Little Victories

Little Victories, Little Victories,

You can always count your blessings...

Lyrics from a song by Wild Pumpkins at Midnight

(Much of the following post is from an e-mail that I sent out today. So some people reading this blog will already be acquainted with the content. Some events from the weekend have been detailed in other posts.)

Greetings all,

hope that you're all well and happy.

For the moment I am. The last 3 days have been very positive all over, annoying pain aside.

Had a great weekend. Long-term friends Keith and Sharyn came over on Saturday (17 MAY) and we had a Game of Thrones marathon. We watched all 6 available episodes of this years season. Made me feel so ... normal! Just hanging out and doing stuff that had nothing to do with cancer.

There ya go great-grandad!

Saturday night I devoted to locking off some of my family history efforts. I saved the book ("The Leavetaking") I'd been writing as a PDF, and closed the Word file. That was it!

I'd bought a pile of USB memory sticks and loaded them the book, a special "gedcom" file containing the entire family tree, scans of some of Mum's old cookbooks that I had from a marathon scan after Dad's death, and copies of my family photos folders. They're ready for various cousins who are interested. Some I'll post, others will pick them up. Oh and one huge one for my brother. This is a major achievement for me - 10 years of research and 3 years of writing.

On Sunday (18 MAY)  another long-time friend Leigh came down from Sydney. She is like a little sister to me, and I hadn't seen her in 4 years. We had a great afternoon sitting about and catching up on things. After I dropped her off at the train, I came home and cried for a while. Not something that I've done for a loooooong time.

From unhappy to intense! Licence photos never lie.

Today (19 MAY) I got my drivers licence renewed. Although I expected it, there was no shit-fight over the fact that I have all these dressings on my head for the photo. Enough of my face was visible to be acceptable. And, perhaps symbolically, I bought the 5 year licence (not a cheaper 1 or 3 year). Will I get a chance to renew it again? Stayed tuned kids!

One of the more interesting aspects of my trip to the registry office was that I walked there without my Walker. I decided to give it a try as it wasn't far. I think that if the distances are still long that I would probably need it - but I handled this quite well without it.

I finally got news late this afternoon about starting Chemotherapy. I'm not happy about the chemo itself - but it's a positive sign that attempts to help me are coming along fast!!

I head into Hospital tomorrow (Tue 20 MAY) to have my PICC line installed. It's like a permanent cannula. A tube goes from my upper arm, up and into my shoulder, and across through my chest and directly into a major vein near my heart. They watch all the time with Ultrasound.

Then Thursday (22 MAY) (at 8 am - bastards!) I'm back to the hospital to be "Connected" with my 4-day portable pump of the drugs. Apparently the pump is shaped like a dildo :-) It stays with me 24/7 wherever I go.

Next Monday (25 MAY) I have to pop back in and have it Disconnected. We wait and see what happens, and about 3-4 weeks later, I'll start round 2.

And the best news of all. Last week I had a CAT scan to determine if the cancer had metastasised (spread to other parts of my body.)

It's CLEAR!

Cancer suddenly springing up in the rest of my body is the last friggin thing I need.

Anyway, Woooo-fucking-hoooooooo.! & a hearty Yaaaaaaaay!

(I know - it's just for now, but still good news.)

The fight goes on ...