h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Gosh. how time flies, when you loose half a year to an haemorridge whiping out sixx months memory

Gosh.... one year ago... today... In Manchester MMM. *points at purple collar*

What was that today?!?!:

all this... bright... hot stuff.... in the sky.... I think... I think it was sun... which must mean... that was... summer! - even got to use the rediculus expensive sunscreen factor 50 stuff I had to buy, so to not let my chemo drugs give me skin cancer and do weird chemical reaction thinggies - typically, though, I forgot to wear my new shades, when we went out

Went up to the out of town shopping place, thing.... - no mean feet when you do so on foot; its so designed only for cars - no wher e to walk, cept in the stream of traffic in the car parks

Went to the furnature shop. got out the quote we got last time... re-looked at the bed base, still liked it; its a wooden one, ash I think; loverly rounded sort of corners, and the headboard is kinda rounded and cool too; love teh design underneath, wehre the cross-slats attach (double checkes he types 'slat' and not the other wod that sounds almost the same, and is spelt almost the same). - far better design, and stronger too than the cheaper designs I'm used too, on the bed bases I've had before - had a real good feel round to how its put together; as I'll ahve to construct the base when it arrives (trust me, I'm so much better at taht stff than William is )

paid for, arranged delivery, with the new matress too, of course.

Also, of course, checked the design of the bed, to ensure, it had... as I saw on the first viewing, adaquate attaching mpoints for err, attaching anything one might want to attach to it... like... well... me probably

Went into place that sells stuff, nearby and looked at clothing

went along long row of trouser trousers... just pickin on those I liked the feel of eventually found a pair, loverly cotton ... but sort of not too thin... matterial... turned out to be green. and my size. turns out, despite having gained a stone in weight, I'm still a 32" waist
still a 32" leg, but, To be honst, that was a little less shocking

Found another rail.... containing jeans... did the same...

ones I liked the feel of the most, some make I'd never near herard of... err... NCF or something.... no... NFC ... no... nyC... I think... decided it probably stood for New York Cottaging.

they were also, as it turned out, 32" leg 32" waist, they were, also, rather handily, black.

Took the two pairs down, and tried them on - boy do I know how to shop. perfect, netiher pair were rediculusly baggy for my bottom... which is always a problem, if you've a genetically abscend ass bit looser fitting on the legs, which was what I wanted too; dunno if its oedemia or soemthing on my calf, maybe... or just... dunno. but these fitted good - pockets sensible, belt loops big enough

purchase made

looked at some saucepans. they wer erubbish I didn't get one (my main sauce pan I use a lot has just knackered, now, with use)

Went into toy shop -- didn't have what we... OK, I wantd came out... - combination of the heat, sun, and just walking... I was so we ame home

Popped out later, for afew grocerys,; actually went in for like two things, which I don't think we got; got icecream, ground coffee, cheese, cream cakes, and, baked beans instead, and... sure some other stuff ; that was in the evening; later afternoon we had a nap... or rather W naps, as in sleeps, he seems to be able to do that, I just rested... and cuddled and had my teddy bear too, to cuddle, as well as W, of course...

W gone to bed now... I should too I guess... but... I just snuck onlie online.... and... don't tell anyone..... ordered up a duvet, pillows, pillow protectors, pillow cases, flat sheets, matress protector, and duvet.... I think I have a slightly differnt take on such things to W... I may.... have to hide how much I just spent decided duck was good, last time I bgot a duvet, but went for goose this time, pillows still duck, of course, and all egyption cotton high TC actually... I kinda didn't look too closely at the 'total' before I hit buy... I tink it'd have even scared me a bit... it did seem to get up to tripple figures quite early on, in the adding things to teh basket process just hope that arrives fairly soon

Bed arriving Tuesday.... hopefully I can assemble it Tues, quick, and then throw the old bed into the now empty hallway, then can arrivan arrane that to be collected some time later in the week; off back to hospital Wednesday, new clinic; radiation/oncology rather than chemo/oncology.... get to find h out their plans for zapping me - can't wait, still, to discover which superhero powers I'll develop hmm. flipancy asides... I did kinda... lose it a bit tonight... just for a short while...
We'd had dinner... - a rather massive Chinese take away, from odnwstirs, and, were just on the sofa... dunno... why... really...

