Plan F. As you were

Thanks for your kind post Sandra...how lovely that you have found your soul-mate too, and that you have been there for each other for over 48 years. We've had 27 - I spent a helluva lot of time kissing frogs before I found a prince. And even then it took me several years to persuade him that I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Men can be so dopey sometimes!

Hugs

E

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I'm keeping everything crossed that if the trial would be a good thing - then he gets a place :-) x

I have watched how you have grown in strength on here and you know that I understand how hard that is but blooming heck girl ! You Are Doing It !

Xx

BFN

Julie X

Uncertain harvests continue to be very uncertain indeed. Puts me in mind of school harvest festivals. I took in a tin of pineapples one year, a rare and strange object in those ancient days, and fully expected to be universally admired for my exotic sophistication. I wasn't!

Soooo...last Thursday the lovely hospice nurse came to discuss the various pills and potions and, since we've had two weeks without any significant bone pain (hoorah), suggested switching from slow-release morphine to Oxycodine to lessen my OH's general level of confused dopiness. The evil cancer bunnies must have been listening in because that night he was in agony and hardly slept with the pain. We dosed him up to the eyebrows and everything calmed down.

Then yesterday two of the grandchildren came to stay (aged 3 and 9) and up shot the pain levels and up shot his temperature to well over 100F (we haven't worked out decimals yet) and we had this mad evening/morning of pretending everything was ok (the family still don't know that he has cancer) while my OH was virtually immobilised. Thank heaven for ninja turtles and minecraft and Oramorph - kept them all in their own little worlds while I raced around making easter egg hunts, fish-feeding, tea-making, jigsaw putting together, bedtime stories, mopping up random bits of wee (the little one is just working out how to aim in to the toilet as opposed to around it), making breakfast, doing silent hide and seek (while OH was sleeping), finding lost toys and persuading the little one to get dressed (he'd really rather not) and eventually depositing them home several hours earlier than intended with some vague story about a bad back.

We've flung so many pain-killers at him I'm amazing he can even speak but they are working and he's had a couple of hours sitting in the garden in the sun reading the papers. Now he's having a kip, I'm eating a bar of chocolate (my easter present to me) and we're off to the out-of-hours clutching a urine sample (hopefully OH's not the grandsons') at tea time to see what's up.

Will let you know the outcome. Meanwhile, hope your eggs are in several baskets and that the evil easter bunnies don't darken your doors. Have a good break...

E

Another month, another pile of giant wombat's droppings. I am trying VERY VERY hard to hang on to 'the springing of the year' but the giant wombat's droppings are definitely a hindrance. My dear lovely old OH is going through such a rough time - bone pain spikes, unable to hold food down, constant nausea and just so weak and fearful. Makes my heart weep to see him.

BUT we are getting a ton of help. There's probably no more than a couple of bob (and one of those old pennies that kids used to leave on the railway lines to get flattened) left in this year's NHS Wales budget. He's taking a whole pharmacy's-worth of tablets, we have paired sets of cheery district nurses coming and going at frequent intervals, the onco has been on the phone three times today, our palliative care nurse came round to organise a complete new treatment plan, he's getting NHS acupuncture for the sickness, the GP filled out a new medicines chart for the house and the local pharmacy stayed open late especially for us. Bluddy blooming flipping amazing.

So today's plan: a dual syringe-driver to deliver the pain-killers and the anti-sickness drugs more effectively and at a lower dose and bypassing his stomach which will hopefully lessen the sickness. And if that doesn't work, a spell in the local hospice to get his drugs sorted out. We are getting closer to the time when the family really will need to be told that it's not just a headache or a bout of man-flu. It will be a relief not to have to tell fibs - particularly since I'm absolutely rubbish at it and keep getting my story muddled and my knickers in a twist. And vice versa.

Bugger bugger bugger as the poet quoth.

E

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