less tired today - even though I've done loads of things. I actually sorted the greenhouse out last night (after a second glass of wine...) and after some final tweaking this morning, I put it out in it's new place in the yard. Will try to get some tomato plants to go in there tomorrow.

And then I put up my curtains in my bedroom. ( I was going to call this blogentry "Curtains.." but I didn't like to worry anybody... ) This has been a saga. I bought them on ebay a month ago but then they had to go to a draper's to get the pleating unstitched and when I went to put them up a few days ago I discovered that the curtain track was wrong. I bought new curtain track and hooks yesterday and so today I put it all together. I'm really pleased with the curtains - they look great. But I'm also very pleased with myself for putting up a curtain rail as I don't usually consider myself to be very good at DIY - even the supposedly simple stuff like this.

Then a walk - two miles in the teatime sunshine. A good day.

Oh and for those of you ( like my sister) who wait avidly each Monday for my weekly music chart, knowing that it will have it's finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist ( Q: Can a zeitgeist have a pulse?) I'm afraid there'll be a slight delay this week. There's a problem with the database that feeds it.

But I'd be very surprised if Morrissey wasn't Number One. I seem to have been listening to him all week - apart from today which has been mostly dedicated to His Bobness.

Fatigue?

I am exhausted! It started to come on as I was going round the supermarket this morning - like I felt myself getting slower and s-l-o-w-e-r....

I came home, put the shopping away and fell asleep in the chair for an hour!

Came to still feeling a bit tired but pulled myself together and started to assemble my mini-greenhouse which had arrived a day or two ago. You know how some instructions for self-assembly are great - clear, intuitive, well-written?

Not these.

After two hours, it's ( less than) halfway put together and I need another nap! Will do more of it tomorrow. Or trash it...

In spite of the nurse saying the other day that it's too early for side effects to kick in, I don't know what else this could be. Just makes me feel so slow.

A bit worrying because I finally had the conversation with A my new boss yesterday about going down to Birmingham for the day on May 3 to begin my new job. ( I'll stay at my mum's for a couple of days before.) We agreed that we'd keep things closely under review and see how the chemo is affecting me but at this rate I can see myself dozing through most of my induction!

Went out with S yesterday evening to the Biscuit Factory in Newcastle for their first Contemporary Art Auction. S is a really accomplished artist and she wanted to see what sort of pictures were there and what they fetched. It was a curious event - a mixture of very posh people and the artists themselves and lots of people like us just observing - making sure we didn't scratch our noses inadvertently! She could easily get her pictures accepted there I think but they take a huge commission off both artists and buyers so you wouldn't do it for the money. Unless you were Damien Hirst or Alexander Millar ( Why do people like those Gadgy pictures so much...? ) that is - pictures by them went for thousands!

(Oh - and there was no running water or toilet paper in the Men's Toilets...)

A busy week next week - appointment with Mr Bain on Wednesday, Chemo III on Thursday morning and then J ( she's in Liverpool this weekend seeing her daughter B ) and I are going to a conference in Nottingham. She was going anyway and suggested that I come too as it might be a good way to begin to catch of with work-related issues. And if it's dull we can always leg it to the shops!

Another nap now. Hope I don't dream about greenhouses.

Merry Maids!

My annual treat today - get Debbie and her Merry Maids in to do a full Spring Clean of the house! Just great to come back to.

While they were about their business, I went down to J's for the day and we had a great time sorting things out on her PC - getting rid of files, making it do some of the things it's supposed to etc. Yeah - I know - not everybody's idea of fun but I love doing this sort of stuff with her. Je suis un geek... Nous sommes geeks...

Oh - and I just happened to mention to her that I'd got us tickets to see Morrissey at the Sage in Gatehead at the end of the month... Thanks ebay....

Then up to Durham for Chemo. ( 2/24 - that's 1/12th of the way through...). Nurse Sarah was great and very sympathetic to my my list of side effects - but I got the sense that she didn't believe a word of it. It's not like she wasn't listening to me. Just too early. Not with this treatment....

I sort of know what she means. I know that I've been supersensitive to every ache and pain this week and it's really not been too bad. The symptoms I've had ( sore hands, the bloody eye) are things that I get anyway.

Just keep it all under review eh?

Off Colour

Didn't have a very good night's sleep last night. Even given that I'm up two or three times every night for the bag ( That's my own fault - I eat dinner too late) I usually sleep/get back to sleep OK and feel rested in the morning.

Not last night - definitely just a series of short naps.

