Janet's blog

 This is the 'extra-dose' day - after carboplatin and gemcitabine a week ago, today it's a top up of gemcitabine. Last week went the usual post-chemo way - some nauseous episodes, tired, brain fogged, demotivated, taste buds AWOL or overwrought, mouth sore, guts grumbling, 24-hour farmyard syndrome. Nervous about the next few days, but the word on the street is that gemcitabine as a single agent is reasonably well tolerated.  Usual observations done without any waiting; cannulated without drama by health care assistant and whisked away by Nurse Educator to have my metoclopramide pre-med pill. I'll be out of here before Christopher's made it home at this rate. The Nurse Educator also has an allotment which is also bindweed-prone. I've been re-reading a book club book - We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. It's a book which omits a key fact for quite a while - for very sound narrative reasons - so it's interesting to return to it wit...

 Here we go again.... back in the chemo suite. It's been an early start; it's not yet busy and the herd of drip stands has congregated in a quiet area again.  Going into this one in less good shape - post-surgery and having lost weight and strength after reduced diet  and being housebound for too long. But have been increasing my walking - did 45 minutes around Coldfall Woods and the overgrown bits of the cemetery the other day, and 40 minutes on local streets yesterday. Christopher has been getting me to the allotment to do some brief light duties like planting beans and tomatoes out, and crossing fingers that the slugs and snails don't get them. Helpers have been doing sterling work keeping things under control at a time of year when the grass and weeds just go mad. Am still under orders not to lift anything heavier than a half-full kettle for fear of  developing a hernia around the stoma. Suspect I don't quite keep to that but am trying. Have been in receipt of se...