know your body

'Tis a lesson you should heed.  If at first you don't succeed, Try, try again.

1840 T. H. Palmer Teacher's Manual 223

Once I was admitted to hospital I was put on intravenous antibiotics and started to feel a bit better. We were due to move house that week and I was a bit stressed by that. Poor Russell had  a lot of running around to do and it wasn't helped by the fact that my signatures weren't matching up to computerised ones. Thank god for the lovely man at the RBS for trusting. When I was visited by a doctor she asked me to talk her through the last couple of months. She wasn't impressed by my tale and said that my chemo regime should have been re evaluated by my care nurse and changed long ago and that my side effects were intolerable and unacceptable. Hmm my thoughts exactly. She asked my permission to write to the oncology staff stating this. I don't know whether or not she did this.

I recovered and was dismissed in time to move into the new house. The bonus was that many friends had come round and spent their Saturday painting the whole house from vile magnolia to white. Thank you all of you. When I went back to the clinic I was asked if I wanted to stop chemo at this stage as it was doing so much damage. Anyone who has been through this type of situation will know how hard that was. The thought of another dose was hellish but at the same time I wanted to protect myself in the future. I decided to have another round at a reduced dosage (at last some tailoring of the drugs) and see how it went. I remember thinking that I couldn't live with myself if it came back and I had chosen to cut it short. This time around it was less awful, that's about the best I can say about it. I did get through it though without major health issues but it was still hard. At my next appointment it was decided that we would call it quits. I was delighted as it was nearly Christmas. Within a very short time I was feeling good and my hair was coming back. We had a nice festive season.