The Azzurri get the Blues

Scotland have won a rugby match!!
They've beaten Italy 26-6. Hooray!
Way back in 1971, my Dad and I went to our very first rugby match. We were meant to be going to see Hearts play Aberdeen at football but saw the buses going to Murrayfield and got on one of them instead.
Scotland were playing England in a special Centenary International having already beaten them in the Five Nations the previous week. It was magical. A huge crowd, a great game, PC Brown kicked his conversions after turning his back on the ball as he walked back before his run up and Scotland won 26-6 to beat England for the second time in eight days. That game sealed our rugby future and each week from then on, we went to hundreds of games together as well as seeing hundreds, if not thousands of others on telly. However, until today, I'm pretty sure that I've never seen another game where the final score was 26-6. Now that's got to be amazing.
I wish Dad was here so that I could check that fact with him and tell him the rest of this story.

A Right Pain in the A...bdomen

Liesl is back to work and I have to go down to see the nurse to get an injection in my belly. I think it's to help fight off infections when my resistance is low after the chemo and next time I'm going to give it to myself (! ! !) but I'm letting the nurse do it this time to show me the ropes.
It's actually very easy and completely painless as it's such a very fine needle. I have to 'pinch an inch' (harder to do than it usually is due to me still being about two stone down but still quite easy) and the nurse jabs it in. Simple.
I'll manage that no problem
- maybe!

And now I just want to get home again. It's only 9 o'clock in the morning but I feel so lethargic. Not tired - I just canny be bothered. This is to be just how I feel for the next few weeks.
This is another chemo side effect.

(For anyone who might be wondering - the picture in this post isn't me. Difficult though that might be to believe.)

Chemo 2 ! !

Liesl's had her hours changed so that she has every Wednesday off. This is partly because my chemo schedule is every third Wednesday for the next 15 weeks - that's 5 doses.
I'll get another CT scan to check on progress after Chemo 3 and another after Chemo 6. If the n-hl is still there, I'll get another two doses.
The first dose as an outpatient is today!

It means a return to Ward 1 where I went on the day I had to be re-admitted. I can't remember much about it then as it was so busy - lots of people sitting on comfy chairs with not many to spare.
Luckily, I get sent to Area 4 (of 4) and it's quite quiet and very bright and sunny. It's not really like a hospital at all - more like a local health centre with big, comfy chairs. Here's a tip if you're ever unfortunate enough to have to go as a patient - pick one of the electric chairs that lets you put your feet up. They're much more comfy when you invariably dose off.
Given a bit of luck, the whole process should take about three and a half hours. Unfortunately, I haven't given a prior blood sample at my docs, so I do that, then get sent away for an hour and a half while they wait on the results.
We go along to Stockbridge for a braw breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs on a muffin.

It's all systems go when we get back.
Pre-meds including Piritin which makes me very drowsy and fights against allergies. Then the Rituximab goes in via a drip and takes about two hours. This is when I fall asleep. Then it's the bolus injections again which take about 40 minutes. All in all it's taken nearly six hours and I'm knackered!
Let's get hame!

The main news story today is that David Cameron's son, Ivan, has died after a short and difficult life. Prime Minister's Questions was suspended so that tributes could be paid.
How come it takes a tragedy to get MPs to act like civilised human beings?

Birthday Presents

It was Mum N's birthday on Sunday and she was persuaded to come over for tea and pancakes with cream. Hmmmm!
While she was here, I got two unexpected visitors - Nicola and Chris were on their way to walk the dogs at Yellowcraig and popped in on their way by. It was great to see them.
The rugby visitor theme continued tonight when Davy and Linsey came in to give me another present! This time it's a wee memory card with loads of games for the Nintendo DS. My brain's going to be buzzing.
It was great to see them too and different vistors are introducing a degree of normality back to life and helps break the tedium of the day.

Hair Today . . . .

For the past week, while in the shower in hospital, I've noticed that some of my hair seemed to be falling out. Today, at home, I've had a bath and I'm convinced it's falling out. Big time.