But, it soon passed.; we had icecream. with a cream eclaire, for me, placed, amusingly into the icecream, in ... the obvious way and. well.... from tears to utter obscene sillyness in ... as long as it took W to put the icecream and eclair in the bowl it seems - I can't help it... its.... hmmm..... probably can't blame chemo for that... nah; its just genetics I recon

I really should go to bed. cuppa tea first though I think. off to GP tomorrow, for a few things I need to sort so . fed. up... with medical stuff... and going to surgerys and clinics, and hospitals and... stuff =- once I know the extent of radiation at least I'll be able to come up with a plan for what to add to my ribbons in my hairband... one ribbon per zap might be........ way too many mor e ribbons although... I'm so damn tempted to try

After chemo (pesticides), I suspect radiotherapy will not seem that tasking for you. It's more localized, obviously, and other than the skin burns I think the worst you may expect is some fatigue and maybe some nausea. But both should be less severe than you just experienced.

I'm still hoping they decide to skip it seeing as how quickly your lump absconded.


Anyway.... I can appreciate the joy of bed shopping. I bought my first "adult" bed only about 6-8 years ago. Previously I had a full motion waterbed my mother bought me when I was 16. I kept that silly bed way too long, hauling it everywhere I moved. I replaced it with a wonderful mission style bed with a very comfy "grown up" mattress. (And yes, "attachment points" were a consideration even if I never get a chance to experiment with them.)

Even better is shopping for proper bedsheets and pillow cases.I now scoff at 300 thread counts. 600 or better to open! Or, give me a silky synthetic or microfiber. Last week I bought a pair of "therapeutic", memory foam, extra cooling, dense-as-a-carrot-cake, $70 pillows.

They were worth it, but I think they need some new pillow cases. Maybe 1000 thread count or microfiber. The silky synthetics are too silky for these pillows.

From tears to giggles - PMT is nothing compared to what you're going through.

Ahh. decent sheets, etc.

I did a little late night online shopping last night, before bed. - the .... 'total' appearing the basket, quickly tgot frightening, so when I'd added everythign I just paid for it, without looking to see the total - goose down duvet, duck down pillows, pillow protectors, mastress protector, new pillow cases, duvet covers and flat sheets, all egyption cotton and whatever the highest thread count was they did (think it was 800 ) - I'm sure I glimpsed the 'basket total' hit £200 before I chickened out of looking at it again, when I did checkout just hope it arrives before or same day as bed/matress hmm. its so damn easy to spend a grand and... of course... as we know, a grand don't come for free...

bleh. double bleh. and bleh.

so tired today. up for an hour or so, then had to go to bed first time I can recall caving into it like this probably just lack of sleep, and the blood pressure I think... - after napping a while (yeh, I did actually sleep a bit; well, I think the petit mal fit was a dream no actually hapeneing in my sleep ) then.... even without getting out of bed... William helped me raise my blood pressure

off now to do some shopping... I should so shower first then back home, and I'll have to shower before the GP I ... smell of sex

re-measured for curtains... we screwed up measuring them big time the first time but at least we've got the real measurements now, and they do suddenly add up with a standard ready-made curtain size, which is kinda handy thinking.... either blood red... or a dark dark.... sort of Victorian or Edwardian green... to counterpoint the white bed linen blackout curtains this time... not the chap flimsy rubbish I've had up for .... since I moved in - will be pretty peeved off if a new matress, bed base, sheets/duvet/pillows, plus blackout curtains fixes my sleeping aimingment

Still tempted to buy the hippy goth flaired velvet trousers I saw... guess I'll have to remeasure myself, I know my male wasit has remained the same, thanks to the trousers I bought yesteday, but guessing for a female pair I'll not be a size 12 to 14 anymore and I can never work out leg measurements on female clothing damnit. sometimes I think my life coul dbe a whole lot simpler, were I more binary.... err, heck, If I were even a littel bit binary in anything to do with my life hmmm. less stressful perhaps, but so much more boring, and less weird... - I need weird

"sometimes I think my life coul dbe a whole lot simpler, were I more binary.... err, heck, If I were even a littel bit binary in anything to do with my life hmmm. less stressful perhaps, but so much more boring, and less weird... - I need weird "

Yeah - binary is boring and weird is good - I quite agree!

