ER

Woke late again yesterday half the day had gone, i sleep restlessly in the night and always seem to be waking at around 4 and 5 in the morning baking hot......menopause only bought on obviously by the radiotherapy last year nothing to do with my age! :o)

The first thing to greet me was Ozzy's handiwork from the night before...Ozzy is the rabbit who lives in the upstairs hall, not caged and hasn't yet made an escape bid down the stairs. He has an old ikea box on it's side to sit in with various things on top of it including a full length mirror situated outside Joe's bedroom door...this morning there was hay all over the floor and a barricade blocking the way to Joe's room who luckily was out last night comprised of the mirror, the long handled dustpan and brush and what was left of the bag of hay. I cleaned it up then headed downstairs.

It takes a few moments to collate the information around you, whilst in the back of your mind pounds signs are flowing away as fast as the water and i had no idea how long it had been leaking, it became evident that the elbow connector that the workmen had used to move the tap back over the drain and not over the pavement when they did the kitchen had snapped off, so now the pipe on it's own was exposed. My immediate response was to get the tap connection back in place i tried a couple of times without turning off the water which resulted in water spraying every which way and soaking me in the process. So i gave up and headed for the front of the house to turn off the water at the stopcock.With the boys out of the way and still in bed i watched another episode of Borgen the Danish political drama on I player, not something that the boys are prepared to sit through especially as it is subtitled! A little way in i decided to get a drink, on entering the kitchen i could hear what sounded like a waterfall, i looked around everything was in place the boiler was quiet no one was running a bath or shower. It seemed to be coming fro outside so i opened the back door to find a torrent of water gushing from the outside tap!

I jumped in the car and drove to wickes to get a replacement and whilst i was in the area popped into pets at home to find some things to keep the rabbit contained and most of his food, in the process i added cat food, dog food and pellets and straw for the chickens an expensive quick journey.

Back home i managed to fix the tap to great personal satisfaction in doing it by myself and turned the water back on. I had also bought a chisel whilst out to knock out the two broken windows in the garage doors and dislodge the at least 50 year old putty which to date has proved nigh impossible, i however left this job for another day as it is so cold..... I have everything in place for my first foray into glass replacement, but it will have to wait.

I returned to the lounge to find Adam commandeering the TV with awful American teen comedies so Borgen will have to wait too.

So today i have contacted the pensions people and i have told my boss that he really should start thinking about who is going to come and handover from me, as to compound things this morning a letter from the hospital came, just the usual copy of the letter that they send to the doc but it was the first time the word Palliative had appeared in them, i am having more chemo as a palliative measure. I am pretty certain that after this chemo there will be no other recourse, in fact i was told that they wouldn't give me oxalyplatin again because of the side effects i had last time,  and they are!. So i am moving into a different phase. Next week maybe the last time i go to work, i have chemo on the Thurs and see the OH on the Friday if he and i hope he will, as i have forwarded today's letter to HR to send on, advises that i be retired early on the top tier then as long as they get the paperwork to pensions quickly could within a week or two have my pension and the freedom i need to be at home.

I then reflected on a moment that had caused me a bit of concern whilst trying to fix the tap. I started to cough trying to put the connector back on and then felt my breathing was slightly slightly different to normal. Was this my imagination, a cold or the very first symptoms of the tumours that were sitting in my lungs ready to pounce? The cold water rushing over my feet and hands and my frantic struggle to fix the problem may have caused the coughing and probably did, but i am not in a position to just fob these things off. This experience and losing Lisa last week have brought my situation into a bigger internal profile, i suddenly worry that i have left it all too late to make the most of things with chemo due next week. I took feeling well for granted and it was so much easier to carry on as normal.

Wow! ..............................................................................wow it's a lot to take in.