And as well as the sore hands, I've got the first soreness around my mouth and a burst blood vessell in my eye. This does happen to me occasionally for no apparent reason (It doesn't hurt at all - just doesn't look nice) but I suspect that I'm more prone to it because of the chemo, which tends to make you bleed more easily. But at least I've stopped feeling queasy.

Ah well - I'll ask about it all at Chemo II tomorrow - I expect a pattern will emerge as things progress.

Spring Thoughts

Saw my first pair of swallows on Sunday afternoon - doesn't make a summer, I know but...

And a nice visit from my youngest brother A - he works as a Sound Supervisor for the BBC and was up here covering a football match. J came over as well and we went out for a pub meal.

During the day, I'd been feeling increasingly queasy and so I wasn't sure how I was going to handle the pub and a meal. But after two pints and a big plate of gammon and chips and a shared bottle of red wine when we got home, we decided there probably wasn't anything much wrong with me... Seriously, the sickness does seem to be worse if I let myself get at all hungry - so I'm trying to eat little and often. Need to watch my weight a bit as well - nothing to be concerned about but I have lost a couple of pounds over the last fortnight and at the moment I notice it.

My hands are definitely sore and cracked now - but nothing a bit of E45 can't deal with. Also some cramps in my feet?

Over the red wine, the conversation turned to finances - mostly what I should do with my redundancy money and my new ( higher ) salary. Pension? Investment?

"Why not think about moving to a new house?" said A. Well, that set us all off . The free paper was retrieved from the recycling bin and we had a great hour or so playing " Find Simon A House". There are some really nice ones around in the middle of Durham - not all of them outside my price range...

So on Monday, after A had gone, J and I had a lovely morning driving around Durham looking at possible locations and noting a few properties/areas. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to move tomorrow - but I do think that the seed of it as a possibility has been planted...

We also had a great time just wandering around the Durham shops - window shopping clothes for me, clothes for J, secondhand shops, coffee etc. We always have such a great time when we do that.

Then back to her place to finish her Easter Egg before her daughter D got home and scoffed it all..

So - all in all, a good weekend - and it's still sunny today!

Stocking Up

Another trip to the DIY store yesterday to get a bamboo plant and some lavender - and a chimenea to be delivered next week. Eventually most of that will go in the second yard ( top of picture) which will be my summer retreat, but for now I want to see it all from the house.

And I also took delivery of a new garden storage box and two more olive trees ( on the left in this picture). Oh - and I've ordered a mini-greenhouse as well. I may not be able to eat tomatoes this year, but I'm still going to grow them!

It's nice to feel I'm getting on with stuff.

Chemo symptoms kicking in a bit now - definitely feeling queasy and sore hands for sure. All bearable though - and apart from that, I'm feeling good. It's sunny Sunday morning as you can see.

Happy Easter!

Tamar Bailey

Day Three after my first chemo and I have noticed a tiny bit of soreness on the back of my hands. Hard to tell whether it's a side effect or not as I tend to get sore hands when I'm feeling a bit stressed anyway.

Not quite the active day I hoped for yesterday, but I did get to the supermarket and to the DIY store for some more stuff for the garden - including More Olive Trees!

In my post on Thursday, I mentioned about Tamar Bailey, the 26 year old who's being refused a particular colon cancer treatment by her local health authority.

I thought the name rang a bell. Ironically, my mother's maiden name was Bailey and her grandmother's first name was Tamar...

Anyway. Tamar has a website here - I've set up a permanent link in the sidebar.

Side Effects...?

Hmmm. didn't think they'd kick in that fast...

I was determined to get this picture for the Quiver Project but I had to be damn quick in a crowded hospital corridor so it's not quite as steady as I would have liked. But you get the idea.

It was fine. Of course.

The nurse, Pat was great and the jab really only took ten minutes as they'd promised and I feel fine. (That's 1/24 then... )


A much more pleasant surprise was my brother O and his wife J calling in on their way back home to Herefordshire from O's birthday treat in York and seeing rellies on Tyneside. Nice to see them. My other brother A is staying on Sunday night too.

So. Easter weekend. People are winding down from a week's work and looking forward to a long weekend. J is planting her seed potatoes tomorrow. As I don't appear to suddenly look like an extra from " Champions", I think I'll pull myself together and try and do something a bit more active too. Dunno what yet.

Avastin

I was just getting up when I caught the words "bowel cancer" on the radio. An interview with 26 year old Tamar Bailey who has advanced non-operable bowel cancer and is being refused drug treatment with the newly-approved drug Avastin. Although they won't quite admit it, it looks like it's because her Health Authority won't ( or can't) find the money.

