2012 The Year of The Dragon

We celebrated the ‘Year of the Dragon’ with our Besty Troop friends and their three little mini troops. We had such a lovely time altogether in our farm house and loved so much sharing our special place with them, even though I spent most of my time in a ‘vertical position’. And while they would adventure down the beach riding the Johanna beach waves, I stayed in bed, riding the waves of nausea. Still it was nice to share their company.  Memories and moments, that’s all you need!

The Brave Man, my fairy and I were coming up to having 2 years straight with this inconvenient illness with barely a break to feel good and normal again. I wanted to re-name 2012 from ‘Year of the Dragon’ to ‘Year of the Dragging On and on and on…”

Just to keep things interesting, a new side effect of treatment had popped up. The old ‘burning of the souls of the feet’…. I should have seen it coming. On Christmas day the souls of my feet began to burn. The pain was incredible and became so intense that I could barely walk on them and I would hobble everywhere, like some old troll thing from Lord of the Rings.

I tried to look on the positive and see it as a good sign. Perhaps I’d been ‘firewalking’ in my sleep, I know this was done back in the Iron Age and was a test of an individual’s strength and courage. Maybe it was divine intervention and it was a sign that I was getting better.

Or maybe it was just another side effect. As I read the information pack I had been given from the hospital, I sadly realised that there was no mention of ‘divine intervention’  just the warning of;

“Be sure to tell your doctor about any numbness, tingling, or burning that you have in your hands or feet”

So I went back to being a content atheist. A week later three layers of skin blistered and peeled off the souls of my feet and I resigned myself to the fact that maybe my ‘Sex in the city’ high heel wearing days were over.

THE BFF DAY SPA

So after  my second lot of chemotherapy the familiar ache of my scalp began. It’s the first sign that yourhair is about to fall out.

I wanted to make the most of the last few days of hair, so my fairy and I set up a ‘BFF Day Spa’ (the name was her idea). We spent the morning putting make up on, doing our hair, painting our nails and massaging each other’s feet. There was a lot of giggling about how my fairy would paint more ‘toe’ than ‘toe nail’ and the names of Spa Treatments we would make up for our shop, deciding our first customer would be the Brave Man.

3RD WEEK OF CHEMOTHERAPY

I went in to the hospital today, all ‘psyched’ and ready for my next lot of chemotherapy, but was told that my treatment this week had been cancelled. The results of my blood test showed my white blood cell count was too low and the risk of infection was too great. I was devastated  that it had been cancelled. I worry that any delay, gives the ‘lurker’ inside me the opportunity to grow. I was explained one of the chemotherapy drugs I have, can obliterate my bone barrow which is what we need for our immune system to be strong.

It will eventually build back up, but this week was not quite enough.