As the water drained away, all that was left on the sides of the bath was hair. Loads of it! We had a furry bath and I had a not so furry heid!

I've also stopped shaving and I have a braw smooth chin. Now, I've often thought that this would be a good thing because quite frankly, shaving becomes a right pain in the neck, A chore. Now though, I'm not so sure. I guess it's a case of being careful what you wish for.

Hair loss is the most famous of all the chemo side effects and I'm ready for it.

I'll go to see my tonsorial advisor (Graham the Barber) next week and see what style I should go for.

Snooker ball, tennis ball, Guantanamo Bay . . . . the choice will be endless although a curly perm or pony tail might be ambitious.

They say that when it eventually grows back, it may be a different colour and a different texture. I hope mine comes back like Jennifer Aniston's famous 'do'! It's time for a new image.

Preston Lodge were playing at home in the Bowl against Orkney this afternoon. I had plans to go and watch the second half from the car park but made a mistake with the kick off time and I was too late. It's that brain thing again!

Still - PL won 53 - 8 and took another step on the road back to Murrayfield.

It's True!

It really is true.
The blood cultures are better. The cough's better but not fixed. The chest infection is better. The throat infection has gone. And I'M GOING HOME!
And not just home for the weekend - home for good (hopefully).
Dr. Farquharson has done all of the checks and she's been in to confirm that she's happy to let me go. This is unexpected but great news. It's been exactly 14 days since I was readmitted and it's seemed like a lifetime, although it has passed fairly quickly. Daily blood checks, swabs, antibiotics, repositioning of the canula and all of the other bad things that are easy to remember, will be things of the past.
I have to take care though. Infection prevention is top priority so that means keeping away from enclosed spaces with lots of people.
It'll be a case of one step at a time, one day at a time.

Liesl comes in to take Smudge and me home, but nothing's straightforward. We have to wait for four hours for the necessary take-home drugs to come up from pharmacy.
At last though, I'm away. Hip hip hooray!

This time I feel much more relaxed about being home and of course, Friday night is Chinese night!
Extra spicy chicken curry and fried rice for me please. I'm a creature of habit.

And then it's off to my Pavlova bed again. Temperature's stable, it's still just as dark but not so scary anymore.
Things are going to be fine this time.

We're a' Jock Tamson's Bairns

A funny thing . . . . every single day since I was told I had cancer, there's been a reference in the papers or on TV to cancer in some for or another. Now, I guess that this has always been the case but the fact that it's now more relevant to me, I'm noticing it more. There's always surveys, warnings, new breakthroughs in treatments and of course, people in the news who have been diagnosed or fighting the fight.
At the moment, many of the stories regard Jade Goody and the plans for her wedding etc. Love her or loathe her, Jade is keeping herself in the news to try do do the best for her family and she's allowing her story to be told - warts, chemo and all - to highlight that cancer doesn't care who it comes to get. What's important is not how or why you get it but how you fight it and deal with it.
I've never had much time for her during her celebrity and Big Brother high jinks but now I wish Jade all the best.

As for me . . . . . the viruses and infections are definitely getting better!
I often joked with the Docs as to whether it would be good luck or good judgement that would come up with the right cocktail of antibiotics that would eventually get on top of things. They all just smiled at the question but now the answer is definitely good judgement. Aye - right!

It doesn't matter - I'm feeling a lot better and I'm getting out more! Well, along the corridor to the conservatory at least. I sit in the warm spring sunshine (really!) and do the crossword and listen to the Fred MacAuley show on Radio Scotland. Well, a routine's a routine!
Another funny thing . . . . prior to diagnosis, I could do the 'Hard' Sudoku in the The Scotsman nearly every day. Since diagnosis, I haven't completed it once.
Another chemo side effect that they don't tell you about! Your sudoku brain stops working.
I'll have to spend more time on the Nintendo DS Brain Trainer - the trouble is that the tips of my fingers are numb and it's hard to hold the stylus so Dr. Yamafujitsuwan tells me my brain age is about 106. That's a chemo side effect that they do tell you about.

