Tying up loose ends

The title of this blog is kids, KNITTING, and Guiding.

I talk a lot about the kids, I have talked about guiding, mostly I talk about cancer. But I don't talk much about the passion in my life, crafting, especially knitting, cross stitching and sewing.

11 months ago I started watching a fantastic drama on BBC 1, Sunday evenings called Ripper Street. At the same time I started a new project for the ever expanding bump. Nothing fancy, a baby blanket. Both Isaac and Imogen had blankets knitted for them by my mum and called them their Grandma Blankets. The new baby would need a blanket and I had found the perfect pattern in one of those books you see in Garden Centres across the country.

I had bought the book, I had the wool left over from other projects, this wool came from my bobble cushions. Which incidentally I have finished, but still need to buy the foam to go inside, I must get round to that soon!!

Ripper Street gave me an hour each Sunday to sit and knit which should have been plenty of time, but unfortunately the back pain I started to suffer during pregnancy meant I was unable to sit for long periods of time.

By the time Hope was born I had completed all but 50 rows. I was on the finishing stretch, but 3 children and the absolute exhaustion just put all thoughts of knitting out of my mind. I religiously carted the project around. It came to my parents house and back, it went on scout camp but it never left the bag.

A couple of weeks ago, Ripper Street returned for a second series. Suddenly there was the motivation I required to complete the blanket. I could not let two series go without completing Hope's blanket.

There is also the added bonus that my pain is much more manageable now with the morphine, paracetamol, oromorph combo, so yesterday and last night I managed to get to within 5 rows of completing it. And this morning at 10.25 I finally finished Hope's 'grandma blanket'.

I am so proud of what I have achieved. Hope has her blanket and I have a new found love of knitting again, fuelled by simple projects which can be completed quickly and are portable.

So next up, something Imogen has been nagging for for a long time. A pink, purple and cream scarf.

Let's get casting on!!

The aging process

Tomorrow will be the 34th anniversary of my birth. Yep, with crappy timing my birthday has rolled around again.

Last years day was pretty awesome. We took the children and 10 week old bump to Disneyland Paris to meet Mickey Mouse and generally have fun and experience something new. This included quite a lot of train spotting, luckily our accommodation was close to a railway line and learning lots of new words especially Pomme for Apple.

The year before, 2011, I'd been diagnosed with the cancer and had my date for chemo starting which was 2 days after my birthday. So my actual birthday was spent with some friends enjoying the last of the sunshine before 2 days of PICC lines and oxaliplatin infusions. 

This year I fear will be another wash out. 

I had my endoscopy on Friday 27th, actually I kind of had 2. I opted initially to not be sedated and have the local anaesthetic. I thought I coped remarkably well with the tube being put in and did not have to much gagging or choking. However when it came to it I just could not tolerate it for too long, so the tube had to be withdrawn and I had to be cannulated and sedated. 

It turns out that there was still a lot of fluid in my stomach despite not eating or drinking anything for more than the prescribed time. 

I have to say the local anaesthetic is nasty, it is supposed to taste like banana. If that was my first taste of banana, I'd never have it again. It burns and tastes most unpleasant, but it does numb your throat and makes you dribble everywhere!

After a short time in recovery we saw the consultant. Finally I was going to get some answers.  Or not. 

There is an area of inflammation in my stomach, which he has sampled and sent off for histology. In order to investigate further I will need yet another CT scan. 

Since the endoscopy I have been in almost constant abdominal and back pain. Now I know that there is inflammation in my stomach I can't take anymore NSAIDS, so ibuprofen is out for pain relief and I am relying on trusty paracetamol and constipating cocodamol.

The last few nights have been so bad I have managed about 3 hours sleep a night. 

So, with all this behind and in front of me, I am not looking forward to tomorrow as a special day, but as one more day towards answers. 

My body has given up

Since December 2007 I have either been pregnant, breastfeeding or battling cancer and as a result I think my body may have decided it is time to throw in the towel.

No, no, I am not dying but there are a lot of things wrong with my body and I am annoyed that in this quick fix era there is no quick fix for the human body.


Before Hope was conceived I was a comfortable dress size 16. I was happy with this and had started running and doing yoga to try and tone up some of those Mummy Wobbly bits, but was not planning on loosing any more weight. Fast forward to today. I am wearing a pair of size 14 jeans that I bough when Hope was 6 weeks old and they are too big. I have lost at least 15 kgs since she was conceived and I am worried. 

I know that this statement puts me at odds with the vast majority of my sex. Most women would kill to loose weight without having to watch what they eat and excersise, but not me. I have never worried about my weight. Other than 3 months before my wedding where I used slimfast to try and loose a few pounds I have never dieted. Yet, I cannot keep weight on at the moment. I look in the mirror and see an ill looking stranger looking back at me. According to the NHS BMI calculator here I am healthy, but I was also healthy when I was 15kgs heavier and I was also a lot happier.

Add to the unexplained dramatic weight loss all the other health complaints I am suffering and you would be forgiven for thinking that I am on a one woman campaign to use every bit of the NHS!!

I am still having physio for the back pain which came on when I was pregnant.

Then there is the bowel stuff

If you do not like poo related discussions you might want to stop reading now :)

Since having Hope my bowels have become somewhat unpredictable again. I almost feel like I have regressed to how they were acting post surgery. It is explosive, unpleasant smelling, urgent and frequent. Combined with incredible bloating & stomach cramps like I have never experienced before my GP has been able to refer me for another colonoscopy (on Monday so I am starting my preparation tonight) and I have seriously considered cutting things out of my diet.

