When I started this blog, it was to let people know how I was faring during my chemo during last winter. At the time I tolerated the chemo pretty well and so was still able to get out and about and do stuff, and then report back.
As you probably know the last few months the blogs have tailed off and that's been primarily due to the constant pain I've been having. It's had two effects, one to limit what I can do (and so report on), and secondly has made me feel pretty miserable and disinclined to sit and write the blog.
Four weeks ago last Friday, I had a short shot of radiotherapy on the top end of my spine between my shoulder blades as a scan revealed that some cancer was impinging on the nerves coming out of my spine and thus causing all the pain.
Since then the transformation has been nothing short of miraculous. I'm sitting here having reflected on how my movement has improved beyond my wildest dreams, and how the pain has nearly all gone. I still have a few twinges here and there - my left shoulder has been giving me a bit of gyp - but I can even sense that these may be on the way out.
Physically there has been a change, but also this release from the pain has lifted my spirits. There have been a few other events that have done this too......
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Wildlife corner
"Swift, I've just kicked a hedgehog"
Not a phrase I can say I've heard ever before. Gel was putting the bins out and in doing so her foot bumped against something. Now I've reported in the past that we've had hedgehogs in the back garden, but it's never occurred to me that they might scuttle around the front too. But there it was, rolled in a ball protecting itself from the booting it felt was coming next. The cats were super excited, but very confused. Gel took the little fella round the back and put him in the long grass away from feline eyes. We checked the following day and he'd safely made it away.
Not long after that we were driving up the avenue in the middle of the day and a similar (the same?) hedgehog was parked in the middle of the road. Sean, Gel's brother leaped to its rescue and put it back in the grass from whence it had come.
Caitlin and Andy have been finishing off bits and bobs around the house, including painting the cellar to smarten it up. Most exciting news when they came across this handsome fella...
We reckon it's a toad, but if anyone with greater expertise can put us right...
The final part of wildlife corner is a report from Pheebs that she looked out of her window one night to see a badger scuttling around on the avenue.
We could run our own Springwatch at this rate, having also had fox, heron and sparrowhawk in the garden in recent times.
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Secret squirrel
About ten days ago, I was contacted by Andy asking to keep Sept 3rd free but to keep the fact I was keeping it free a secret. So I did. He told me where the 'secret event' was to take place, and what special requirements there were (none). I kept it all hush-hush until the Friday night when I had to explain to Gel that we had an early start the following morning and she, and I, needed to be ready.
I couldn't tell her what the event was, nor who was attending (because I didn't know), but I asked her not to mention it to anyone else. She used her best interrogation techniques to extract information about what was going on, but I resisted, and so it was that we found ourselves sitting at a table in Tilly's in Castleton on Saturday morning waiting for something to happen.
Then Caitlin and Andy appeared, and Andy explained that he had woken Caitlin earlier that morning on the pretext of watching dawn rise on the top of Mam Tor. He had explained that we wanted to do the same. They took a picnic blanket and a flask of coffee. When the sunrise started, Andy seized the moment and asked Caitlin to marry him, ring at the ready. So when they arrived at Tilly's neither Caitlin or Gel knew who would be there. The start of a weekend of (happy) tears.
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18th
This weekend (Sunday) also saw Pheebs turn 18. We bought her a ticket to the Leeds Festival for her main present, but wanted to give her something personal to keep, and so did a little scrapbook of photos from "Early Days" through to now. Cue more tears.
