Still here!
Time for a little update. I’m battling a bit of a bad conscience, about being so quiet about things, especially as so many of you helped me to keep my blog & website alive… However, I’ve been really not well enough to string together whole, coherent sentences recently!
The month of May has by and large been a rather disturbing one. Well, the disturbing part actually started even before that: during my last appointment with the oncologist here in Gozo a new chemotherapy cycle with Taxotere® was scheduled for April 26th, but because of the rather intense pain I stayed two days at Boffa Hospital and received chemotherapy and a single radiotherapy shot to my spine on the 27th – even though I’d been told that I shouldn’t receive both treatments without a break in-between. Anyways, it was pretty bad.
But worse was to come once I returned home a couple of days later. Not only hadn’t the radiotherapy done anything to take my pain away but to the contrary, had made it considerably worse. On top of that my stomach objected heavily with all symptoms it could possibly muster, to the assorted medications I was taking orally. For some reason the hospital pharmacy at Boffa also forgot to hand me the Zofran tablets (against nausea) to take home with me, and by the time I finally received them a day and a half later, not a single one stayed down. I ended up in such a mess that I was taken to hospital by ambulance – on my son’s birthday, out of all days! That was all of 8 days ago…
Shortly after my admission in a four-bed room, my blood test showed an extremely low white blood cell count, leaving me vulnerable to possible infections. So the other patients were moved out, and all my visitors have had to wear protective clothing and facemasks. Here’s a mobile phone snapshot of hubby and sisters-in-law, taken during those first minutes – looks much more light-hearted than it really felt…
Meanwhile I’ve been moved to a single room, which I am very, very grateful for. Of course the privacy and familiarity of home is best, but I have been able to get a good rest, and feeling safe and taken care of by professional staff obviously also plays a huge part in that. Hopefully I’ll be able to go home by the weekend!
Well, that’s all for now. I will try not to let too much time pass before telling you again how things are going…
