Better and Worse

Hello,

I know it has been a while and I have been meaning to write for a bit. I had a planning appointment for my Radiotherapy last month.
Ash and I had to go to St Thomas’ Hospital in London (where I used to have lectures when I was training).
It is not a bad journey but it is always cold and windy there as it is right by the river. The hospital itself was really grubby and dirty in the public areas. I am assured that it is clean on the wards. The signage was really bad too and we got a bit lost but still managed to arrive in time.
We were down in the basement (lots of people have assured me that this is normal for Radiotherapy!) surrounded by old people.
They told me what was going to happen, they gave me a CT scan and tattooed me in three places, 1 under each arm and 1 in the centre of my chest. It is just a small blue dot that looks like a freckle. Hopefully when I have a boob again it will be hidden by my cleavage.

The appointment was pretty quick, I have to give them that and I got to see Dr Sawyer who I was seeing at Bromley during the chemo.

Afterwards Ash and I had a wander, got some lunch and went to the Tate Modern.

With that done I expected to be starting Radiotherapy 10 working days after the appointment (3 Nov) but I hadn’t received a letter and when I phoned them they said it would be 25 Nov. I think this is because we are going away to Centre Parcs and I had to write the dates in so that the holiday didn’t clash with the treatment. Unfortunately I didn’t put in the dates of when we are going to Boughton-on-the-Water as I thought the Radio would be over by then and now that is going to clash instead.

In the meantime I am going to be at work, I have some project work to do making documents and charts and things. At least I will be getting paid.

We have had a rough few weeks really. We have both suffered with a horrible head cold for a couple of weeks. Ash came off his bike and fell down the stairs in one day and was all bruised and achy. AND to top it all off he was told that he had the job he applied for and when he phoned up to say where is the paperwork for it, he was told that he didn’t have the job. It is all very complicated and I won’t say too much at this stage as we are probably going to challenge the decision but it was a BAD week for us. Reflected in the fact that we both gained weight that week.

We seem to have come through that a little bit. We had a mini trip away as I was bridesmaid for my friend Rachel and we had to travel to County Durham for the wedding. I have never been so far north in this country! We had a lovely time, met some fantastic people and it was great to be away from here for a while.

I have recovered well from the surgery and had the tissue expander filled up by mr D in clinic. It was a weird sensation and seeing it get bigger before my eyes was very strange! It has all healed nicely and I have asked to have the next surgery in January so that I am not recovering over Christmas again and so that I can do Crisis this year. This will be my last year I think, it is all changing and our centre will not be there next year and it is likely that there will not be a night shift so it made sense to make this the last year. It will also mean that I have been involved in Crisis for 10 years and a decade of charity work seems like a lot to me. That said, I will have to look for a new project once my involvement in Crisis is ended. I can’t imagine NOT doing some form of charity work now.

I don’t think there is much else to report right now. There are a couple of things that might come to something (a meeting tomorrow with HR about my sickness and a new job application for Ashley).

I will keep you posted

Lots of love

Liz
xxx