You can read the full story here.

Something to aim for...

Another great night at the Hydrogen Jukebox ( I'll find the link later - J says that the website's disappeared! - ed) last night.

As well as a brilliant piece from Kate Fox, there were great sets from Kalle Niinikangas and Bob Beagrie and from a very good Darlington band called 2 Many Units.

All the photos here.

And here.

And here.

Which is why was great that several flickrites turned up - Topsy, Pickersgill Reef and Scuola di Atene - as J said later, you couldn't move in the place for competitive photographers or poets. ( Well, she put it slightly more er...candidly than that actually...)

Topsy gave me this arrow from his Quiver as well. He'd mentioned it on the blog the other day and now I have my own. Expect it to appear at significant moments...

The rest of yesterday ( and I think probably what remains of today) was spent completely restoring my main PC system which went Blue Screen on me yesterday morning. Bless Bill Gates for inventing the ASR system - and curse him for having such an unstable/vulnerable operating system as Windows XP in the first place. ( One of these days I'm going to go Linux or Mac and have done for good.) Oh - and thank goodness I had the sense to do a half decent back up in the first place. ( Remember kids - try this at home...)

Note the huge amount of displacement activity in my life at the moment. I'm really quite nervous about the chemo tomorrow - I mean, I know I want it and I'm sure that I'll cope with it. It's just the unknownness of it all - volunteering to be poisoned on the grounds that your poisoner assures you that it will make you better. Ho hum.

But thanks so much for all the good wishes.

Chemo Go Ahead

I saw Dr Coxon this morning and reported that the night sweats had stopped a while ago. On the basis of that, my chemo can go ahead on a weekly basis, starting this Thursday.

The Chemo Unit at the hospital has that cheery Dunkirk Spirit atmosphere that I find so difficult but both Deborah and Sandra the Unit Managers/Sisters were really friendly and helpful and Deborah spent a while explaining the treatment and the side effects to me. The treatment will be every Thursday for 24 weeks ( I can take weeks off but they're added onto the end) and will take about an hour each time.

I knew about most of the possible side effects already from seeing Dr C last time but the new information was to do with avoiding infections - not just coughs and colds but also from food. I must avoid blue cheese, pate, cream ( unless I know that it's very fresh ) and reheated food. ( You can see where this is coming from ) Oh - and no kebabs...

But no problems with head and foot massages and I can exercise as much as I feel able to. J and I also talked about seriously investigating complementary therapies now - as much as anything so that I can feel that I'm in control of this in some way. It is ironic that today I think I probably feel the fittest and most upbeat I've felt since the op - and who knows how I'm going to be in a week's time. ( Of course, it could be that I'll have no side effects. Now wouldn't that be great! )

I'm glad it's all sorted - and I'm happy that it's going ahead. After all the knife edge stuff of the last few weeks, I can also do a bit of planning now - like the weekend break J and I have been talking about for weeks.

It's a lovely sunny day out there ( none of yesterday's snow settled) so I think I'm going to go for a walk.

Anemone

This is the poem I wrote a few days ago about my stoma and the bag and all the problems I was having. Hopefully it's a thing of the past now, but it should have its place here.


Stirred memory

Itches

The anemone bathing

In warm shallows of recovery

Empties lava in to a boiling sea

Blind shadows in the depths

Disturbed.

The sea slug dribblesears across my stomach

Follows gravity

Down the scar tracks

Seeps into my underwear

Burning burning

I remove the pad

Force myself competent

Douse the fire

Remember

Michael

Who pooed his grey flannel shorts

In the playground when we were seven.

Success!

OK - I'm going to go for this and take the chance by declaring the new two-piece bag a success! I changed the baseplate myself 5 hours ago and all seems just fine. It was a bit different to fit - maybe a bit more fiddly - but also quite a bit more tolerant of my ineptitude.

I'm so pleased.

A nice stayover last night with R & C my ex-parents-in-law in South Yorkshire. Since the end of my marriage 6 years ago, we've kept in touch and are still very close. I've kept them a little bit at arm's length since my op just because, well, you have to draw a line somewhere. But they've been very concerned about me and wanting to come up and see me/(look after me... ) for ages so I thought that the best thing to do was a brief trip to see them so that they could see that I am basically OK.

