Summer Paradise

At 7pm on Wednesday night I was picked up by Gracie’s mum Jo, blindfolded and driven to a mystery location for my birthday surprise evening! It turned out to be a lovely barbecue on the lookout area behind the Trundle Hill (some of you hardcore blog readers may remember when I went there with my aunty for a picturesque lunch and in stead the landscape was blotted out by the bad weather, I put a photo up!). The view is stunning and it is one of my favourite local spots. We stayed up there for a few hours chatting and having our meal, I had a really great time! It was so lovely and thoughtful of them to arrange it for me 🙂 There really is nothing like the smell of a lit barbecue in summertime! Here are some photos, but it has been confirmed by my brother that I “don’t take a nice photo” so I apologise for how awkward I look!

On Thursday we went to the beach, and I had such a brilliant day! As my line was out I wasn’t panicking about it getting sandy or wet and since the wound has almost fully healed I went for two ACTUAL SWIMS in the ACTUAL SEA! Usually I detest swimming and wasn’t bothered by not being able to go with my line in, but it was such a lovely day and the sense of freedom was amazing. I appreciated it so much more than I would have before diagnosis. Using factor 50 sun cream I managed to stay in the full heat of the sun for 5 hours without burning at all! West Wittering beach was crammed with people, which you can see if you look towards the left side of this photo I took…

This Friday I went to Southampton for what I thought would be the start of my maintenance treatment, but ended up just being a bloods check and a catch up with my consultant. I wanted to get it all under way, but I prefer to look at it this way- no poking around to try and get a cannula in my tiny and buried veins, no chemo and I didn’t have to spend a whole day in a stuffy room, that equals a victory for me!

I loved that as I was saying goodbye to a friend who is also having his line out and moving onto maintenance at the same time as me (although he was only diagnosed in January- how unfair is that?!) we both warned each other at the exact same time “Don’t do anything mental/crazy!”. Even though we can be more normal now we were reminded by the specialist nurse today to be careful and remember that a) our bodies have been through a lot b) we will still be on oral chemo every day. To be honest I don’t think that’s going to stop us doing much, unless our immune systems are REALLY bad!

My maintenance phase is set to start some time next week at the local hospital, I don’t know exactly what these doses are going to do to me but I have a party, my birthday and volunteering at CYE Sailing Centre to look forward to!