Too little, or too much......

Long Exciting Grand Final Weekend...

Well the sun is setting on what has been an amazing long weekend. Sylv and I spent the entire weekend at the Vineyard and mixed quiet rest time with some great food and great friends.

I have a huge week ahead that I am nervous about and as such have been pacing things pretty carefully. After experiencing a tough week getting off the Morphine and trying to work out what my body was up to, this week has been much improved, albeit that I am so light at 66 kg and I've still got the runs!!!!

No bug, and the tests are back on my diarrhoea. Appears to be just a body wondering what the hell is going on. Here is what I have learned.

The pain killers slow the bowl down and cause constipation so now that I am off of them, everything has gone a bit crazy the other way. I have so many questions all the time. Advice is never far away, and working out who to listen to is one of the hardest things when you get seriously ill. Recovery is proving to be similar, advice is from getting back on pain killers that contain Codine, to staying off every thing and letting the body work things out. In the meantime I am barely holding weight, and it isn't about what I am eating, it is actually about what I am absorbing.

Weight exchange. Thanks to those of you who have offered me any amount of your KG, to be donated. Thank you for your kind gestures but so far we have been unsuccessful transferring that weight across to me. Being a bit fat is looking damn good right now, so stop complaining and enjoy a bit of pork!

I get so cold...that fat has a purpose obviously. And as mentioned last week, finding spots to inject Clexane (my blood thinners used to dissolve the clots I got from when I was getting the Chemo) has become quite challenging. I have hit some muscle, hard to imagine where at the moment, but muscle and Clexane are a very bad mix ...a very bad combo indeed unless you enjoy pain. The injection must go into fatty tissue.

As a consequence of all this trouble with my injections lately, I lost my nerve in sticking the needle in. I started shaking like a leaf and have become extremely tense when injecting. Shaking, and tense is not ideal when it comes to giving yourself an injection.

I had my follow up appointment with Piers this Wednesday and I asked, with a great deal of passion, when can I stop the injections? The answer was not good. Another 3 months! Piers then went on to run through the non injection options. The complex nature of them sounded even worse, apparently one treatment is essentially taking rat poison tablets, which require continual monitoring with blood tests to check blood poison levels. I DON'T THINK SO.

In walks Tim Bright to our appointment, he is the Surgeon who works with Proff. So these were 2 of the 3 surgeons who did my op. As you do, I started working on Tim with regards to my injections, and he suggested having an ultra sound to see if the clots were gone...now that was exciting. I was so excited that all clots would be gone and the injections could then cease.

We booked in for the ultra sound, which was done last Thursday. The same operator that did my investigations when I was in Hospital and so we caught up on all the news. To my total dismay, although 2 of the clots had dissolved, one was not clear. So the injections continue. Tomorrow I see Prof Watson, he will have the official results and with a whole lot of luck I hope to get an estimate as to how much time before it should clear. These injections are really tough going.

Knowing how important these injections are, and the fact one clot remains has made in easier for me to persevere. Basically I have no choice, and it is so important. I have changed my attitude to these injections and have been a bit better.

Thank goodness eating has been pretty straight forward, 'touch wood'. I have been able to eat most things and have improved dramatically in the areas of reflux and gagging. Obviously, slowing the digestion down and getting absorption is now a priority and will be the focus of tomorrow's appointment with the Prof.

FMC have continued to be excellent. Kate, the Hospital's dietician, spent an hour with me on Wednesday and was great value. I am on this rocket fuel that is hospital only type liquid food called Nutricia. So rich and I find it really hard to get down and it is essentially a very rich milk drink. One bottle per day, plus Hospital Formula Sustagen once per day, it really is hard to keep your humour drinking this stuff, and injecting daily. Hopefully this body of mine will come to the rescue and start absorbing nutrients soon, and dissolve that clot.

The really awesome news is nights. Finally I am getting through the night in bed. Imagine that. An entire night with out leaving my bed. Sure tossing and turning but no more wandering around the house all night swapping from bean bags, to Black Beauty2, to watching SBS slide shows because there is no programming in the early hours of the morning.

As I have been told, it is 3 months before I will feel better, 12 months to return to what resembles normality, and 2 years to reach my new peak. Given that is how all this works, I feel pleased we are going as well as we are.

This week I had Mum and Ken baby sit me at the vineyard on Monday and Tuesday. They are both amazing. Ken can't stop working and he pulled out the old vegies in the vege patch, with limited help from me, while Mum was feeding me up, as Mum's do. It was really great catching up and gave Sylv a break!! I relearned how to play Canasta and had a couple of relaxing days.

This weekend has been really great too. The sunshine means so much and the warmth is something I have been craving.

We had some mates up for the AFL Grand Final. I can't remember the last time we weren't in Melbourne for it but this year it was Battunga and on the big screen. What a game. We loved it. And so relaxed, sharing with some mates. The cinema room digital TV has not worked for over a year so the occasion also was a catalyst to get that fixed. Thanks to David Raffen (Dr.AV) for sorting that out for us....it was well worthy of the massive reds consumed on the day, unfortunately not by me though.

I was backing the Swans, so it was a sweet victory.

So lessons learned this week?

This is a journey, it will not be rushed. The body is an awesome machine but needs to be respected.

There is a fine line between doing too little and doing too much. To do too little is to risk the mind running a muck , to do too much is to risk reversing the healing.

So this week, I am judging at the Australasian Auction Championships, and then we have the REISA Awards on Friday night, so it is definitely not too little, but hopefully not too much....