Mayday meanders

14th May 2018 

Anniversaries: Third year in? 

We have officially lived in Letchworth for 3 years. And boy, they have been full. 

I’m into my twelfth year of MS diagnosis with all the disruption that can bring and am now five days into my diagnosis of precancerous tumour on my right breast. And that has filled me with more fear, anguish and uncertainty than an incurable condition has. Crikey, I am absolutely terrified if I am going to continue being honest. Insomnia has hit several nights running and it’s currently 3 in the morning.

Relapse city is close - I can sense it. MS is unrelenting, I know that, but I continue to think I can slay the MonSter. Can I do the same with Tommy Tumour? (I don’t know if there is an acronym people use but Tommy is my name for now...) Tecfidera is my drug of choice these days and I don’t feel as anxious or cranky as I did on Rebif. I’ve asked the questions - has the Tec caused this? - come to think of it, has the seven years of Rebif? Or has another habit caused this invader? Again it’s a question I can ask but it’s unlikely I will ever know. So life goes on with unswayed optimism? Possibly a little bit shaken.

I set up this blog as a gardening blog, so I apologise if the last few months have taken a few detours from the primary goal, but life’s like that. We have found someone to fit some gates, and with the gift of blarney, I think he may help us to get rid of some of the rubbish too. Everybody knows each other in Letchworth and I think Michael knows Trevor our builder, and they run into each other at builders yards. (The ones we can’t find, which do great discounts to the Trade. I tried hard to find the cheapest gate supplier, but Michael is in the know...) Again this work in progress is showing promise. We may soon have a secure garden to Borrow A Doggy. Cody the Schnauzer may have a competitor in Jasmine the Greyhound!

Doo you see how full our life still is? Tommy or Alfie Asperger won’t take over, we won’t let them.

Cold and miserable?

4th May 2018

Warming up? No!

Why am I longing for a roaring fire in May? Because it is sodden well freezing that’s why! Who turned the heat off? Our soakaway must be helping... we don’t seem to be seeing the puddles next to the house we were getting used to. Having realised we are creeping towards the three (yes THREE year anniversary of our moving in date I should probably be booking some sort of party... but the mess everywhere makes me realise that’s not going to happen unless I am magically cured of all my ailments, not gonna happen anytime soon...

I have been wishing this mess away but today it just reminds me of what work still remains out there. We truly are at the end of our finance for the work on the house. Hence me learning to tile and grout the shower room and kitchen. So after that is finished (when?) I can start looking outside again...

Struggling, really struggling...

Sunday the 13th!

Feeling unlucky?

Making clay masks

Tha Green Man

I really just want to curl up and go to sleep. Maybe on waking I can imagine it’s all been a horrible nightmare... I don’t usually feel that way after a walk round the garden, but today is different. I am hit by the most awful wave of despondency that threatens the whole day.Yet things are growing. We have some ginormous rhubarb which tearing me away from my wallow Squeaky wants me to pick it with her.We also went to the local park which had a Maypole, Morris Men, clay faces and willow headpieces for the kids. There was a Green Man who turns up and tells stories.

But it allowed me to catch up with some messages and thinking, as I have been told that I have precancerous cells and a rather large tumour in my breast. I will have to have more tests, another scan and appointment with a plastic surgeon. Yes my worst fears have come to being advised that a mastectomy is the best way of ensuring the cancer doesn’t become dangerous.

Life took a turn no one can be prepared for and tidying the garden has lost its appeal...

Knebworth Garden Show

It's a hungry business, this garden fair...

K9 and Witches Hat made of sedums

Woolly garden.

Short back and sides.

6th May 2018

All the fun of the show!

I treated my husband, oldest daughter and her friend to the Garden Show while my smallest went to a party. We hit Knebworth just after 12 and trundled back and forward looking for unusual plants. I got sidetracked by bulbs again and bought some alliums and cannas. Also another slug product which gives the soil back its nitrates. I explained about my use of Slug Stoppa but he assured me this was another product worth trying. I didn’t see as many products for landscaping as I saw in Birmingham last year. Should I try to get back to that? Our budget for travel this year has disappeared after our kitchen work was finished... And let’s just see how my appointment at the QE2 goes on Thursday?

I had a rest when we got back but seems I am being beaten to it by the smallest of my daughters who have watered all my hostas. We lawnmowered and strimmered a lot of the overgrown areas until the battery died, so I am waiting for a recharge before cutting the rest. Think we are going to struggle to rebuild the compost heap without the purchase of a new composter - which was part of the plan...

