CHILLING OUT

Been a week since I last wrote this blog; pleased to report it's not from feeling chemo hell that I have been slow in updating but just been quietly recovering at home. Still very tired and very slow. Still swallowing a fistful of huge fat white tablets twice a day. Manage to walk round Grassmount roundabout every day, sometimes x 4 which feels a ridiculous achievement!

Upping my visitor intake - yesterday Mel drove me up to Horniman Gardens and we sat on the wooden seats by the bandstand and admired the London skyline view, including The Shard (with Guys hospital squating below the gleaming spire). The park was swarming with buggies, seemed like there was some kind of buggy convention, but maybe just bank holiday hordes...Nic came over in the afternoon and Lulu and Jan came over early evening. Lu threw together, in a matter of minutes, a wonderfully healthy soup with turmeric, beans and fresh vegetables. A.Wray came over on Sunday night and gave me heavenly reflexology: I lay flat out on sofa with knitted beanie on my cold bald head and wrapped in my favourite rug (bought form MOMA in New York). Luigi cooked delicious asparagus risotto (I ate a big plateful, first food I enjoyed for weeks) and we played cards. Perfect.

My garden still producing sweet peas and late summer clematis. The place is a-buzz with bees too, crawling in and out of fuscia bells etc. like to think I am doing my bit for the bee population! Luigi did some rather fearsome pruning at the weekend - was too tied to intervene, but I guess it will all grow back!

As I write this I am in the Day Unit receiving 2 units of blood - a four hour procedure and my bum is very stiff. Only one and half hours to go... Pleased to report that all my blood counts have finally bounced back up. A healthy 2.2 neutrophils, 2.4 white cells and 50 platelet count. Platelets are what clot the blood. Last week they had dropped to 4 (should be 150+) which was shudderingly low, but a transfusion pushed them up to 19 and now they are going up on their own accord. Just my haemaglobin that is low, hence today's transfusion. I have a bone marrow biopsy to look forward to next Monday to see if I have gone into remission after the FlaGida chemo regime. Please cross fingers you all. I need to go into remission. Then back to Guys on Friday 7th for my second round of chemo. Another 5 days of nightmare poison, stomach injections and filthy gloopy mouth. Am dreading it, but it will at least be the last one. It's phase two of this treatment, the bone marrow transplant, which is starting to stress me out. I will blog about it later, at the moment I want to keep that reality as far away as possible.

Thanks for blog comments and emails from both hemispheres, always a huge pleasure to receive them. Hope everyone is well and enjoying the final countdown of summer. I send you all love and high fives. Moving on and moving up. Paralympics start on Thursday, least this time round I will have the energy to watch.

Just me and a handful of nurses left in the Day Unit. My transfusion machine is humming and clicking next to me, only quarter of a bag to go. 5pm sun is dropping silver light onto the scaffolding outside the window and throwing shadows onto the empty red Day Unit chairs. I can see little squares of sky through the muddle of metal bars. Luigi on his way to pick me up. I close my eyes and imagine I am in my studio making up a periodic table and that tomorrow will just be another normal day...

A presto tutti x tch