I'll be back

It's so frustrating - I have tons of photos to share, from blossoms to bugs to hairy footed flower bees, but I can't sit again, so can't get my photos processed and really need my desktop to do a post with photos anyway. So for now I'm tapping this out on my Kindle again. I have one solitary photo of pear blossom with my house in the background which I'd already processed which I can share - the rest will have to wait. 

I don't want to whinge, but suffice to say there's a game of ping pong going on with my abscesses; as one starts getting better, the other one starts getting worse! Unfortunately my stoma nurse and surgeon think the latest inflammation is not bad enough to warrant more ABs (this is the first abscess flaring up again), and would rather keep the ABs for if it gets really bad. I do understand this as I know too many ABs can lead to a resistance, but I hate being continually told that these wounds in the perineal area can take months to heal up (and basically I have to put up with it..... unless I'd like more surgery? Errrr, no thanks, and who is to say that would make it any better anyway. And no thanks to the mention of that ghastly morphine either). Also having chemo doesn't help because it lowers your resistance to infection and you don't have the full force of your white blood cells coming to the rescue to combat infection.

So for now I'm back to my daily walks around the garden for a bit of exercise - getting the timing right after taking my painkillers, but spending a lot of time in bed, having to eat lying down in bed or on the sofa, and lying on the back seat of the car to travel to the hospital. My mood isn't great either and it's getting harder and harder to be positive any more.

Chemo starts again tomorrow, and I've already dropped two kilos since the last round and it's hard to eat enough to put back the weight when I don't have much appetite, even when the nausea has passed, which takes about a week.

Hopefully the latest inflammation will pass soon and I'll be able to get my photos sorted and post properly again, but I thought I'd better explain my absence! I hope everyone else is well and enjoying spring (or autumn, depending on where you are).

Frustrated of Brittany xx

These are a few of my favourite things

Life's not all bad at the moment. I've added a health update at the end to keep it separate so if you are interested to read it, you will see that I've had a rough time lately, but I'm still getting out in the garden as much as possible because the weather is just so lovely. I've been really enjoying listening to the bird song and seeing butterflies, bees and hoverflies, more and more flowers opening up and just generally everything coming to life. I've seen my first Holly Blue butterfly but no photos of it yet. 

Blossom is going crazy here with the warm weather and now my eating plums are covered in flowers, the wild cherries and now also the eating cherries are covered in blossom too, as well as the ornamental cherry trees by the pond. Leaves are appearing on some of the trees and every day that I look out of the window something has changed. This is the month with the most change in the year so I don't want to miss any of it! P.S. Are you old enough to notice the title of my post is a lyric from the Sound of Music? My favourite film of all time. :-)

Enjoying sitting by the pond on my special cushions,
although it didn't take long for Bertie to jump up on my lap!

I'll start with some bird photos but also wanted to mention that my OH heard the first Cuckoo a few days ago - I haven't heard it yet myself, but they normally arrive around the first or second week of April.

Male Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs).

 

The Chiffchaffs (Phylloscopus collybita) are very vocal and loud at the moment and
the Blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) are back. The photo bottom right is a poor one of Mrs Blackcap,
but as both these birds are Warblers which means they are very flitty,
I was pleased that I even managed these pics! Best clicked on to view large.

Dunnock (Prunella modularis).

This one is my favourite - a very fluffy looking Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) in my Greengage tree!

Mustn't forget the two remaining ducks! Dirk the Saxony is on the left in
the top photo with Rachel the Rouen on the right. I dread another one dying
as I don't want to be left with a lonely duck or drake.

Male Orange Tip (Anthocharis cardamines).

Male Orange Tip (Anthocharis cardamines) butterfly.
I was pleased with these shots as they don't often settle and they show
that when they close up their wings they are quite hard to spot,
although leaving a bit of orange showing is still a tell tale sign!

Comma (Polygonia c-album) butterfly - one with tatty wings, and another
with fresh looking wings. This is the best I can do zooming in.