Wow a year since Manchester... A long year for me, as my partner died just over a week after I returned from Manchester but it has been a year full of remembrance of fantastic memories, including lovely dreams and getting to know all the new friends I have gained from knowing D

D could sleep anywhere, but I don't find it easy to nap, so that is one of the best memories I have, cuddling and resting while D slept

Manchester is an excellent memory for me, too - a pleasure to meet you in person, even though we didn't say much to each other, as well as everyone else who I saw or spoke to

Yes... not sure why we didn[t end up talking more when we actually were in the same place at the same time! <l I still just find it amazin,g how quickly William can fall asleep! ; I'm just... too much the oposite, - mind, saw GP today, I'm going to try the melatonin again see if I can regain some sembalance of being able to sleep

Oh; weird is so much better;

Hmm. seems I was right, more w weird, is indeed yet to come ;

today... W and I, up a street nearby, busy shopping street, just come out of Waitrose, and were purchasing some duck eggs, from the veg stall there, we always use...

and, err, I sort of made some silly comments, that got the stall ow owner laughing... and then a customer also... then W and I were sort of being silly...
Then I was saying " moan, windge, windge, moan, moan windge..." etc... in s aort of silly voice... and W was sort of doing the same... and we padi for the eggs, and were walking away doing that... and... some random person in the street yelled something silly at us.....

so I turned round and yelled back "We only came up here to entertain you".... - the entire street eupted in laughter

I only wanted a box of duck eggs!

Went to the POlish supermarket, for the first time, since. - I dont' know wheen, certainly first time since before Chrsistmas.... I think I must have started feeling ill round that time...

Girls in there were all big smiles to see us, not seen us in so long,. so had to give them the 'details'... chemo etc...

Went to GP.

GP looked on system. found a letter, he'd been sent, but which had gone astray....

we'd not recieved a copy of it; we should have.


Its my discharge letter, from after the grand mal seizure.

one of the first things it said, is that 'follow up investigations are needed'.


That's from like four months ago.

Some of the actual details in it, are a little bit beyond my tecnical knowledge of neurology and such.... overly clinical for my biological background... - W's going to type it out for me, so I can read it properly on the PC, and ry figure out what its saying.... = This might be a major ...... mess up. - it might not of course. I hope the latter some inference I could draw from it... if that's what its saying... and if it was confirmed say on follow up stuff.. would be most epically ungood... espeically say if the letter got ignored for four months.

hey ho.

Must go find something for dinner. ; W's gone home now, for the weekend, though he may come back Sunday, depending, if not, back here on Tuesday

" Yes... not sure why we didn[t end up talking more when we actually were in the same place at the same time!"

Thank you. Well, you were sitting next to Dragonqueen at the time, so I guessed your attention was elsewhere It would have been nice to chat more, but I enjoyed sitting opposite you and admiring your elegant heatproof hands while you ate dinner and held the hot plate

I have to keep reminding myself; I don't have heat proof hands at the moment, thanks to chemo!; hence I've had so many burns, esp a few months back now ; Hoping my heat proof hands will return though - mind, of course, that wasn't helped, as the chemo took away my heat perception too, for a long while; not quite right yet again; so I didn't even realise I was doing it!

for once... I can safely say that was DragonQueens fault.... I was.... there in the room... I did talk a bit to some people... I do vaguely recall being there.. but... I think my mind was rather elsewhere still can't believe its a year ago.... heck, even minus the 6 months or so missing memory, I cna't believe its 6 months ago memory-speaking, either - I have recalled a few things now, however, during the missing memory period... but very isolated memories... and, truth be told, the memory loss, sort of continued; I can't recall really, the first few infusions/chemo I had... I was still so sort of out of it... actually, that's probably less memory loss, and lack of memory being formed.... Hmmm... you'd think I was ill or something.... - which I'm still damn denieing!

