A place in the sun

Ok so we've finally booked a place in the sun - we're off to Anguilla July 2nd through July 10th.

Decided to book a villa so that we would have some privacy, the chance to chill out by our own pool and to cook for ourselves rather than falling for the 'Continental Breakfast'

There's a link here to where we're staying

http://www.18degreesnorth.com/amenitites.htm

Of course there's no guarantee that I'll be finished with treatment by July but I'm assured that treatment can e worked around my being away for eight days and that my having something in the diary that doesn't involve my ingesting poisons is a positive thing.

It's on days like this that I start to feel lucky again. We have access to the best treatment for this disease, the support of really good friends and the ability to buy ourselves a little light at the end of the tunnel. That's something that very few people can say.

Now if anyone fancies a spot of pet sitting in early July - we have a 16,000 BTU aircon unit and a 'fridge full of ice-pops.

A slow day

Other than the ongoing war I'm having with our heating (sometimes it responds instantly, occasionally it decides to hang out a while, to chill, to relax, to heat only, say, the kitchen for 20 mins bfore moving on to the rest of the big room we live in) things are ok.

Nose is still streaming, legs feel as though they're made of some weird polymer but the cough is all but gone and I cope better with what I see as 'unrelated' symptoms.

Still waiting on insurance approval for the CAT and PET scans, will follow up with Adela tomorrow, meanwhile it's sit tight and do nothing today - hard as I'm bored already

That's better!

After a week of coughing and spluttering and three days of eyes, nose and anything else that can produce liquid just streaming away I woke up this morning feeling SO MUCH BETTER.

It may be the big, red horse pills that Maureen (my nurse) gave me; it may be the gallons or tea that I drank, it may be the change in weather (they're talking an 18C weekened and spring is springing as I write) but it feels great not to be surrounded by snot pagodas, assembled from tiny mounds of coughed into tissue

Oscar Night

So whilst the starlets are being plucked, the stars tucked into their tuxes and Isaak Mizrahi's hands warmed (whose tits will he grab on tonight's red carpet) I'm starting to feel the effects of the Rituxin.

Had a great day yesterday and woke up this morning feeling fabulous but knowing that at any moment my body would start pumping out anti-bodies to attack the cancer cells now clearly marked by the man-mouse hybrid drug.

And so it is... I'm not feeling bad, just a little 'flu like, a little achy, a little tired, a little congested, glands just a little swollen. Exactly what I should be feeling - another $5k well spent.

More Velcade and Neulastra tomorrow and a drastic decrease in the number of drugs I'm taking, so we'll see if it has the same effects as last time.

Cough still knocking around, but deeper, less frequent and more 'boomy' a good sign I hope.

On the Oscars I'm shocked and scandalized that Dakota didn't get a nod for 'Dreamer : Inspired by a true story"; I, like her agent, had seen it as the Liz taylor way to Oscar stardom - involve a horse and surely you're there

But Oscar this year was feeling political... perhaps if it had been a gay, soon to be gelded arab horse trained in Israel .. who knows?

Ok - time for some pre-Oscars filler TV