No, scratch that I have cut something out of my diet. On Wednesday I made the decision that the agony I have been suffering after a sandwich is something not worth the pain so I have decided to cut out gluten/wheat. Actually I do feel better for it. But it is unscientific as I have no diagnosis to confirm whether or not I need to do this. But it does help. 

What doesn't help is this TV advert which has me crazing a large slice of hot buttered home made toast and marmite.

But hopefully come September we will have some answers or some tablets and I will be able to move further away from the toilet!!!

24 months is really quite a long time

They say a lot can happen in a week (or a week is a long time in politics).

I am definitely not a politician and a week to me is far too long, mostly because of bickering children and the weather being far too hot for all of us. 

But I want to look even further back than a week, to Thursday, July 21st 2011. This was a date that will forever be etched in my memory as the date that I found out I had cancer. 

But, if you remember even then it wasn't definitely cancer. It was just a stage 4 tumor. The cancerous nature of it was not known. 

I have been reminiscing a lot over the last couple of weeks about this and how I feel now. I have to be honest since having Hope (14 weeks old and looking lovely) a lot of fears have resurfaced. 

Prior to my cancer diagnosis and since having Imogen I knew something was not right with my body and kept going backwards and forwards to the GP trying to get them to agree that it was more than just 'ovulation pains' or 'IBS'.

Since Hope was born, these fears have resurfaced. My body appears to have regressed to a post surgery state again. I veer from having very uncomfortable blocked bowels to liquid ones in the space of 36 hours. I am loosing lots of weight and am feeling tired, dizzy and rundown. 

My GP's are great at reassuring me and running goodness knows how many tests to try and put my mind at ease and constantly reminding me that I am breastfeeding a very hungry 14 week old as well as running myself raged looking after a 5 year old and a 3 year old. 

However the heat, coupled with the never ending back pain means that I am not looking after me properly. Some evenings I don't eat as I can't face any food. Other times I will eat three decent sized portions of food before midday .

At the moment I am feeling fairly confident that the cancer has not returned, but I cannot shake the fear that it will return and I won't know about it. It has snuck up on me once before, what is to stop it doing it again. 

Sometimes I look at the three beautiful children I have been so privileged to have and wonder whether it was fair to have a third knowing that she might carry my faulty gene and have the inherited risk of bowel cancer? I do have these fears for Isaac and Imogen, but I had them before I knew of my cancer. Was I selfish to have a third child knowing that I might pass on that gene?

Only time will tell, but if my children read this I am sorry if you have inherited the gene's that make you predestined for bowel cancer. I am sorry that I have exposed you to this nasty, evil disease. But I love you and you have made my world complete (sounds really cheesy).

So, 2 years on, I continue to live in fear, but also surrounded by the most wonderful things in the world

Isaac, Imogen and Hope and my fantastic husband

6 weeks to go

This post will contain irrational ranting and is probably best not read by anyone thinking of becoming pregnant for the first time.

Now that that is out of the way I can tell you a couple of things. 

Pregnancy and me do not get along. 

This time last year I had taken my last dose of capecitabine and my follow up appointment was about 6 weeks away. That was scary. I knew that they had removed all of my tumour and a large amount of lymph nodes around my bowel. I knew that the tests had confirmed that the cancer hadn't spread. I knew that the 6 months of hell I had been through in the form of chemotherapy were over and were only preventative rather than curative (?). But I was still scared. You can't help it. You're only human and however hard you try to focus on the positive the negative always creeps in.

In the same vein this pregnancy has been like this for me. I have seen the healthy baby twice on scans and, although scans are not infallible, know that there is very little likely to be wrong with this baby. I know that going into hospital to have a baby is very different to being refused an ambulance, having to wait 4 hours for an out of hours doctor who diagnoses appendicitis and calls you an ambulance to take you to hospital in the middle of the night. This doesn't stop me being terrified of the prospect of having to go into hospital again.

Childbirth represents a loss of control. You cannot predict when you are going to go into labour. I have had one child born at 40 weeks and 6 days and one born at 38 weeks and 6 days. This one could turn up at 36 weeks or 42 weeks. You genuinely live in the dark. When you have two other children to consider along with school and pre school runs this creates a dilemma. Add into that mix that your husband is starting a new job at the same time and you can see why there is a loss of control here.

For me at the moment though the main concern is getting through the next six weeks. Ever since I pee'd on a stick and it was positive I have had back ache. I have seen the physiotherapist, although to be frank she was very hands off and gave me a couple of stretches to do, which I could have worked out myself, advised me to sit on hard backed chairs and gave me a couple of massages. When I asked for some advice as to whether I would be better seeing a chiropractor or an osteopath she said she wasn't allowed to recommend either. 

The level of pain I was experiencing was getting so bad that paracetamol didn't cut the mustard any more so I dragged myself back to the GP and got a prescription for co codamol. I have now reached the stage where this is not even effective. 
I have just re read the dosage instructions. 

Take 2 tablets every 4-6 hours. Do not take more than 8 tablets in 24 hours.

I was coping on 2 tablets every 5 hours, but this meant that the pain relief was wearing off before I took more tablets and so had to wait for the next dose to kick in which involves spending at least an hour in pain. I cannot wait 6 hours between doses and need to take them every 4, but this means that I cannot sleep due to the pain. I am fighting a loosing battle. 

This has now culminated in me being awake since about 2am, as I took my last dose of tablets at 10pm. I finally succumbed to take more at 6am thinking foolishly I could try and get through to midday before I took some more. I probably got about 20 minutes more sleep before I was joined in bed by Isaac & Imogen. 

So I am writing off today. I may watch the Australian Grand Prix highlights later as I turned it off to let the children watch cbeebies while I dozed. I will also be making a GP appointment to discuss the pain management situation.