You should be able to reclaim some of those missing months by going back through your journal postings. You've kept nearly daily records of your life here.

I went back through all my health related postings from the time I first found out I had that tumor. It was a good thing I did. I finally found a common factor for all the times I've had double vision with prolonged headaches. Even that first time, there was indications in the MRI that I had sinusitis. My doctors never made this connection. Next month I'm having elective sinus surgery in the hope that it will minimize my chances for further sinus infections which could worsen what appears to now be permanent . I can deal with it as it is now as I can see straight at reading distances and with a bit of adjustment to my self made half eye patch, I can compensate for longer distances. But if it gets much worse, it's going to be tough.

Very true!; I oughta go back further; look at my journals, end of last year... well, September on till start of Feb this year, is pretty ... much an empty speace in my head yeh; including my not recalling being diagnosed with lymphoma.... that.... is weird... its the mind screwing affects of all that has happened ( thus far), which is the worst, IMO... the physical stuff... that's just... stuff Mind; don't go thinking my writings, and insane ramblings make any mor sense to me, after the time, just becuase I happened to write them

Odd moment tonight, talking of memory; cooking pierogi, first time in.... well, first time I can recall, for... like a long long long while... and... I was cooking it... and I knew; "I'm not doing this right.... this isn't how I normally do it...." - whilst, not having the slightst idea of how 'my normal way of doing it', would be - sadly I think I over boiled them, before frying, so lost half the fillings MMMM..... don't quite tast e as I recall... but given my odd senses of taste, of late, due to the chemo drugs, that really ought not supprise me
not like I've ever found any food, etc., actually tastes 'bad', or un-eatible, etc... just ... differnt.; often more complex flavours than I recall; due to th eheightened scense of smell I seem to have

right... late... I really oughta go to bed; took melatonin tonight, not taken taht for now..... err... probably about three or four months (well I can't remember!)

but. today did include one ... OK a couple, but the first... I from mentioning great moments... the mentionable one, was when W and I.... accidentially entertained the fruit/veg stall holders, and passers by to the point... at which, we had the entire street, full of shoppers in laughter at us, and our...... somewhat bohemian..... antics - we kinda spontainously, ad-libbed, a very monty python like scetch at teh fruit and veg stall.... err... flamboiently, of course... and with me with my twenty foot of multicoloured hair ribbons... and my trilby.. and W in his bowler with his proper walking cane (an actual anqtique one he got recently)... I think... we don't go unnoticed now at the best of times.... - we even got a heckle from the croud... whic hI put down... epically... to gain another laugh

well. I wanted more weird right... must go get this final cuppa cammemile tea, and thence to bed, or I'll upset the timing with when I took the melatonin... - got so many drugs piled up on desk now; but, 90% or more are now just to take back to pharmacy for safe disposal, - mainly anti-nausea drugs that I haven't used, and antibiotics leftover Hmm... actually oddly, I've taken sod all drugs connected to the cancer/lymphoma thing, - I guess not needing the anti-nausea ones, and refusing to accept any pain killers, helps, and I already got the nasty horrible sleeping tablets, disposed of... never gona go near those things again... just evil - worse than turning up for chemo infusion after 80 hours not sleeping... seriously... how people get addicted to them now, that is truely weird.... err... right. bed! err. tea! err... tea then bed!

