"Reality bites"...wild weekend

Saturday Morning...

After a pretty eventful week (personally and at work), it was great to get to Saturday.

Lesson of week 3 of treatment...plan your eating.

I'm not going to just drop into a cafe and order the usual breakfast toasted sandwich and expect to simply eat it.

Suzannah & Andrew (Suz's 'friend' who she had to leave behind in Sydney to come home for me) and I dropped into Millie's Bakery at Dulwich on the way back from radiotherapy treatment. I learnt a big lesson. Eating for me can no longer be 'on the run', I need pain relief on hand; eating is now a planned and well thought through event.

The smallest bite of my toasted sandwich, and oh my God. This time tears streaming from pain, I could hardly breath. Poor Suzannah and Andrew didn't know what to do as I was in a packed cafe looking like I was having a heart attack or something. We gathered our meals, and headed straight to Kensington House. The tablets were upstairs, and launched into my new pain killer liquid morphine. I couldn't have swallowed a tablet, thank goodness for the liquid.

Janine (who has started training me to program my mind) and I had an appointment set for after radiotherapy via Skype, and I was in so much pain when the call came through. Rather than postpone it, I spent the 90 minutes live learning techniques on how to work through pain. Wow, some lesson. Whether it was the medicine, or the technique, it doesn't really matter but in the time I went from a 9.5 to a 1 in pain.

Off to the farm...the stress immediately drains away. Long hot shower, gently washing my hair and guess what? You got it. Clumps of hair in the drain, and bits of hair everywhere. The hair loss has begun. In hindsight, I noticed my pillow on discharge at the hospital had some hair on it but it didn't sink in. It has now.

Dinner - I was terrified of a repeat of my breakfast experience. So it was with a great deal of preparation, thought and caution that I approached dinner.

New drugs, change of food, small serve and all was good.

Last night was the best sleep I have had in several weeks. Woke up a few times but wow, what a feeling to actually sleep.

Sunday...Slept in, woke to body temp of sub 37 degrees (finally), and life is good. Very slow day, and made it through 3rd week in 5.

In summary, 21 days into treatment...hair thinning, chest and back getting itchy, pain relief now 24/7, eating getting problematic...but overall, high spirits and focus moving more and more to balancing the body. I now have a permanent cough, as promised. The treatment is working, and we are on the home run but where I will be fully challenged. Bring it on.

Did you know there are heaps of pain relief options? Slow release base pain management, short fast acting pain relief, and everything in between.

Looking forward to less excitement this week, life sure is not boring at the moment.