Rants and raves

There are a trail of 'health professionals' on my trail, and some of them are starting to get right up my nose.

I have no trouble with the trial nurse who needs to check up on me fairly regularly, she's bright and breezy, asks sensible questions like how do I feel, what are my symptoms etc.

I can cope with the woman who feels I need to join a support group or two.... no thanks. But they are such fun people she says - still no thanks but I'll think about it. (I have come across a couple of people who belong to all the support groups and they are unable to talk about anyone other than themselves and anything other than their illness and whether they will be alive next year. I cannot stand the thought of being stuck in a room full of people like that - I don't know that they are all like that but not sure I want to take the risk)

The ones that ring me up and tell me that I need to grieve for my loss of health and should get counselling are getting close to being hung up on. They seem to prod at it until they know they have upset me and use this to confirm I need help. Yes I am still upset that I would be in the UK next week if this hadn't happened. Talking it over with someone is not going to make it better, in fact it is going to make it worse - it is best it simmers in the back of my mind until I find some acceptance (and we'll go next year). I am coping perfectly well with a lot of other aspects of life at the moment, and I am trying to get back to the adjusted type of normal - the best I can get it. They don't see this. I may have to get caller display so I can avoid them.

Okay rant over - I'll go and do something less irritating to me.

About time for an update

I'm not actually depressed at the moment but aware often that what is happening in my life is depressing so I feel doubtful about blogging for fear of sounding miserable.

Anyway I had the first dose of chemotheraphy yesterday.
I was given three choices:
1 Not too nasty chemo with about a 60% chance it would work
2 Nastier chemo with a slightly better chance it would work
3 The option to go on a clinical trial where I would get nastier chemo or nastier chemo in conjunction with a new drug which looks good in mice but initial results in humans are only moderately successful.

No one quite believes I did this but I narrowed it down to options 1 or 3 and I tossed a coin. Option 3 came up. Then over the other side of the world they reviewed my scans and bloodtests, decided I was an acceptable guinea pig and tossed another coin to randomise me onto the trial and I came up as part of the control group so I am just getting the nastier chemo cocktail not the new drug. A couple of people have asked cautiously if I am disappointed about this but I am actually not... if that is what happened that is the way it is meant to be for me. A minor bit of good news is the tumour they can measure at the moment on scans (there are a lot of bits that aren't showing up in scans) has not grown since the last scan in early May, (and fingers crossed it starts getting smaller soon) .

I'm starting back at work next week, once I get over the three or four days of yuk that goes with chemo, but think I will work mostly from home for a while. Home is a good place to work, home is just a good place to be!

Mingling with the farming community

Fieldays

We went yesterday. The weather more or less held together, there wasn't too much mud, there were a whole heap of people... We wandered round for hours and then had to do a circuit again to buy all the things we had noted on the way but didn't want to carry.

I am in love with miniature cattle. However the price tag is too scary to contemplate. These were the size of a large dog, looked like tiny highland cattle. Soooo cute!

Got waylaid at serveral saddlery places - can't resist a special... so stocked up on lead ropes, halters, hay nets, worming pastes, covers and ummmm a saddle - a tiny wee mini horse sized saddle that was soooo cheap (and I am having some small regrets that I didn't buy another one as well which was a third of it's normal price).

Also got some plants to thicken out the shelter belts some more. And some other stuff of a minor nature.

Looked at tractors of all sizes, quadbikes, farm buildings, stock underpasses, fencing, watertroughs, clothing, tools, watertanks, trailers, horsefloats, and machinery with obscure uses.

Exhausting but fun

Orange ribbon week

http://www.fedfarm.org.nz/media%20releases/PR0882005.html

The nomad bus

The nomad bus. Husband built this...(well he did the conversion from bus to motorhome) however he can't claim any credit for the paint job which was done by a very talented man in Christchurch and is amazing. Bus owner tells us that the attention is a bit boring at times - people always ask if they can get a photo of it.

This 'n' that

No intentional neglect here, just stuff has kept happening lately. Coupled with the diminished mobility/ energy as I work on getting back to normal my brain has turned to mush and I haven't been able to think of a single thing (either intelligent or stupid) to say.

So here is a brief catchup.

For starters we've had some nomads in a bus parked in the back yard for a week. Lovely to see them but glad they have gone... not that they were any trouble, they even weeded some garden and did some housework, I'm just an antisocial cuss. I might post a photo of the nomad bus later - it's very impressive and a work of art in its own right.

Close friend's father died last week too in Christchurch. Not unexpected but sad nonetheless. This was a man who treated us as part of his family, loaned us his holiday home and boat, taught my children to fish, waterski and drive the boat, told us off for our dissolute habits and gave out sage advice. Husband has gone to the funeral today. I contemplated being there but am not sure I have the energy to see it through at the moment. It's also the second anniversary of my father's death this week so I'm a bit contemplative about life and death at the moment.