There's been a lot of buzz lately about a small study that suggest that as little as an hour of cognitive therapy can help with acute insomnia and possibly with chronic insomnia as well, but the study focused on acute case before they reach chronic stage.

http://www.refinery29.com/2015/06/88556/single-therapy-session-insomnia-cure

OO... I'll have to try remember look at taht tomorrow... ; Or I'll get distracted, and never make it to bed! tea brewing - me, cognative therapy?: I pity the therapist who's.... mad mad enough to take me on Though I'm thinking maybe something of that ilk wouldn't be a bad idea... at some point...- struglging a lot at times now, quite recalling who I am... or which me I am... I'm too much of an all kinds of everything to ever be one thing for long. . . which isn't helpful when I reach points at which I've such a thin grip on reality that... well, I have no grip whatsoever - I useually just pop off at such times, and return later, when things look ... more real... and let a bit of a differnt all kinds o feverything of me, hav e a bash at dealing with the real world... for a while whilst I@m gone Mind, other times I've a pretty clear solid rememberance and fix on myself, and who the 'me' is that I am... as a whole that is hmm. Mind, I've always been somehwat like taht, its just... me I guess... an whole of individual parts of individuals Kinda always made sense, and useful too... makes it easier to cange and alter ones tone, for differnt settings, and needs I doubt many people have seen it, but I do actually have a quite seirous, scientific, logical side to me, which always useually runs through most of me's to a greater or lesser extent - guess recently I've only bought that ought when necessary and spnt most the time in one of my other.... less serious 'me's' hmm. if that makes any kinda sense hmm. me... sense... in teh same sentence... - exactly!

Right. tea must be brewed, and I should have been in bed like half an hour ago, already I think

Time enough tomorrow, after sleep, for more all kinds of everything. more bedroom tidying, cleaning, housework and clenaing, wanna clean the hallway downstairs, proper, and maybe do some laundry too or at least get some done, to make Sundayu's hosuework less of an ordeal

I may have pointed you in this direction before - and it may not work - but check this out if you haven't already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRPh_GaiL8s

You may have already but I may have failed to then look it at - my memory is getting better... honst... just not as reliable, I.E., 100%, as I'm used too; short term in particular, now; I think my days of having a photographic memory (yes, I did, despite being blind), are gone; mind, I still remember 1500 word plus long, uni essays, word perfect, from over a decade ago - just not so good at remembering if I just made a cup of tea or not, ten minutes ago; and, that. is. so. not. me. - hoping its chemo brain, and will vanish please

Good luck with that

My late mother may not have been the best of mothers but she certainly had a good sense of humour. She laughed out loud when I told her this story about the three old bats comparing loss of memory:
First Lady: You know the other day I was going upstairs and at the first landing I couldn't for the life of me remember if I was going up or down.
Second lady: I know, right? The other day I was standing in front of the fridge with a jar of mustard and couldn't remember if I was taking it out or putting it back in!
Third lady: Thank Bob I don't have these problems, touch wood (knocks on table - and a second later says: Oh, I here someone's knocking on the front door, excuse me while I check who that might be...)

The best thing is; its stupid stuff m y memory seems rubbish with!; recalling essays I wrote, lecturees I attended, at university, or even A-levels, like in the late 90s is so easy! now m y concentration is back, I can even concentrate on stuff on the radio, and recall it, etc; couldn't do that a month or two back ; a fifteen minute short drama would just.... vanish out o my head, soon as it ended!; not now - but its the really smlal very short term stuff.... -- and, half the time, when its happening when other people are around; they just assume its another part of the whole me being mental and weird, and surreal badger type thing - its all just adding to my ledgend - it is variable though, so I'm guessing it is possibly now more down to the chemo-brain, and likely to pass, or at least reduce, as time goes by;

I think I'm a littel bit bouncy from having the final chemo; I keep forgetting actually it wasn't that long ago; William reminded me this morning, on a txt; I'm on day 9 in the cycle; and, I checked; activilty stipipng myself doing all the blocking stuff.... ahh; yeh; the 'drugs inside', they're actually being ultra fighty at the moment - massive pain all down my long bones, hips etc; that's the bone marrow being nastily affected and multiple aching elsewhere etc
*puts sheild back up*
see. no pain ! no wonder I@m feelin g tired and abit..... bleh! - only one solution. ignore it, and bash on with housework - after lunchon!