Wednesday, November 19:

Of course there isn't much news from me in-between sessions as I tend not to go out too much. For the week after chemo I am really not safe anyway and this week – my "free" week is where I feel so much better I am grateful just to totter around the house. Laura gives me lifts now. She took me to the doctors today and dropped me off to collect a prescription. It is such a weird feeling!!

How am I?

I thought a "health check" point would be good just to let you know how everything is going. So, I have a sort of "fuzz" on my head. It's hair, but not as we know it! It is also white – that is slightly worrying. Everyone says their hair comes back in a different way, curly, or a different colour. Now I wouldn't mind either of those two but – white, c'mon, that really isn't fair!

I still have eyebrows and eyelashes. Leg hair in abundance (that isn't fair, either) and no under-arm hair! Other "parts" of my body are almost nude, but not quite. I did say I would be honest!

My operation is fantastic. The breast has become soft again and I am constantly fascinated by the way Mr Pittam has made me look so normal. Of course you can see some evidence that I have had an operation but it is mainly the dull red line around the nipple (the scar) together with the neat red line under the arm that gives it away, and oh, the small blue patch which will forever be a talking point, of course!

There is no disfigurement, really, and I feel really lucky in this respect. My arm has been fine, no swelling where they took the nodes and definitely no pain anywhere at all. I look very well; everyone says so, pink, plump and bald!

I can put all these things right when the treatment is finished, but I am trying to incorporate some exercise into my day on those weeks (like this one) where I am feeling better and more upbeat. I am still hungry all the time and still trying to cook delicious things.

I mean I cook plenty of things but the delicious bit seems slightly elusive! All in all I feel so lucky that things are going well, even if there are those awful days when it just doesn't seem that way at all. They are eventually replaced with days like today, where I can appreciate that I will survive this - no-one said it would be easy, but I will do it.

Thursday, November 20:

My brother Cliff came round this week for our usual tea and 'put the world to rights' chat. He has been quite poorly with pleurisy and this was the first day he felt better. We were talking about the medicine he had been given by the doctor, which he wasn't very pleased with for two reasons. Firstly, the tablets had not worked well and after a few days it was obvious they were having no affect on the illness.

On his return visit the doctor decided to try some steroids and prescribed some tablets that Cliff had never had or even seen before – little red ones. He took them as instructed for the required amount of days and then, of course, stopped, because there were no more to take.

Cliff said the effect was marvellous at first and he felt better almost immediately, which he was grateful for. However, the day after stopping the steroids a very strange effect came over him. He felt exactly how I feel after my chemo! Jittery, tetchy and restless.

A feeling of can't be bothered with anything and a general depressive gloom. He said he wasted a whole day because he couldn't shake the impending doom feeling and wondered what life was all about! Now, my brother and I are like two rubber balls, especially when we're together. If we're not doing some sort of job, we're thinking about doing it.

Websites I have found useful:
Breast Cancer Care
Cancerhelp.org (the patient information website of Cancer Research UK)
Netdoctor.co.uk
Scarf Studio (scarfs and bandanas)

He said he felt sure it was the steroids as now he was fine and couldn't believe how awful he'd felt! It made me feel so much better – not because Cliff has suffered but because it's not just me then that has these terrible side effects from steroids. I'd begun to think I was imagining it. We both felt so much better after that we went down the garden and dismantled a trampoline that I am getting rid of!

Saturday, November 22:

Today is my "going out" day. Alan escorts me round the village as I lurch about trying to look normal and gather some Christmas shopping. I have to have this all wrapped up (no pun intended) and organised in between my chemo sessions; it's not going too badly so far.

The only trouble with this week's outing was the fact that the test car happened to be a VW Scirocco. Fantastic-looking car goes like a silent rocket but...it has those sport seats, you know the supportive kind with "ledges" round the sides. This was fine getting in, I just dropped from a great height and landed in position but getting out…...well, the seats sloped backwards and as I say were racy, sporty things, not designed at all for the less agile and maybe slightly overweight variety of human being.

I was also wrapped up against the cold in one of those Puffa coats; scarf, thick jumper etc. and all this meant that movement was restricted quite a lot. It was heave and heave again to get me out the car and then some before I could actually set a foot on terra firma where, once upright, I could walk, robot like, round the shops.

We had been out some time and I was getting beyond reasonable sanity when we parked on Sainsbury's roof. I leant forward to open the door, swung the large heavy object outwards and then... I was stuck, well and truly.

"I can't get out," I wailed to Alan, who had hopped out the other side with no problems at all, "I really can't move. This damn car," I shouted, now trying to force myself forward wrestling with my coat. I was trying to swing my legs outwards and over the seat edge.

I figured I could lever myself up and out that way as I certainly wasn't going to have the ultimate humiliation of Alan having to haul me out like his granny and then having to hear about it for ever more. I was getting very cross indeed and hot and slightly panicky as I wrestled with my upper body to follow my legs and move.

I also wondered what the strange clicking sound was every time I tried to lift my torso out, my back perhaps, how embarrassing if that went now – or perhaps my neck, that would be too terrible to imagine, breaking my neck getting out of a car.

I gave myself a huge push upwards and grabbed the side of the seat to propel myself outward when I suddenly realised what the clicking sound was...the seatbelt. Yes, I was still strapped in, unable to feel it because of the huge amount of clothing I was wrapped up in and because I had been pulling so hard on the belt, it had locked.

Oh, the shame and humiliation. We both laughed so hard I had to go and find the toilet! It's my birthday on the 25th - I will be 58, obviously going on 90!

Part 41 next week

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