With your feet in the air and your head on the ground.
So as posted in the last Blog my back was sore in the morning, but as soon as I got up and about it eased again. I'm guessing it's just going to be getting gradually worse again until my next chemo, at least this time it lasted longer than the previous couple of times that I had the chemo and was more than a couple of days relief. Most of this blog I'm going to keep short and to the point. It has been a week since I last posted, but things have been generally going very well.
The rest of Tuesday I really didn't get up to too much, a lot of sitting around reading watching TV and films. One of the films I watched was eXistenZ and started onto season 2 of The 4400, in the evening I got my first experience of the Champions League in the Insyplex, although it was Man United. I had a fairly early night for me, at first I thought I was going to struggle getting to sleep but then next thing I knew it was morning.
Wednesday I didn't have any plans but I knew I wanted to do something. I decided to go on a long walk and initially I went one direction, changed my mind a few different times so ended up zigzagging and finally chose a destination to walk to, which was over to my old school playing fields at Malone and then to walk into town from there. I thought the walk into town from here would be a lot longer than what it was, but turned out to be a nice distance for me today, in total it ended up being about 8 miles or so and sat at city hall for a while to think of how else to spend the day as I'd started early. On the way home I got a call to do a couple of chores, so in the process of doing that I bumped into a couple people I work with and chatted with them for a while, also the guy that served me in Tesco I used to teach, he didn't seem too happy to be there and/or having to serve me, if only he listened a bit more in school.
Yesterday I got a new coat, the last few times I've got a new coat it's rained the next day... today it rained, only in the morning though in the afternoon it settled and was a warm enough day. Phoned the GP to order my new sick line and asked when I needed it from and said the one I'm on runs out today, "oh you'll have to call again tomorrow", "I need it for tomorrow morning to take into work" "right, well do you want us to make it from today then?","yes". So will have to go down later to pick that up and of course when I got it they didn't even put a date on it! While I was waiting on the sick line I went into work to watch Elysium, was a good show, my type of film and obviously was good catching up with some of the work ones. The evening was spent watching more football in the Insyplex and then watched Looper in the evening, wasn't quite as good as I was expecting it to be, but watchable.
Today another event occurred, my mouth has cleared up as over the last week it has been a bit sore and more cracked than normal, this is just with the chemo and the immune system not being there and is quite common, wasn't really that bad in honesty but was just a bit frustrating if you were eating something a bit strong, would burn the mouth off you (more than the normal case for me). But today my hair has started to come out, I've noticed that over the last month or so the hair has been receding a little faster than what it had been and even more so over the last week, but today hair around my mid region was coming out quite fast, so far I've been finding it quite amusing, hopefully will stay that way. (Not the beard, not the beard, not the beard)
Friday morning I noticed that my head hair was starting to loosen up a bit after I had a shower and you could quite easily pull out a clump of it, this cheered me up even more than yesterday going to finally start looking like I am sick! May not be all good but at least it will make me feel better about being off work for so long. Plus I'm not vain enough to be worried about not having any hair, I'm more than just what you can see.
I took my sick line down to work and had a bit of a walk around town and sat at city hall for a while just looking around and thinking about things. It was nice, not having much to worry about and watching the world go past on their busy breaks, rushing from A to B to go and queue for some food, to eat too quickly and then to rush back and work. I finally got up and started walking for home, walked the long way round through Botanic and through Ormeau, it was nice apart from the masses of dogs running around without leads.
When I arrived home my Halloween costume arrived and I tried it on, it fits well, maybe a little too well in places. I don't know if I'll definitely be doing anything for Halloween but I decided to get one anyway just in case, although I may need to add to it. After watching a bit more of The 4400 I went for a bit of a nap as I had made some plans to go to Culture Night in Belfast, but as it got closer to the time I changed my plans, slightly. Still went to the Culture Night but with someone that I've been dying to meet up with for a while now, was a little nervous to start off with and that doesn't happen too often but turned out to be a really good night and really enjoyed it.
Saturday I had a good lie in and when I got up I felt fairly fresh done the usual garbage today ie feck all, but then got persuaded (asked) to go out for a few drinks tonight again so ended up doing that. Was another long one, different from the night before and almost as enjoyable. Sunday was spent mostly lying around in bed watching basically all of Season 3 of The 4400, but thankfully no hangover, I've been quite lucky lately with the lack of hangovers. In the evening when sister was on her way home from the house she got a brick thrown at the car and it smashed her back window, the two kids were in the car at the time so there was a bit of panic when we first heard, but everyone was ok, maybe a little shaken but not hurt and they came back to the house.
Monday morning the kids didn't go to school as the car had to be cleaned up, so while they were busy doing that I was with the kids and we watched a few films that I had, they seemed to enjoy them and it past most of the morning and afternoon. They went out for a while I went upstairs and I was looking into the mirror washing my hands when I noticed that my facial hair looked a little different than normal, I know I shaved it last week but it looked a bit more patchy and not as full as it would normally be at this stage. A little later, I can't remember why I done this, but I pulled out a few of the beard hairs very easily. This was one of the things I didn't want to happen and it annoyed me for a while and shortly after I discovered that my friends' engagement party is on a night that I will be getting chemo so I am not sure if I will be able to go to it or not, I hope that I'm feeling ok and I'm able to make it for a little while. But soon after I cheered up and after all it is just a beard. I've just had it for so long it will be unusual to be without it for so long. In all my years I've only ever clean shaven a handful of times. Another thing that didn't exactly make me happy but at least I got it out of the way, but I got a call from a school I would regularly go to for teaching and had to say to him that I wouldn't be available until about January or so.
I have seemed to have killed a few hours doing this, haven't been giving it my full attention as I've been listening to music (The Pixies) and talking on twitter, and also noticed now after being a little itchy on my face that my eyebrows are starting to loosen up a little, I must resist the urge of pulling all these hairs out haha.