Jim Burnside and Iain and Karlynn have been in to visit. It's good to hear the news and gossip from Atos Origin. It seems a long long time since I was there.

Oh aye - nearly forgot to tell you - there's Chinese whispers that I might get home for the weekend and then come back in from Tuesday to Friday next week to get Chemo 2.
Fingers crossed.
If I could feel them.

Time to Breathe a Sigh of Relief

I was awake early and urging the nurses to get me hooked up to the mask as early as possible. The quicker we start, the quicker it will all be over. As it happened, we didn't get started until after nine but by 11.30, it was all over. At last. Thank goodness.
What a relief! I can breathe easy now (? ! ?).

Actually, I did feel better. I was still coughing and stuff but maybe just the relief of getting that treatment over and done with has helped me to relax a bit. My temperature was still up and down and there was no real change in my blood cultures but yes - I was feeling better. Maybe, just maybe, I had bottomed out and was on the up?
(I think 'Bottomed out' is a good term to use when you have Ulcerative Colitis.)

The young lady (from Thailand) who cleans my room - and very kindly gets the papers in the morning - is very chatty today and I'm happy for that. She gives me the lowdown on the Thai and Chinese restaurant fraternity in Edinburgh and also pays me a huge compliment by remarking on how blue my eyes were. This was not to be the last time the colour of my eyes would be commented on - mostly by young ladies! This must be one of the better side effects of chemo but they don't put it in the booklets.

Visiting is back to normal. Mum and Shona come in (so there's no need or no opportunity for me to talk!) and then later it's Liesl. Everything is calm again.
This weekend's been a bit of a test of character for me and I didn't cope too well but now I'm sure that everything's going to be ok again.

Bonjour Le Weekend

It's been a long weekend.

Scotland got beat again - this time by France. Apparently some of the PL boys were on telly - featured in the crowd at Stade Francais. I didn't see them but at least the match helped pass the time while I was locked in my vapour cell.

The inhalation treatment's been a bit of a trial - the mask has sometimes been blocked making it difficult to breathe and I've had to resort to sticking my finger in the side to vent it a bit and get me some much needed air. The two hourly sessions seem to be taking longer and longer (obviously they're not) and no sooner is one finished than preparations begin for the next. I'm glad it's only for three days.
Visiting is also disrupted and sometimes Liesl and others have only been able to look through the door.
These are tough and lonely times.

The Mask of Sorrow

The antibiotics have still not had any noticeable effect - still coughing, blood count and condition isn't good and temperature is generally high, although that doesn't mean that I feel hot. Quite the opposite actually - I'm often pretty cold and need extra blankets at night. So, the Good Doctor has come up with something new.

An inhalation treatment. Three times a day. Two hours at a time. For three days. Starting today.

I've been shown the mask I'll be wearing - rigid blue plastic to cover my nose and mouth and held in place VERY tightly with rubber straps. Seems quite inocuous when it's in your hand.

No-one will be allowed in the room while the treatment is being given - not even the nurses unless they have masks, aprons and gloves. The exhalation tube - like that you get on a tumble drier - goes straight out of the window to help cure the chest infections of North Edinburgh. After the treatment ends, there will be an extra half hour in the exclusion zone to let the dust settle. Literally. This is nasty stuff. If it doesn't kill the viruses it'll probably kill me so the end objective will be achieved either way.

At 2.00 pm, in they came - the Ghostbusters. As it's quite a rare treatment, five or six apprentices came in to watch the chief Ghostbuster fit the mask and see where all the tubes go. Unfortunately, like too many cooks . . . something was going to go awry. As they all gathered round giving opinions and pushing and pulling at the straps to ensure that my face was squeezed tight enough to make an impression on the back of my head and that there was no infiltration of outside air - no-one was noticing that I couldn't breathe because the oxygen wasn't turned on. I was panicking (and suffocating) but it seemed more important to get the mask even tighter!

