This Week I….

Hi! Happy Sunday!

Today I am writing this from a whole different place as I am on HOLIDAY. It is only a 45 minute drive from my house, which is good because I have to head back to Norwich for a hospital appointment on Wednesday, but it’s still a holiday and it’s lovely.

This afternoon we are planning a short walk and pub roast, then I’m going to have a really long bath and a nap. Bliss.

But first, this week I…..

Got new eyebrows

I’m quite attached to my eyebrows. Discussions around chemo and stem cell transplants do include losing your hair and I was a bit “meh, I like hats” then it occurred to me that my eyebrows might go too.

My thoughts turned to microblading and my Mum offered to pay. So I got some recommendations. There was that emotional rollercoaster where I thought my blood thinners might stop it happening, then an irritating schedule clash when it turned out I had to go into the hospital for all my Velcade injections this cycle. But on Tuesday morning I finally arrived for my appointment with Kelly at Coveted Beauty.

After some discussion we decided that powder brows rather than microblading might be better for me as they would bleed less and also look more like I normally pencil my brows.

I am so bloody happy with them, they look amazing and I’m booked in for a top up in 4 weeks time.

Drank some fancy beer

A few weeks ago some friends came to visit and they bought us a bottle of a Belgian beer called Duchesse de Bourgogne. They were excited to find it in the shop and so when the pub down the road announced they actually had it on keg this week we apparently had to go down and try it. So we did. It was nice. It’s like strawberries with balsamic vinegar.

Had no sleep

One of the joys of the chemo cycles I’m on is managing my energy levels. I’m finding 2 days on steroids and I’m wide awake and wanting to clean things, but also bloated, retaining water, eating everything I find and all sorts of other lovely things, then other days I can barely keep my eyes open and fall asleep in the middle of work.

Tuesday night this week was a particularly steroidy day and despite aromatherapy, CBD, eye masks, nose strips , herbal tea, meditation and all the other acutrements of sleep I tried I was still wide awake at 3am. Eventually I put on a 30 minute meditation, which I didn’t hear the end of, so I guess I dozed off around 3:30am.

At 4:45 I became aware that Waldo was making whingy noises, I gave him a hug and was dimly aware that his face felt damp. As I slowly returned to consciousness I realised the bed was also damp and that he had decided for the first time ever to wake me by being sick in the middle of the bed.

So I put the light on to check he was ok and not ill, at which point he decided it must be breakfast time and energetically leapt over a pillow and started bouncing around so I assumed he wasn’t dying of anything. Cleaned up the sick and tried to get back to sleep.

Except now both Pugs think it’s breakfast time. Peppa decides to sit on my stomach and then scratch and punch me in the bladder and Waldo decides that I need to have all 4 of his feet on my shins.

I probably get back to sleep about 5:30. 2 hours later it actually is breakfast time and I have had 3 hours sleep. I plan an afternoon nap, but steroids decided I don’t want that either. So I’m basically just really tired for 3 days.

Had a backaversary

Well, it’s been a whole year now since that fateful day I twisted my back doing dumbbell squats.

On the plus side if I hadn’t we might never have discovered I had incurable cancer so early and it might have been less treatable as it was the only symptom I had.

Still, looking at how things have changed over the last year was a little sobering. I was excited about growing my PT business. Working on my running and taking part in the 12in12 challenge (which I did still finish if not how I wanted).

I’m so glad that I’m getting treatment and that the pain I was in is finally being dealt with, but the readjustment has been really hard. The uncertainty is one of the most challenging things. I can’t plan ahead far because I don’t know how I’ll feel and what my treatment plan will involve. I can’t take on new PT clients while I’m broken and can’t demo exercises and I’ve lost A LOT of strength and fitness and knowing what I can do without damaging my back further is hard.

Things will improve, adjustments happen, but an anniversary always bring a bit of reflection. And here we are, a year later. Who knew?

Ordered Peanut Butter Whisky

You don’t need a reason for this surely?

I got mine from Master of Malt, apparently they also sell it at Tesco.

Went on holiday

Like I said, I’m on holiday.

I’m in Suffolk at a friends cottage that she has turned into a Dog Friendly holiday let. I’m being a guinea pig and it’s amazing.

I’ll tell you more about it next week as I’ve only been here a couple of days. So far we’ve had dinner at the local pub which was the hugest burger in the world.

And walked a whole 20 minutes out to a brewery for a beer, which was great and part of my mission to move more even if I ache!

The Brewery was ace and is attached to a hop farm so really nice to sit by the hops and enjoy a beer. We got very slightly rained on and then steam dried in the sun, so a classic English summer really.

And that was another week in my life.

I expect you’ll spend the whole week just waiting to hear about the rest of my holiday. It’s like the old days when you had to wait a whole week for the next episode of a TV show instead of binge watching them all in one afternoon.

How was your week?