Yuletide Message

Hello everyone!
We haven't sent lots of cards this year - a pack of ten charity cards costs nearly £4 so 40p each, add on the stamp and every card we send costs the best part of a quid. Even the years I have made cards we've still spent a fortune, and the charities get maybe 10p each time. So this year, we've dramatically cut the number we've sent, and we will just give all the money to Breast Cancer Care (who have helped me) and the RNLI (who we hope we'll never need to call, but some of our friends have!).
So, Yuletide Blessings and Merry Christmas to all our friends and loved ones, and the space we've left on your mantlepiece has helped to do some good!

And in the meantime, here's a message from a friend, who gave me these wise words a couple of years ago - I think it bears a revisit.

I don't generally go in for moral lectures, but this one sort of caught me a bit - anyway, here it is...

A Personal Appeal...

As someone who has experienced sleeping rough, please spare a thought this Christmas as you tuck into your hot meal and open that pair of socks from Auntie Mildred that you loathe.

• Look through your cupboards, is it filled with tins that you haven’t used, probably won’t. Then donate them to your local soup kitchen.
• Got old sleeping bags, there are plenty of homeless charities and soup kitchens who would appreciate them and could pass them to someone for whom that warmth could save their lives.
• Smile and wish them merry christmas, just because they are homeless doesn’t mean they aren’t people anymore. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of human contact to give someone hope again.

Don’t just think of the homeless freezing in the cold, think a little closer to home too. Have you seen your elderly relatives lately? Maybe you should, they might need a light bulb changing, a heater fixing or just a chat.
How about the little old man in the bungalow at the end of the road? Smile, say hello next time you see him. Behind his door he might be sitting in one small room next to a single heater, cold and worried about the money he doesn’t have. While you eat your turkey, he might be eating a cold sandwich because he can’t afford the gas bill with the price hikes. If you got to know him, well then it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to pop over christmas day with a hot plate of christmas dinner and a smile. You might just make someone's christmas a merry one.

 

Onward and upward

Or at least onward...

I had my last meeting with the headologist a few days ago.  It was strange to be talking to her knowing that it was the last meeting - we talked through the last few weeks and it's fair to say that we've come a long way in that time, and that I have learnt a lot along the way.  One thing that I have learnt is that it's not good to keep things bottled up inside - and that writing a blog is a good way to make myself sit down and work things through.  It would be very easy to just rant, let off steam all the time, it can be quite cathartic, but it's not always productive long-term, and would no doubt leave me with nobody speaking to me very quickly.  It's important to think about the things that happen, and the other people who are involved, who might well be reading about themselves!  So rather than just blow away the frustrations that life brings, I try to think and write about them rationally, which hopefully is more useful.  Hopefully it also makes the inane ramblings of the madwoman interesting enough to keep you, dear reader, awake long enough to read it as well as not causing your blood pressure to rise!  I aim to amuse if I can.

Saturday brought yet another meal out (hee hee) with some friends who have recently returned from sailing in the Med.  They muttered one day a few years ago that they were jealous of our plan to pack up and sail off into the sunset, so DH blithely said "Hang on, your house and boat are paid for and you've got nobody to look after here - why don't you give it a go?" - and blow me down, they did!  Within a few months they'd rented out the house, dumped the jobs and headed off!  They tend to come back here for a bit in the winter, to top up the bank account a bit - she's in the fortunate position of having an job that's always in demand, so she can generally get short-term work when she wants to (although he seems to have decided that he's retired!).  They have good tenants, so they took a winter let on a holiday flat the first time - it worked so well that they go back to the same landlord every year now.  All in all it's extremely depressing to watch them having great fun doing pretty much what we want to do.  Hey ho... it's really nice to see them having a great time though.
The embarrassing bit was when they mentioned some event or another - and we didn't know about it - except they'd blogged about it and we clearly hadn't seen it.  Caught out good and proper we were, and even saying "have you read my blog then?" didn't make much of a defence!  So I am now hurriedly catching up with what they got up to this year, which will be no great hassle as their travels around are generally well worth the effort of reading!