Moo! Cows are back in the fields around the garden.

Remember the sand filter bed where the grass looked yellow and sickly? My OH applied some
fertiliser specially for newly sown lawns and suddenly it's greened up and the grass is growing!

Chickens having fun digging where the Dahlias have been left in situ for the first time ever,
covered in a protective layer of leaves.... which are now chucked all over the lawn!

First leaves opening from the 'sticky buds' of the Horse Chestnut.

My OH has taken over the veggie patch chores as I can't do anything in there!

Here he is planting my seed potatoes and he's also sown parsnip and carrot seeds.

I managed to get an insect photo! A fly of some sort on a plum blossom.

My front bed again, Daffs and species Tulips.

Rosemary on left, Pulmonaria top right and a Rhodo bottom right.

Tulips and Greengage blossom.

Health update
I'm keeping these updates separate from the rest of the blog posts so those who don't want to read this kind of thing can just ignore them. There's possibly TMI (Too Much Information) for some (particularly guys!) in the following..... I  really had no idea it would be so up and down after my surgery, with one thing leading to another, but I'm finding it quite cathartic to write about it, and if it helps anyone who reads this who may be suffering from something similar, then that's a good thing.

I had my 6 week post surgery appointment with my surgeon and wasn't happy with the way it went. I get the impression I won't be seeing him again, as as far as he's concerned his job is done. Never mind that I am left with residual problems directly relating to it! He even seemed surprised that I had not yet seen a urologist, so I had to remind him that he'd said he would arrange this back when I was in the hospital, and again two weeks ago when I also mentioned a gynaecogical problem I'd had for some while too. This time at least he said when we saw his secretary after the appt she'd arrange appts with the two specialists for me.

He then picked up my file, stood up and started walking to the door as if that was it. I piped up and told him that we were not finished as I had questions to ask to which he seemed surprised. Well given he had not brought up the important point of when I may be allowed to start doing things around the house and garden, I had to ask, as up to now the only thing I had been doing was walking to get exercise! His reply was basically yes, I could start getting my life back to normal by doing housework and cooking etc. I then asked about doing light gardening jobs to which he replied, of course! Huh? This is the man who told me pre surgery that I couldn't do any gardening for three months!!!

I know my limitations so I will only be doing little jobs so there is no risk of me overdoing anything, but at least I've got the go ahead. But I shouldn't have had to ask. He should have told me this sort of thing as standard, don't you think? Bloody ridiculous.

In other news, I was lucky that the next day I got a call from the gynae in the morning saying she could see me that afternoon. Seems like I have thrush, which is not surprising given I've taken antibiotics twice within the last five weeks. The physical exam was painful, but the lady doc I saw was gentle and kind, although she only looked about 20, which makes me feel so old! :-) I've never had thrush before, so didn't recognise the symptoms, but anyway, everything 'down there' has been jiggled about with during surgery as it's all so close to the anus and rectum, so it's hard to know what's just normal discomfort after this kind of surgery. Thank goodness really for the itching which alerted me to the fact that there may be a separate issue here. My bladder problems (it still just doesn't feel right) might even be due to the thrush - well I've taken the one off treatment so I'll find out soon enough, but if not, I've an appt for early May with a urologist.

And then. Yes it goes on. Sigh. Whilst the abscess is healing up nicely, the other little hole in my butt wound suddenly started hurting worse and bleeding on Saturday morning. The nurses who come round daily to change my dressing say this one has turned into an abscess too. It seems that just as I start feeling better, start walking normally and bending easier and becoming more supple, along comes another thing to knock me back. After talking to the Stoma Nurse who I have been dealing with mostly regarding the other abscess, she said she'd come and see me on Thursday when I'm back at the hospital having round 2 of my chemo. But it's been getting worse and the home nurse who came around this morning told me to go and see my regular doctor, which I did this afternoon. He also thinks I should lay off the ABs but other than say to also flush out the abscess hole with hydrogen peroxide as well as the serum physiologique (a sterile saline solution) which the nurses have been doing, and keep putting the wadding with silver in it (meches in France, no idea what it's called in English), I don't know what else they can do to aid healing. Of course this is horribly painful trying to stuff something into a hole that is barely 1mm diameter, but I just grin and bear it.

