Peeking over the parapet to say hello

This is a quickie post with no photos just to let you know I am still in the land of the living. 

I have been to hell and back since Christmas with radiotherapy burns and spent two weeks in bed since Boxing Day. In fact I've spent most of my time since then in bed, because even when the pain finally subsided I've still felt unwell, rather like having flu and feeling really weak with no energy, just thankfully without the aches and shakes, and still getting bouts of nausea and lacking appetite. I guess there's a lot of crud to get out of my system from the strong chemo drugs and the battering my body has had from the radiotherapy. But I'm just beginning to have some good days at long last and I've managed to get outside a few times in the last week.

What I found the most interesting learning about radiotherapy burns for my particular kind of cancer and the same treatment ranged from a website that said to ignore the people who talk about excrutiatingly painful burns because that is just a myth spread by sensationalists!!! Even the radiotherapy tech told me as soon as my last session was over I'd start getting better straight away (wrong). The intern told me the burns would last about 3 weeks after the end of the treatment but wouldn't get any worse (wrong).  The truth is in various cancer sites' forum posts where I found many people had suffered the same as me. It gets worse before it starts getting better. And we are not talking about burns just in the anal region where the radiotherapy is targeted. We're talking about the whole area down there, from the top of my butt crack to my female parts and all. :-(

I ended up having to take the morphine I'd been prescribed which itself is a horrible drug making me feel like a complete zombie. I only took the slow release tablets even though I had some other fast release ones to take on top if needed, but I felt so drugged and weird I wasn't going to add to that. It did dull the pain a bit which made it bearable. Because I couldn't sit I have been eating lying down with my OH who has taken over the entire housework situation including cooking, cutting my food up into bite sized portions so I could eat my food with just a fork. 

This is the first day I have turned on my Mac and I'm finding I can sit here now reasonably comfortably so I wanted you to know how I'm doing.

I saw the surgeon last week and the date for my operation (which will be the full Monty with the bag an' all) is the 24th Feb. Apparently it's a 5 hour operation and he said I'd be in hospital about 12 days! If they cannot remove every trace of cancerous cells then I will have to have six months of chemo via drip, every fortnight for two days (no idea if that means staying in hospital overnight); I'll be asking him about that but there is no point worrying TOO much about this just yet..... although if that happens then that stuffs up our proposed plan to visit our relatives in England in the spring after I've got over my surgery! Hey ho. 

I've only been using my Kindle to access the internet so was able to chat to friends on facebook who have been helping me get through this awful time by bucking me up, telling me butt jokes and generally making a difficult time easier by the amazing support system I have there.

Fellow bloggers - I've looked through a few of your more recent blog posts but sometimes I have not the energy to comment. I hope you understand but now that I'm able to sit (even if somewhat gingerly) I will try to catch up eventually. 

Also hope to start taking some photos again soon! 

Take care. xx