At Sunday lunch, (yet another meal out!) a friend leaned across the table, told me to be still, and skilfully pinched away the mosquito that he saw sat on my forehead.  Sadly, he wasn't quite quick enough to get the little so-and-so before it bit me... so now I have a rather angry lump on my left eyebrow, which is showing no signs of subsiding.  Sad, as I have to go to see a customer tomorrow... hopefully some antihistamine cream will calm it down and I will look a bit less like I've been in a fight!  I am tempted to dig out the NHS wig, which still looks fine and has a much longer fringe that my real one... wonder if it will cover the red lump?

Just for a change, I have actually cooked a meal this evening, if himself ever arrives home to eat it.  I've just looked at the clock and it's an hour later than I thought, which means that the chicken pieces are probably a bit dried up by now, and the parkin is most likely completely carbonised.  Hey ho...  Hopefully I will have interesting (to me at least) news on the home improvement front soon... there may be - gasp - a conservatory!!!  Watch this space...

Big gaps

Sorry folks, it's been a few days since the last update which has worried a few people... nothing untoward going on, honest. I am really touched by how many people have emailed or phoned me to see why I have disappeared! Thank you all for your support and interest, it means more than you can know.

Gushing soppy bit over...

Had a chemo session on Wednesday last week. All very calm, took a while to get going but once we started all was smooth. It was a bit dull to know that the stuff going in would be removing my taste-buds again, as food is a great pleasure in my life, but in the grand scheme of things I can live without the joy of spice for another couple of weeks, I guess. However the hair on the head is still there, although the lashes and brows are now pretty much gone. Odd how it affects different areas of hair differently.

Thursday (the day after the chemo) we decided to go sailing... yes, I know, but you can't let these things get in the way, can you? We had agreed to go to the Isle of Wight for an event, a little race thingy, a friend had asked us to crew for him but then had plenty of crew so we decided we'd go anyway and entered ourselves. This meant the usual big panic Thursday morning to get everything ship-shape and stowed before we missed the tide. As always, we had a pretty disappointing journey out Thursday - the wind around Bognor Regis seems to have a talent for finding the pointy end of the boat - and despite the engine manfully doing its stuff we were still dropping the anchor at 3.30am in a local harbour (we always seem to get to this particular place at 3am!). Crew who were supposed to be joining us Friday morning discovered at the last minute that they could not, so we made an early start and headed west.

Dull dull dull

Yep, everything is dull. Nothing tastes of anything which is very sad, but I guess if that's my worst complaint I have got off lightly. Appetite is pretty low, although I can eat I am suffering rather badly from heartburn.
I constantly feel as though I have just had a dose of flu - achey and tired. I managed to go all of yesterday without needing a nap which was good, although by 9pm I was pretty wasted. I've been taking paracetemol every six hours, and I got involved in cooking about 6 so didn't take any until nearly 7.30 and still felt reasonable (in comparison). I didn't take anything at midnight and boy did I feel ropey this morning. I decided to try ibuprofen for a change and they seem to have acted more quickly than the paracetamol - or perhaps I am just feeling better, who knows?
This is day 7 of the chemo cycle, which means that today's GCS-F (the thing to boost my immune system) will be number 6 - that starts to affect me after about day 7 so we shall see what that adds to the mix tomorrow.
It's just been suggested that we could go sailing this weekend - there's an event on that would be a reasonable daysail (depending on tides of course) to get there and would probably be quite fun, as long as I am feeling up to it. Might be able to persuade some crew along I guess but we haven't had great success in that in the past - people promising to come then can't make it for one reason or another. Some friends of ours are likely to be sailing in the area too, since their sunshine holiday was cancelled due to the demise of a travel company they have decided to make use of the asset they have (ie a boat) and enjoy the south coast of England instead of some foreign shore. I think we will try and give it a go, if nothing as a protest about cancer getting in the way of life!