It could be easy to start getting really depressed by it all, so I thank goodness for the sunshine and spring which cheers me up immensely. The other good thing is that it takes my mind off dwelling over the chemo, or even the cancer! In fact I didn't suffer much from this first round of chemo. The tingling in my hands when they were cold (peripheral neuropathy) only lasted about five days. I had a couple of days of on and off nausea and a couple more with little appetite. Now I'm eating reasonably OK and whilst not 100%, it went better than I'd imagined. The last few days I've felt quite tired but that may have been due to infection from the new abscess, or the thrush, as both are infections of different kinds. My next round of chemo is Thursday and Friday this week. Just wish these other problems could just *insert expletive* off and go away!!!

Recent photos of the garden

This post is full of photos taken in the last few days, and as my last post contained lots of text and only one photo which I hate doing, without further ado I will shut up and show you the pics! I'll just caption them first though..... :-)

Round the front whilst I was doing some supervisory gardening,
actually these photos were taken about a week ago.

Unfortunately using leaf mould as a soil conditioner meant that goosegrass seeds
in it had germinated and were swamping many plants.

Front bed.

Rosemary, Daffies, Euphorbias, and Hallie.

Aubretia starting into flower, growing through a Lavender.

A variegated Pieris.

These are from a week or so ago - Green Woodpecker at the top,
with Mr Chaffinch below, both taken through the kitchen window.

First hints of green on the willow trees.

First Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria) butterfly of the year feeding on a dandelion.

This is when my superzoom PowerShot SX50 comes in handy!
I can still get half reasonable butterfly photos.

Forsythia, Peach blossom, Weeping Willow and Harry's bum.

Pretty in pink - Peach blossom.

Celandine and a black cat silhouette!

Hallie and Bertie accompanying me through the woodland paths.

Blossom in the woodland - a Prunus of some sort.

Not sure if it is Damson, Bullace or Blackthorn, although it doesn't have thorns.
It has never had fruit so no way to ID it that way. 

This next photo requires some explanation. We are missing a white duck and this looks like the kill zone, although I don't see any blood. What's surprising is that there is no trail of feathers, nor any body anywhere. We strongly suspect a fouine (stone marten), for several reasons. One, because one was seen a few months ago, and if you remember, we found Doris' headless corpse around the same time. My OH also found the end of a seep hose that had been around some raspberries and blackberries, out on the lawn, in two pieces. He said he couldn't remember leaving the end on the grass after removing two blackberry plants, as it looked like he'd mowed over it. However the next day the seep hose was discovered in many pieces, with tooth marks around the ends. Fouines have a tendency to chew through things like this, particularly wires and cables they can get at under cars!

We have to assume that Freckles, the last of our original ducks bought in March 2007, was ailing or died, and the opportunist fouine got her. So far we've only lost weak or sick ducks, as given the ducks never stray more than a leap from the water now, it's fairly easy for them to escape predators by swimming off on the water. It's a bit sad and a shame and I hope she didn't suffer, but as they refuse to come into the shed to safety at night, we can't do much about it. Poor old Freckles, she lasted a good old time. The last time I saw her she was bathing and splashing in the water looking happy. I think Dirk had just given her a seeing to! :-)

RIP Freckles.

Rubbish zoomed in Roe Deer photo, but we were really pleased to see two of them briefly
in the field next to the veg patch.

Expect plenty more photos, as apart from supervisory gardening, there's not a lot I can do outside at the moment except walk around to get exercise and fresh air..... and take photos! And the weather is at last warm and wonderful. :-)