I am working on getting round more as I want to go to Fieldays on Friday. Not sure if I am up to that much walking yet or not but guess I can sit myself down at a stand if it gets tiring. I am okay wandering round for an hour or two at a time.

Chooks have finally gone off the lay for the winter and we have no eggs (darn it). One of the cows got under the hotwire in one paddock and trimmed the recently planted shelter belt in that paddock (double darn it) and the littlest horse trimmed his girlfriends tail very short so she is going to look a bit silly in the show ring this summer.

Life's like that I guess.

Insular

I like being by myself... I don't get scared alone in the dark (much anyway) I like solitary and bordering on antisocial pursuits - reading, writing, scrapbooking, gardening, solitary horse grooming sessions. I like riding alone, walking alone, I used to jog with only a dog for company. A package tour holiday with the same 30 people for 10 days would drive me demented. I choose to live where the neighbours can't see into my windows, I work best in an enclosed office rather than an open plan one.

Most of the time I am moderately happy to have some human interaction in my day, but if I go a day or two without seeing anyone it doesn't upset me. Happily I have a husband with a similar outlook so we can be antisocial together.

The 'people people' I know find this disconcerting, as if contentment with aloneness is some sign of psychological disturbance. It is good for me to go out apparently. It is equally good for people I know only vaguely to come and keep me company....

They mean well - they just don't understand that I am quite comfortable with solitude.

Let me live up to my name - Wino that is...

Had someone else tell me today I should get counseling to help me deal with the stuff in my life that I have difficulty dealing with....

Hic.... bugger that. Two (big) glasses of wine, a chat on the phone to a friend that always makes me laugh and my problems aren't that important. Let me go and get another glass, and spend a little more time on that post I have been formulating for a while 'Why counseling can make you feel worse than you already did'

I'll get back to you with that.

Dreaming

In the last week I have been having weird (as in not nice) and frequent dreams. I'm guessing it's the drugs...

So three or four times a night I wake up having dreamt of being in a car accident, opening my credit card statement to find big charges I haven't made, of one of my children dead, the stock attacked by dogs, a bulldozer running amok through the house and others. Now I am not of a nervous disposition normally, anything that is not an immediate threat is really not worth worrying about in my mind (and all insurance premium payments are up to date).

I've just spent a while looking up a couple of dream analysis sites. And all these dreams indicate that I have a feeling of having lost control, and have real and deepseated fears that I am having trouble addressing.

Maybe that is the standard reply to all bad dreams. Or remarkable accuracy.

Roll on better dreams.

A room with a view

Have just got back from a five day stay in a ninth floor Auckland room with amazing views of the harbour and the skytower. I even had this fabulous room to myself and it had an ensuite. I only wish I had thought to take the camera.

The room service sucked though and the cost of staying included feeling like I had been run over by a truck, and some interesting staple effects in my stomach.

They didn't manage to kill me while under anaesthetic, but I don't think they did a lot of good either, they didn't remove a great deal of the cancer which has now spread.

So it's on to chemo. It's not over by a long shot.

Nominated as the best short joke of the year....

A three-year-old little boy was examining his testicles while taking a bath.

"Mama," he asked, "Are these my brains?"

Mama answered, "Not yet."

It never rains but it pours

SEVERE WEATHER WARNING.
ISSUED BY MetService AT 5:52 pm 18-May-2005

FURTHER HEAVY DOWNPOURS LIKELY FOR COROMANDEL PENINSULA, BAY OF PLENTY AND ABOUT MT TARANAKI A moist northeasterly flow covers the North Island with a trough expected to cross northern areas overnight. The trough is likely to bring further heavy downpours and thunderstorms to Coromandel Peninsula and Bay of Plenty through to late Thursday morning, with another 60 to 100mm possible, especially west of Kawerau. The heavy rain about Mt Taranaki should ease overnight, however another 100mm is possible about higher slopes through to the early hours of Thursday morning. People in these areas are advised to be on the alert for rapidly rising rivers and the potential for further flooding. More rain is likely about the parts of Gisborne and Hawkes Bay through to Thursday afternoon, but amounts are not expected to reach warning criteria, with only 30 to 40mm possible about the ranges.


It definitely rained. It poured down at home last night but had settled into a steady rain when I went to work. Got into town and it was bucketting down. Checked the building for leaks but it appears that the last lot of repairs are holding up. And it continued raining - rather a lot. Wasn't particularly unpleasant, not cold and little wind, just torrential straight down rain.

Didn't think too much about it until I went out about 11am. Rivers down the roads and some pretty big puddles, rather deep too. Collegue went home for lunch and reported he couldn't drive into his place - had to park up the road and paddle - and he came back with photos on his cellphone of his local pub sitting in the middle of a deep looking pond with water half way up to the windows (guess they won't be doing their usual smorgasbord tonight) and the nearby retirement home had been evacuated. Then we heard they had closed the harbour bridge and some houses had fallen off the hill at Otomoetai, cars had been abandoned in Welcome Bay, sister-in-law had to wade through waist deep water to collect the children from school. 309 mm of rain fell in the last 24 hours apparently and they expect another 120mm tonight. They have announced a 24 hour state of emergency.