It was all too much. Eventually they heard my dying breaths (okay - that bit's an exaggeration) and released me from the vice to breathe normal, polluted air. From then on though, I knew I wasn't going to enjoy this one little bit.

Common sense prevailed and anyone not deemed necessary to the success of the operation left the room. In a more calm fashion, I was re-masked, oxygen on, thumbs up Top Gun style and off they went. A 'KEEP OUT - Danger of Death' sign went on the door and I looked at the clock and started to count every one of the next 120 minutes. Keep breathing - that's the trick - in and out - steady and even. This had better work!

And when it was over, the room and me had to be cleaned down to get rid of the powdery residue, a bit like mildew, that seemed to be everywhere.

Just enough time to get my tea, phone Mum to let her know how it had gone, see Liesl and tell her all about it and then it would start all over again - episode 2 at 9pm.

I canny wait until noon on Monday.

Yet Another Move

Well the weekend passed fairly uneventfully. Preston Lodge didn't get beat (they didn't play) but Scotland did - 13-26 to Wales.

The first cocktail of antibiotics have had time to work but haven't, so I'm still feeling a bit rough but the coughing is only really bad when I talk. Unfortunately, that means when I talk to the doctors I start coughing and I think it seems worse than it really is.
Various urine, blood and swab tests have unearthed a throat infection (I knew that) a chest infection (I knew that too) and yeast in my blood (I didn't know that). I wonder where it came from?
So the antibiotic cocktail gets changed a bit and other tablets are added to my morning assortment. The nursing staff also noticed that getting from my room to the loo while pushing the drip stand was a bit of a problem, especially as my UC was flaring up due to my resistance being low, so they suggested that I got a move to 'The Unit'!
The Unit is still Ward 8 but along a separate corridor. Each room has en-suite shower and WC, flat screen telly and a FRIDGE!! Get the beer in.
- Liesl got the beer in - what else are fridges for? We never drank any though but the fridge is good for keeping all the juice and water cool.
There's also a different view - north towards the car park and there's plenty aeroplanes to see. This is much better.

When I get bored with the view, I can always turn to daytime telly. Now I know that I'm a bit of a saddo because I like Bargain Hunt, Flog It and some cookery programmes. I also don't mind hopping on the student and 'senior' bandwagon to watch Countdown sometimes.
However, can anybody tell me . . . . . ?
- What is the point of Goldenballs?
Aloadofballs mair like!

Too Hot to Handle

37.9 C - right at the limit so time to call Ward 1.
There's no messing about - I've to get in there as quickly as possible. Michael had explained when I was in Ward 8 that every hour wasted at the start of an infection could cost a week at the end.
How right he was.

By the time we got there, I was so weak and feeling lousy that I nearly collapsed before they found a chair for me. It was very hot and busy with lots of people getting their chemo sessions. They took some blood but I had to lie down and they soon found a trolley for me and immediately put up a saline drip. It was to be a long day for Liesl as we waited for the decision as to what was to happen. I think we both knew that I'd be re-admitted - I had brought my bag of jammies and toys - but it wasn't until about 4.30pm before the decision was made.

So back up to Ward 8 - to a wee side room to myself this time though. And it had a telly. Hooray!

Hey-ho - my freedom didn't last long but we have to get rid of the cough and any other viruses and infections that I've got. Bring on the antibiotics by the gallon.

Poor old Liesl. Hope her Mum can come over to stay with her again. Not least because all the ironing gets done!

Things are Hotting Up

I'm not feeling quite so well today so we decide to have a quiet day.
By the afternoon I'm back on the couch and under the duvet.
And my temperature is 37.6 C.

Getting too close for comfort - let's hope it's down a bit in the morning.

Stripped for Action

It's a beautiful day - in every sense.

It's strange to be in a new routine again - or is it an old routine? Getting showered and shaved is stll quite an effort and unlike the hospital, there's no seat in the shower. Getting ready takes ages but there's no rush.