I want to get my oomph back!

4th May 2018

A four-day weekend is approaching!

Tiles are advancing up
the walls slowly...

I opened a letter from the consultant this morning and it took the wind out of my sails somewhat. I had the horrible MRI only two days ago and I had brunch with some new MSers yesterday and had a conversation about someone else's breast cancer experience. Even that sounds like less than mine has been and she has had surgery... The thing that hit me today was the grouping of words and 'high grade' DCIS stuck out. It looks like they caught it early but I don't have months or years to decide to do something. I think I will go back to be told its happening as soon as it can be.
And all this while the government plays catchup with the hundreds of thousands of ladies the NHS has failed to contact in the last couple of years...
I have lots of jobs in the house to finish, lots of bulbs and plants to get planting, and I just feel empty and exhausted before I even start. Now is not the time to have an MS relapse! But I can't walk into any room at the moment and find 'tidy' or 'calm', its a tip everywhere!
The dishwasher is beeping at me and I feel like shouting at it... Ken Bruce is burbling on the radio and I don't want to hear it. Pity party in full swing!
And it's not raining, the sun's out and I could go and get dirty in the soil, and nothing wants to move. Oh dear.

PS I tiled a couple of rows YAY Me!

We went out to vote yesterday.
Excuse for us to eat cake!

MRI torture!

Grass getting woolly
but it needs tidying...

3rd May 2018

Seriously weary!

I had the whole gamut of feelings yesterday and had an MRI lying face down while they filled me up with an unknown substance just labelled Contrast. I was asked the same questions I was asked on the phone to cross and dot the paperwork and cover themselves should anything go wrong. But it's amazing how the cross-examination makes you doubt your own answers.

After maybe 20 minutes I had to squeeze the hand control and get someone to wipe my nose as it was making my nose tickle which was causing hysteria to rise and I knew my giggling hysterically making my body shake wouldn't work for the scan...

But seriously this then made them restart the whole thing and it was an hour and a half later when I was finally released from the torture chamber. I can't remember the last time I lay face down for even a quarter of that time, and probably it was on a sunbed somewhere warm and toasty. Next time I will have to summon up visions of the health spa and thassalotherapy to follow the clanky horrors of the MRI.

I have electricians in today and I inadvertently cancelled my work shift so you know what? I am not going to bother about anything. My daughter's messy collection of children's clothes and plastic has been thrown in five binbags to clear the entry into her room and she isn't getting them back unless she keeps the floor tidy for a week.

I've said before that I don't do rain, so the gardening I will be doing will be of minimal intervention. If the sun should appear at all I will rush out and be out for the time it appears but things are growing and it looks pretty in patches.

May Day! May Day!

1st May 2018

Monsoons hide my tears?
It's really blowy out there and you could be forgiven for thinking the weather is a result of everybody in the UK raging about the nonsense the government thinks we should hear. The country seems to be getting madder and badder, and we hear about it all on our many forms of media (be it social media or the Murdoch and Russian oligarch-owned dishrags) have a lot to answer for. A lot of people are angry for whatever reason – lying politicians and dying babies – and I really hope that someone takes a crop sprayer across the country with relaxants and 'chill' sprays. Its hard to focus on the important stuff when all this background noise is going on.
That said, my own preoccupations have suddenly switched and I realise I have been reading about this and that A to Z list celebrity having chosen to have bits of their bodies cut off without realising that is now the current thinking: that the precaution against developing cancer has shifted to cutting out the bits where cancer could develop. The fight against cancer is big business too as reconstructive surgery is now the outcome from discovering precancer cells early. Blood analysis chemistry and scanography mean people can hit this before it makes them poorly indeed.
I certainly hadn't anticipated being in this position and I do have strong support, but no one really knows how to react or feel.
Girlfriends and relative strangers have given me hugs and advice. Its been getting easier for my emotional lability to be kept in check but often it is unexpected.
I had several phone calls from different departments of my medical chart and tomorrow sees me going for an MRI before my notes are discussed on Wednesdays meeting which means Ill be going back again on Thursday and it may not involve the hour and a half on the bus as I am getting taken.
I know its a cliché but I never saw this coming. I never thought it would happen to me. Nobody wants this, honestly. An excuse to get breast surgery? No! A way of clearing my diary of extra stuff? Maybe not. It would make life a hell of a lot easier to make time for family and doing fun stuff together – making memories – rather than running around like a bluebottle never concentrating on the important stuff.
I have more bulbs to distribute and strawberries to plant – must stop wallowing!