Latest health update and first Swallowtail

Half of me would prefer not to dwell on the horrid side of life, but I think it's a good idea to keep up with my 'journey', as one day I hope I can look back on this nightmare period and think - thank god that's over! And if my updates are at all helpful to anyone who finds themselves, or a friend or relative, in a similar position (although I truly hope not), then if there is anything helpful here then it will have been worthwhile. 

So where was I last? A couple of weeks ago one of the abscesses had got worse but it was deemed by the powers that be not bad enough to warrant taking more antibiotics. However a few days later one of the home nurses discovered that the two abscesses had joined up! Worse was to come when I suddenly started having even worse pain as a new inflammation had started up the top end of my butt crack. By this time they realised that I had one abscess that had become a tunnel behind my entire perineal surgical scar.

So (and these things always seem to happen on Fridays when my stoma nurse doesn't work, and/or it's a public holiday in France as it was that day, and other than 'Urgences' there is no-one to contact over the weekend) we called the nurse first thing last Monday to explain the new situation and she was able to see me that afternoon. She'd been in touch with my surgeon and this time they'd decided this did warrant another course of ABs, plus an urgent MRI scan to see better what was going on in there.

I had a hideous time with her as she's pretty brutal and always inflicts some pain, but this was like nothing I'd experienced before. Her view is that you've got to be cruel to be kind in order to clean it out as best you can, which aids the healing, but I could have done without her sticking tools up all the tiniest holes into the abscess. I even swore in English. Well I swear a lot better in English than in French. At the end I burst into tears, not just from the awful experience (heck, most medical people would give you a local anaesthetic for that level of pain), but mostly the absolute feeling of frustration and hopelessness, this having gone on for so long now. Mostly also because, whilst I can put up with the pain or discomfort from radiotherapy burns and from chemo because they serve a purpose, to kill off tumours and cancer cells, this serves absolutely nothing and just adds to my general misery.

I manage to get in for a scan a few days later and to my delight it was actually a CT scan which only lasted 5 mins, as they hadn't been able to fit me in for an MRI scan, which is a noisy horrible thing that goes on for about 45 mins. The doc or technician said she could see nothing out of the ordinary.

So, all was going well with my abscess seeming to dry out somewhat and the pain started reducing, when all of a sudden on Thursday evening I started having diarrhoea! This got worse, along with nausea and I even threw up which is the first time since all this started - I've not even thrown up from the chemo so far. I had 24 hours of worse nausea than I get from the chemo. A bit of research lead me to finding that it was caused by the ABs! Honestly, I know more about septic tank workings than the human body - I'm well aware that ABs can disrupt the good/bad bacteria balance in a septic tank but hadn't thought that the same thing can happen to gut flora!

My OH has scoured the supermarkets and bought some probiotic yoghurt drinks so I'll keep taking those in the hope that I can get my poor guts back to normal working order eventually. They are still gurgling like you wouldn't believe.

My biggest problem now is lack of appetite and weight loss. I lose weight with each chemo session and haven't had much appetite since it started. I am now as skinny as I was at my worst last year after I suffered sudden weight loss around May/June last year, which was the start of all my problems (including the thyroid problem). I have some high calorie, high protein drinks which will help, but I hate having no appetite as I love my food normally, but when you are feeling nauseous, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it; you just can't eat. 

I'm seeing the stoma nurse tomorrow during my chemo session (damn public hols in France in May have meant my usual Thu/Fri sessions have been brought forward), so it will be interesting to see what she says about the abscess. If it doesn't clear, then it'll be back to hospital to have my scar cut open so they can clean the area out properly, then presumably stitch me up again. Then I'll have to go through the recuperation and healing of that all over again, but I'm willing to go through this if it rids me of the sodding abscess so I can start to move forward with my life!

Still, life is not all bad, I saw my first Swallowtail of the season yesterday! And I managed to scoff home grown asparagus for dinner, no problems with lack of appetite there. :-)

Swallowtail (Papilio machaon) feeding on kale flowers.

Belated blossoms, bugs and bees from April

I've had a really rough week healthwise which I'll explain in a separate post; for now though I want to post these photos that I managed to sort out during one relatively good morning when I was actually able to sit for a bit!

Of course everything has moved on since I took these pictures during the latter half of April and I don't have many more yet, as the weather has been naff - I didn't mind three straight days of rain as it's good for the garden, and it's certainly really lush and green out there. It also keeps the stream flowing into the lake which I always want to stay full for as long as possible. Hopefully with some warm sunny days coming soon (and the end of the awful wind which makes photography really hard), I'll be able to capture what the garden is looking like now. It changes so much this time of year!

But for now, those photos. There are lots of them, but as I haven't posted any for about a month I think I'm entitled to!

Apple blossom in the orchard. Not so sure about a good apple harvest
now as the weather turned wet whilst a lot of the trees were in flower.

Eating cherry blossom on the left and ornamental cherry double blooms on right.

Think this is one of my three eating cherry trees! They were loaded with flowers.

Hard to get a photo of my neighbour's wonderful ornamental
cherries without either swings or perimeter fence in the way.
That's my Smokebush Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple' in the foreground.

The big old cherry in full bloom whilst the green tree in the foreground
is my greengage which had finished flowering.

Cherry again with Euphorbia characias in the foreground.

There was a reasonable showing of buds and some flowers on my Forest Pansy this year.
This is Cercis canadensis, the Eastern Redbud.

They don't all open up into flower though, but it's better than a
few years ago when the buds just kept dropping off!

There's not much left of this lilac by the pond as much of it has died off.

Greater Stitchwort (Stellaria holostea) is everywhere in my woodland at the moment -
look carefully at the pic on the left and you'll see a male Orange Tip butterfly!
I love these flowers as they last for ages.

My second biggest oak tree looking pretty with fresh young leaves.

Some of the front bed, weeds and all (can you see the dandelions?!).
Thankfully most weeds are smothered now by Forget Me Nots!

Same area which has been taken over by bluebells in the thyme bank,
which is looking better now that the brown dead bits that
I couldn't prune are disappearing under new growth.

Some spring photos look positively autumnal!
These are some of my purple or dark leaved shrubs, and golden ones too.

In the veg patch before the purple curly kale started flowering,
but the PSB was providing nectar for the bees. And that cherry tree again.

A snapshot of my Pollinator Meadow Year 4.
This is now completely natural with weeds wildflowers which have
colonised it like dandelions and goosegrass, even some grass.
I'm leaving it like that because the whole point of this is that it is/was
an experiment to see which insects and pollinators were attracted to it.
It's hugely colourful no matter what kind of plant is flowering.

Top is the bug that loves brassicas, Eurydema ornata,
bottom left is the first Dock Bug (Coreus marginatus) I've seen,
and bottom right a Striped Shield Bug (Graphosoma lineatum), a bug
I normally see later in the year on dill and fennel flowers, so it was
a surprise to see it in my woodland area just sitting on a leaf.

Teensy solitary bee collecting tons of pollen at the top,
and a Carder Bee on the bottom.

Hairy-Footed Flower Bee (Anthophora plumipes) and a little Weevil on the left.

Hairy-Footed Flower Bee (Anthophora plumipes) on my Kale flowers.

Those of you who sent me emails - I've read them and thank you. Thing is, I'm not set up on my Kindle to send or receive emails - so to my friend who has a FB page I'll reply to you via messages there; to my cousin, we can keep in touch via your daughter on FB, and to my friend who sent healing advice - thanks, I'll print it out! Hopefully soon I'll be able to spend more time at the proper desktop computer and reply to your emails properly - things are easing up in the sitting department! xx

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