There's a letter to be handed in to the Docs, so by late morning we're ready to set off. Temperature seems steady in the late 36 degrees Cs. That's my temperature but it's such a good day that the air temperature might easily be in the high twenties.

The Surgery is closed for staff training until 2pm so we walk along the entire length of North Berwick High Street and go for lunch at Tiffany's Tea Room. Haggis Stovies will do just fine for me.

The Biarritz of the North is at its best today and I'm glad to be here. (The Biarritz of the South or BIARRITZ would be pretty good too though.)

I'm a bit puffed oot and glad to be home. Liesl is out the back and shouts for me to open the door. There's an enormous parcel on the doorstep - and a smaller one too!

As I tear off the paper, the enormity of peoples' kindness and caring finally overwhelms me. Inside is a framed Preston Lodge rugby strip, signed by all of the players and of course Shona, whose brilliant idea it was. I don't know what to say. It's amazing. Totally amazing. What a team we are.

The smaller parcel was equally amazing. It's a Nintendo DS with a Brain Training game! This is from the girls who sit beside me at the rugby - the WAGs. And they're better than any you might read about in the papers.

Shona and Nicola have been down while we were out and so sadly we've missed them.

It doesn't matter how terrible an illness might be, when you've got this much support behind you, you just have to get better. There's no doubt.

Team Craig has many players and backup staff pulling together to make sure I get better. It's awesome.

Temp's crept up a wee bit - over 37 C now. Probably caused by all of the exertion and emotion.

Root Toot, I'm Oot ! !

Two weeks after I was admitted with a mystery virus thought to be linked to my Ulcerative Colitis, I'm getting home having been diagnosed with non-hodgkin's lymphoma probably caused by the use of a long term drug which was keeping the UC in check. It's a funny old life.

However, I'm very glad to be on my way. The staff here have been brilliant but it's time to go home.
Liesl has bought me a nifty wee thermometer because I have to take my temperature every four hours to make sure it doesn't fall below 36 degrees C and doesn't rise above 38 C. If it does then I've got to get in touch immediately. No risks are to be taken and I've not to catch any infections, so that means avoiding crowds and enclosed spaces.
When I came in, I could hardly walk from the car due to weakness. Now I can hardly walk to the car due to a different sort of weakness. I'll soon get fit again (stop laughing) by walking to the paper shop every morning.

It's great but emotional to see my house as we come down past the pub. It seems ages since I last saw it. It's great to be home.
For the first time I see the flowers sent by the NHS Scotland team at Atos - the messages of support continue unabated. It really is amazing. And humbling.

Liesl has bought a new duvet and sheets as part of the pristine and germ free house.
It's braw and cosy but I feel engulfed in it - like being swamped in a big meringue.
And when the lights go out, it's very dark.
Not dark like it was when I was in hospital, just dark - really dark. Scary!
I canny sleep but it's good to be home.

To Go or Not to Go . . ?

Not to go - apparently.

My temperature is still not perfect and I'm still coughing so The Lady from Del Monte says 'NO'. It's better to be safe than sorry so one more night in Ward 8 is recommended. It's probably for the best.

On the outside world, the National Gallery of Scotland has managed to raise £50 million to save Titian's 'Diana and Actaeon' for the nation.

Pretty good I suppose - I expect we'll all get to keep it for a week or so each. We'll probably put it above the fireplace when it's our turn.

It's one of Titian's greatest works and depicts the moment when the Goddess Diana met Actaeon. He was a famous Greek hero and was trained by a Centaur. I reckon it was a Friday because she's obviously dressed down for the occasion.

You don't get this sort of stuff in other blogs you know. It's all Greek to me too.

Good Riddance January, Hello February

Well apart from PL getting beat again, it was quite a good weekend.
One of my fellow in-mates is annoying me a bit - especially when he demands attention whenever a nurse enters the room. But it's ok, it's the weekend which means a slightly different routine and more sudokus and crosswords in the papers.

It could be my imagination but I think I'm feeling better. It really must be a magic potion.
Still coughing though.