Tablets and Blood Tests.

I had written a list somewhere, of all the things that have happened lately and what needs blogging about, but would you believe, I’ve gone and lost the blooming thing. So now I am going to have a sit and think about what I wrote on that list.....hang on......In fact, I know why I have lost it, it’s because Charlotte wanted  some CDs and I told her that she couldn’t until she learned about being tidy...for at least a week.

I went out and came back to find she had tidied my bloody desk !!! Now I have lost everything including my list!

Now I want to tell you about the rheumatologist and white blood cells, and about Ady’s hair and my choir..hmm, I had written other things down, but I can’t remember them for the moment. I’m sure that once I get going, they will come to me.

I will start with rheumatology.

We went to see Ady’s nice consultant to talk about starting back on the Methotrexate. I think I have told you this before, but never mind, a recap is never a bad thing  eh !

Anyway, he said to start back on the Methotrexate, doing 10mg for a couple of weeks and build up to his usual 22.5mg. He wanted bloods taken every 2 weeks for 6 weeks and then monthly after that.

He took a blood test while we were there and his white cells came back at something like 3.5, which by all accounts, is getting quite low.

The rheumy nurse and I agreed that it is probably to do with the radiotherapy and it should sort itself out. Well a couple of weeks later, he had another test done and his white cells were still dropping...they were about 3.2, so the rheumy nurse spoke to the consultant and he said to stop all of his arthritis drugs and see what happens to the white cells and then he will make a plan.

So, Ady has come off his Sulphasalazine and methotrexate and his white cells have come up to 4.8, which I assume is a good thing, even though he now has a stinking cold. He is not sure if his bones ache cos he has man flu or if it is because he is off the drugs.

I must ring the rheumy nurse on Monday and speak to her.

Last year, I was asked by my friend Gill, if I wanted to join a choir, but to be honest, that was the last thing I had on my mind at the time, but now things have settled down a bit, I thought I would go along and see what it was all about. Well blimey, what fun it is, I love it!

I go along once a week for a couple of hours, forget the world and its woes and have a good old sing song. And before you start sniggering, our choir leader says I have a lovely voice..so there!

It also happens, which is VERY handy, that our choir leader was a GP and she says I can ask her any questions I like and she will be very happy to answer them. She is also a right old laugh.

We had a good chat about white cells and she said not to worry until they get to about 1, so I am not worrying and Ady is just going with the flow.

As I think you know, Ady is taking Casodex 150mg for six months to try and stop any possible lurking cancer cells feeding off his testosterone and multiplying. Well, there was me thinking yay, he will be multitasking and asking for directions before the week is out, when all that has happened is that he has started growing some bum fluff on the top of his head. He is absolutely delighted! I think he looks a pratt, but he doesn’t care.He says he wants to enjoy his hair while he has it.

In fact, it has made all of his hair go a bit bum fluffy and fly away and now he has started complaining about bad hair days....for goodness sake!

The other thing the casodex has done, is zapped all of his energy. He is knackered all day. (Ady says, just like a woman.....knackered all day and can’t do feck all). So then he has this whole guilt thing going on in his brain all day about whether he is just being lazy and should fight it and try and go to work, or whether he should go with the flow and sleep it off when he is tired.

He doesn’t just doze when he sleeps, he is completely out for the count and I have to give him a jolly good shaking to wake him up.

He drives me around the twist sometimes, with his guilt trips. There he is, trying to complete his treatment for cancer, the second cancer, off all his arthritis medication cos his white cells are up the shoot, so that needs sorting, plus all the other things that are wrong with him and the silly sod thinks he should be going out for the day digging over someone’s bloody rose bed!!

Thank the Lord that we went to see his oncologist the other day who told him not to fight the tiredness and to sleep his way through it. Work can wait.

Well because someone in authority has ‘given him permission’ to sleep, he is quite happy with that arrangement and so hopefully the guilt conversations will stop!

The Oncologist also said that she is very pleased that his PSA has remained at zero and because of that, she is discharging him from her care, back into the care of Mr D our urologist.

She said that she hopes, in the nicest possible way that she doesn’t see him again. I didn’t like to ask what she thought the chances of that happening were and from what I have learnt about prostate cancer, is that it has no rules and it takes no set path of destruction.

Prostate cancer has a complete mind of its own and is totally unpredictable.

I really really hope, in the nicest possible way of course, that we don’t see her again, but I have a nagging gut feeling from his ‘high risk’ stats, that we just might do.

For the moment, we are going to get used to the ‘new normal’ we have found. The one where all the cancers have been packed away in a box, get the casodex finished in August and then tightly cross our fingers that the PSA doesn’t rise next year, or the year after, or even the year after that...we will get used to it...you have to!

Someone said to me the other day “It’s not the lion you are watching that will get you, it’s the snake creeping up your leg that you didn’t see”

Blimey, that made me think a bit!

Daisy and Matilda.

