Naughty, but nice

I probably did the wrong thing today - I went to a big Craft Fair. I enjoyed myself and feel inspired to do some different things in my textiles (also to revisit some things I haven't done for a while). I took things slowly and had quite a few sitdowns - see the other blog for details.

I know if your white blood cell count is low you should avoid crowds, so I hope I haven't done myself a disservice. However, I feel less tired this evening than I have for some days, and I haven't had any diarrhea for the last two days. I will be sure to take my temperature regularly though.

Into a holding pattern

Not such good news today.

My white blood count is low again, so the Xeloda is delayed for a week in hopes it will improve. I did get a low dose of Avastin though - with a full one supposed to happen next week. Also, the oncologist is going to the US for a conference at the end of the month, so my next CT scan won't be scheduled till he is back. I am disappointed - I want to find out what is happening to the tumours.

I am having problems with the Clexane injections - I have lumps at almost every injection site and some of them bleed for a while. One bled for nearly 24 hours while we were away. The actual injection (not the needle insertion) is sometimes quite painful. I told the oncologist, but he didn't seem to think it was a problem. Yet another reason for anticipating the CT scan - I hope it will show the pulmonary embolisms have dissolved or at least reduced.

I have been really lax in updating both my blogs.

Since we got back from Queensland I have been feeling really tired and I have had quite a lot of diarrhea. It hasn't stopped me from working on textiles (I got my pieces finished for the Craft Fair) and going to meetings though!

Tomorrow I will have a blood test prior to my oncologist appointment on Wednesday. This will be to establish the Xeloda regime I am due to start. I am assuming I will have the two weeks on, one week off routine, but I haven't been told anything as yet. After the appointment with the oncologist I am to have an infusion of Avastin. This will only take half an hour, so we should be out of the hospital in a couple of hours, rather than the five or six the last chemo treatments took.

Back Home

We arrived home from Brisbane last night after eight days. We had a good time and did lots of enjoyable touristy things, though our activities were sometimes restricted when I got too tired or the diarrhea too insistent. The finger tingling was almost non-existent while we were away (probably because it was much warmer weather, though I did have a bit of foot and leg tingling). It was back today, though reasonably mild.

Today has been a good day. I have had had plenty of energy and done lots of things. If I were still on the previous regimen it would have been a chemo day, but I have a week's extra holiday. This morning I washed all the dirty clothes from our trip, then went to a meeting of a sewing club. In the afternoon I went to another gathering. I have done a little shopping to replenish our food supplies, and made dinner - tuna patties. Nice, but almost tasteless, though I enjoyed the tomatoes and lettuce in the salad.

I have tackled my email and reduced it from 250 waiting messages to 45. Hooray for the delete button. Tomorrow I am planning to finish some textile pieces I am committed to have finished for the big Craft Fair next week.

Someone is looking after me

I am really tired and have had a bit of trouble with diarrhea, but I have thoroughly enjoyed our holiday so far. The tiredness is due to the amount of walking I have done.

An incredible thing happened today and I have written about it on my other blog.

Tomorrow is the reunion. The resort where we are staying is an easy stroll from the venue, so we are planning on walking there. We will taxi back if necessary.

Brisbane Day 1, Cycle 9 Day 6

We have been in Brisbane nearly 24 hours and we are “suitably impressed”. We are staying in a hotel in the CBD only about 200 metres from the major shopping precinct which we have visited 3 times today – for breakfast, for lunch and to buy an umbrella (unfortunately it is showery, so we have tried to keep under shelter).

This is probably more walking than I have done in months. I have needed lots of sit downs, but have managed quite well. There are lots of lovely colonial buildings here. One of the most impressive is the Old Treasury Building, which is now a casino. We are thinking we might venture into it one evening – probably not tonight, though.

Another lovely building is City Hall. It is closed for renovations at the moment, but the façade is lovely. It is interesting that Brisbane has a City Hall when all the other capital cities have Town Halls.


More rain is forecast for tomorrow, so we are planning on visiting South Bank where there are lots of museums, so we won’t have too much umbrella time.

We are both struck by how much smoking goes on. There are people standing outside every building with cigarettes in hand, though it seems to be banned in indoor areas. Smoking seems much more prevalent than at home in Perth on the other side of the continent (3709 km or 2503 miles according to the display on the plane’s information display as we landed).

BAD Hands

I have had really bad tingling in my hands today - so intense that it was painful to use my fingers for anything - not just cold things. Not to mention that they were clumsy and I found it hard to use any tools - except a spoon for my breakfast cereal. It lasted till noon, but is getting better now.

We are leaving for Queensland tomorrow and I have a long list of things to do. One of them was to clear out the vegie drawer in the fridge. The vegetables would not be too great 9 days from now. Despite the problems with my hands I have done it.

I cooked up some leek and potato soup which we have eaten part of for lunch, a HUGE mixed mixed vegetable and barley soup and a tomato and onion sauce. I am waiting for them to cool down so I can package them in plastic storage containers for freezing. There are also some roasted pumpkin pieces in the oven. I was going to make a soup from them too, but I will just freeze them as they are. They can become a soup some time in the future. I feel so virtuous that I didn't just dump all the vegetables in the compost tumbler - there were a lot of peelings and bad bits that did end up there.

Now I have to tackle the packing, though that isn't too urgent. We don't leave till 11 am tomorrow.