My longest drive so far ( two and a half hours ) which went fine - no real discomfort at all. Warmly welcomed by hugs, a lovely meal and a good helping of whisky, we had a great evening catching up. I enjoyed being with them and I think they were reassured about me as well. We've planned that they'll come up to stay in a month or so's time so that R can help me with getting the backyard sorted for the summer.

I slept well ( the whisky...) and drove back at lunchtime today, calling in to Tescos on the way home to do my first proper ( non-internet) grocery shop since I came out of hospital. It was quite tiring and I still feel quite vulnerable with crowds of people but I'm pleased to have done it.

To celebrate I rewarded myself with the Completely Unnecessary Purchase of a portable colour TV/DVD for my bedroom...

...and while I was installing it later, the snow came down. It is April isn't it..?

And now, it's 8.00pm ( Great to look out and see that it's not completely dark yet) and I'd better go and get something to eat.

Then an earlyish night with the new telly beckons...

Two-piece sweet!

s'OK - I'm running out of puns...

Well - everything crossed but the new two-piece bag is doing very well indeed so far. Comfortable and reassuring - it's just so great to not feel that I have to worry about it all the time. I walk better and my back doesn't hurt so much because I stoop less. Of course the next big test is on Saturday when I have to change the baseplate for the first time.

To celebrate/show off I spent most of the afternoon up in town - shopped a bit ( the new Morrissey CD) and then to the cinema to see the new Harrison Ford film "Firewall". I'd seen the the trailer for the film last week and it looked good.

Don't bother.

The trailer was the most exciting thing about it, it turned out - and contained the entire plot, apart from the holes you could drive a truck through.

Tea in the pub and then home. In spite of the cinema disappointment, it's been a good day.

Oh and this morning I got a call from the nurse at the Chemotherapy Unit. Will I go in to see Dr Coxon on Monday? This is it then - decision time…

Off to stay over with my ex parents-in-law in Doncaster tomorrow night. Back Saturday.

Two Piece Suits?

After two more uncertain “willitwontit?” days with the bag I wasn’t going to my appointment with Sue the Stoma Nurse this afternoon with much optimism and sure enough, as I pulled into the carpark at the hospital I felt that old familiar burning sensation…

Ostensibly the reason for the appointment was to try a two-piece bag that some one ( I from Beating Bowel Cancer I think) had recommended but I was pretty miserable when I got in to see her and just sounded off about the whole situation with the bag.

She was, of course, brilliant. Soothing, calming and knowledgeable. She had a really good look at the stoma ( amazing that people do this for a living!) and decided that it’s actually something to do with the shape that’s the problem. So she fitted a special two piece bag with a kind of compression ring on it and suggested we review next week.

Now I know ( and you know ) how desperate I am for this to work but as soon as she put it on it felt very different - sure enough, a little more cumbersome, ( I can deal with that) but nonetheless much more comfortable and well, trustworthy.

It’s an hour later and it still feels good.

I’ll report back tomorrow.

Weekend

A quiet, almost boring weekend. But I think that's probably A Good Thing. Shows I'm getting better.

I certainly found that I was beginning to get my work/networking head together for the new job - a few notes and ideas. Felt good. I gave A my new boss a call this morning as it's my official start day and ironically he's off sick today! Will speak to him later in the week.

The other thing I did yesterday was to draft a letter to Mr Bain my consultant, explaining how debilitating the bag problems are and asking him ( as my main consultant) for his advice. The idea had come up in the session with J my counsellor on Friday as a way of getting them to understand the distress this causes me. If things don't improve by midweek ( I've got a Stoma Nurse appointment on Wednesday anyway) I'll send it off. Very therapeutic to write it anyway.

I changed the bag as scheduled yesterday morning, and apart from a little bit of stinging ( usually a sign of leakage) the damn thing has actually held! ( Sod's Law again!) Too early for celebrations yet though I think. It also inspired ( if that's the word) a new poem yesterday - once it's a bit more polished, I'll post it here. More therapy.

Aftermath

No - it's OK, we didn't wreck the place at the Farewell Meal last night. The Copthorne is still intact. This is the warehouse opposite - it suffered a major fire a week ago.

A really nice meal and very sad to say goodbye to such good friends and colleagues as M and K - but I know we'll keep in touch. I drank far too much but both the bag and I behaved ourselves. But I was very glad I'd booked a room for the night - my head was not good this morning...

So. April. A lot happening this month. Chemo starting soon I hope. Maybe my last month off work - I wrote to my new employers yesterday suggesting 2 May as a target date for starting with them properly provided I can manage the chemo etc. I just need something to aim for.