Left my car in town and went home with husband in the 4WD as we weren't sure how bad our gravel road would be (actually gravel is a misnomer there isn't any gravel on it only mud) but it wasn't that bad. Suspect we didn't have that much rain at our place.

Nature is tough when you least expect it.

Blah

It's one of those days....

It's raining. I wish I hadn't bothered going to work, it was more trouble than it was worth....

You'll be pleased to know I ate well though - I had a muesli bar and an anzac biscuit for lunch, another muesli bar for afternoon tea and dinner was popcorn, toast and icecream.

I wonder why it is okay for me to eat this way, I wouldn't allow my children to do so (at least not in front of me).

Seeking positive forward moving things I changed the template on my blog. Not sure if I like it or not - may change it again later.

After I have rounded out my diet with some chocolate - as long as I can find some. And a glass of vino....

Update on the broken cat

Herbie the roadkill escapee is pretty much as good as new. After two weeks in a cage so his hip could settle back into place he was allowed out in the house. He's now allowed outside again - something he is very pleased about. The impatience was not helped by Mitzi the other cat bringing her catches (mice, rabbits, lizards) up to the outside of the door to show him and proceeding to play with the live ones just inches from him through the glass.

Not sure his intelligence has improved at all - the catdoor is fitted in the fixed side of the ranchsliders so when the door is open the catdoor doesn't work. Have just watched him run full tilt into the catdoor and find it extremely unyielding since the door next to it was wide open.

Why I blog

No this isn't an essay on how many people I know in Cyberspace or how much satisfaction this gives me....

It's more a conversation with myself (I do that - have chats to myself)

I have a stats counter on this blog, but I hardly ever look at it - it makes me nervous because I really don't know if I want thousands of readers or none. But I guess I don't want none, otherwise I would be writing this in a Word document and keeping it on my C: drive. And I don't think I want thousands - big parties make me feel shy and I drink too much.

So I can't decide if I should be happy or sad if no one drops in to see what I am doing. Usually someone or two or ten does so I know I'm not talking to myself, and then I start wondering just who I am talking to.... I know who some of you are, but I get some unidentified extras....not that that matters much (I mean if they decide I'm an idiot they can just go away again, not really a problem, or if they want to come back occasionally that's fine by me too)

So probably I should just give the stats counter a miss, then I wouldn't have to worry about it.

Teambuilding the return

I've just got back from a two day training session.

The sort of thing that raises more questions than it answers like:
If we -the chosen few - are so valued why do they put us two to a small room in a cheap motel and offer us food that looks suspiciously reheated.
Why isn't the bar tab bigger.
Where was the cooked breakfast (the reason for getting up in time to go to breakfast on these occasions)
Why is aircon and heating in conference rooms always so inefficient
Why did everyone spend hours on a preparation exercise that was hardly touched on over the course
And... how much do they pay that guy to stay enthusiastic for two whole days.

Actually I got a lot out of it. I learnt there are more productive ways of making staff behave than yelling and screaming. (I knew that really but it amused me to say I was kicking the staff into shape, now I have training I will have to use PC speak, I'll give them some feedback in a non threatening manner). And I learnt to write shorter sentences - not something I have put into practice immediately - because apparently brackets and colons and semi-colons make things hard to understand. (Note that I hardly ever use colons or semicolons - they are in the wrong place on the keyboard I find)

But there was a significant leaning towards teambuilding in this one. Not as bad as the 90s when being part of the team was the most important thing in the world and you could just go home without your bat and ball if you didn't want to play, but none the less that T word kept coming up.

If they want to blindfold anyone I'm going home.

And more autumn

Central Otago colour - again from last year.

Terribly chocolate boxy - but rather gorgeous.

Autumn

Every autumn I wish for more deciduous trees. This is one of last years photos, autumn in Nelson.

Think positive thoughts for me

They ('they' being some unidentified number of surgeons who consult each other and make decisions - I only got to meet one of them but I am assured I was the subject of serious discussion) have decided to cut me open on May 23rd.

It doesn't sound like much fun.... but they didn't suggest any other options that sounded any more entertaining so guess this is what I have to do.

My mother is just about eight weeks behind me in the process with a probable recurrance of her cancer.

Fatally flawed as a family.... (mutant DNA)

No need for a reason for being

It was raining cats and dogs the other night (strange saying I've always thought, it was raining large amounts of H2O to be more precise) and I was standing out in the paddock supervising horse dinners because if I don't supervise the horse equivilent of sibling rivalry will break out and they'll all start biting and kicking each other in an attempt to get the 'best' feedbin. It was just getting dark and the rain was dripping steadily down my neck... and suddenly it became one of those moments of perfect contentment that happen every now and then, where there was no place I would rather be than standing in the rain and the dark with one large and two small horses.

Life isn't all bad and I should take the time to enjoy it more often.