Ady was really really miserable about losing Bluebell and Pepper and I have to say, our house was very quiet without them.

Ady told me that he would cheer up a lot of he could have some more chickens. His little girls had kept his spirits up all through his bowel cancer and were helping him through his prostate cancer, so we agreed that he could have some more.

He found a place nearby that was selling some, and we were able to go the next day to collect them.

Well, Ady cheered up in an instant and off he went outside to the run to do a few more ‘Tom and Jerry’ efforts on it, just to make quite sure that My fox couldn’t get in.

I had to tell him at one point that if he carries on with the hammer and nails, then none of us will be able to get in!

The girls noticed Ady’s new upbeat mood and suggested that they would be equally happy if they could have a dog...a nice rescue one. I thought that would be a nice idea and had visions of us all going on nice walks as a family like they do on adverts, so me and the girls looked some up on the internet.

We printed off a picture of one we liked and showed it to Ady. Well, he can’t keep a happy mood for long that one, and told us in no uncertain terms that if we got a dog then he wouldn’t have the new chickens and he would get rid of the cats, oh, and the hamsters would have to go to, and we would have to walk it cos there is no way that he is swinging warm dog shit around in a bag. He wasn’t happy at all as it happens.

So Ady won the battle and we picked up Daisy and Matilda the next day. Ady has put himself a chair in the run with them and sits there just watching them and doing his thing..whatever that is..

Our new girls are very cute and friendly and they lay us two eggs every day. Good girls!

I will do a picture of them when I take one!

A Day Out.

I was told that Julia’s funeral was going to be a simple affair, which was quite a relief actually because Ady and I weren’t sure if we should let the girls come with us.

Charlotte said she didn’t mind not going and Steph stamped her foot a few times saying that it’s not fair cos we never let her go to funerals, so we decided that they could come.

This would be their first funeral, and a nice one to go to for the first time. Not too solemn and dark if you know what I mean.

So, I got my sat nav and blu tac all ready, and just to make sure, I printed off the directions from the AA route finder, bought us some journey sweets, phoned the girls school to get them the day off, made sure Ady had his piss bag things ready and a spare set of clothes, and off we went on our day trip out (we don’t go out often).

I was really chuffed, cos I had managed to get us there without getting lost !

The funeral itself was really nice and certainly good for the girls first one.

Ady told them that it would good practice for his.

 They played Status Quo as we walked in and when we left, because she was a Kylie Monogue fan, so Ady’s just shouted from the kitchen, sily arse.

I’m getting Charlotte to type this for me while I dictate to her, thinking it will be easier but i’ve got Ady shouting additions to this blog which is really off putting.

I brought my finest singing voice with me (which reminds me, I must talk about my choir at some point!) Ady, again has shouted “your choir’s got nothing to do with my cancer! Why the bloody hell do people want to know about that? It’s all me, me, me and me.” Charlotte and I have just told him that we are bored of his cancer now...that’s old news...

Any way, we sang All Things Bright And Beautiful, which I have to say, is an octave too high for me. So luckily we sang Jerusalem which is much more with in my vocal range!

At the end of the service, we were given a piece of paper with directions to go to a pub for cucumber sandwiches and a cup of tea. Ady’s brother Dave had come to the funeral too, and had got himself wedged in a car parking space where the only way to get out was to drive over somebody’s grave. So he had to wait until someone else moved their car so he could follow us to the pub.

Now the problem with me, is that I always think that I know where I’m going, when actually I haven’t got a clue. We were going to wait and follow someone who actually knew where they were going but Dave had got out of his space and was waiting behind us so I decided to just go and find the pub. It couldn’t have been that difficult?

Ady was reading the directions and frankly he’s crap at doing that and sent me the wrong way. The next minute we found ourselves in some bloody one way system in the middle of poxy Cheltenham. What a bloody place that is!

Normally, you would expect a one way system to go around in a sort of circle..not this one, it seemed to snake everywhere and all the signs are upon you before you have time to get in the correct lane (assuming you know where you are going in the first place).

So I had the girls in the back moaning “Muuuum, do you know the way? How far it is to the pub?” and Ady sitting next to me saying, well shouting actually “If you had listened to me and turned at the roundabout when I said, we wouldn’t be in this fecking one way system woman....you want the left hand lane...THE LEFT HAND ONE!!” and of course Dave was following merrily behind us.

Tony (Julia’s dad) then rang to ask us if we had gone home to which Ady replied that we were going round and round in circles on some bloody one way system in the middle of Cheltenham. Good old Tony talked us all the way out of the one way system and to the pub.

I tell you, nothing we ever do can go without a hitch !!

Ady coped very well throughout the day and the cucumber sandwiches bit was filled with laughter and jokes..just the way Julia would have wanted it.

So there we have it...I won’t be rushing off to Cheltenham again in a hurry cos it’s full of roads that go in the wrong direction that you want to go, and one way systems!