Monday, 28th April

Jimmy, 3 weeks ago, dancing at Megan's 21st with a broken vertebra!

Wow! I have had such positive responses to this blog, thank you so much.

We had a lazy Sunday morning yesterday.  I made some meatball and cheese omelettes for breakfast before my mom left to drive home to Bredasdorp.  I'm going to miss having her company and support, it was nice having someone else in the house and having other things to talk about, apart from just being able to give her a hug when I felt like it.  We have a family thing that we all do when driving up to Bredasdorp to visit my mom and dad and that is that when we get to Napier, which is about 20km away, we phone and say 'put the kettle on'.  Mom said she phoned my dad from Napier and when she turned into the driveway he was waiting for her.  She commented on the fact that he standing waiting for her and he replied to say that he had been waiting since Thursday....they do everything together.  Shame, my dad is the kind of person who calls a spade a spade but deep down he is such a softy.  I can hear from his voice when I speak to him on the phone that he is absolutely gutted by this whole thing.

Jimmy has been in more pain today again, than the last few days.  This morning he really battled to get out of bed.  The pain in his back seems to be moving around to different places.  Things like pulling on a pair of tracksuit pants are quite a mission.  He was questioning this and I tried to make him feel better by explaining that there will be good days and bad days and today is a worse day but we are thankful for the few good days that we have had.

We popped down to the mall to go get a few things.  Routine in this household has gone out the door, we even ran out of toilet paper!  And then we met our friends Rohan and Patsy at the beach for lunch.  A belated happy birthday Patsy!  It's such a glorious day and the wind hasn't blown for days now. We were 15 minutes late and I made a note to myself to remember that it takes Jimmy so much longer to walk now.  As we were leaving we bumped into Brad and Shan and Carol (their mom) on the beach so Jimmy went over to say hello.  They are finding it hard to come to terms with everything and it was quite emotional which upset Jimmy.  We are looking forward to having them for a few days from Wednesday this week.  My girls are going away with their dad for the weekend so Brad and Shan can spend some special time with Jimmy.

With all these public holidays it is hard to keep track of what day it is. Tomorrow morning first thing I need to phone the medical aid to find out if Jimmy's treatment has been authorised.  As soon as this comes through, we need to get hold of Prof and he wants to start with the chemotherapy as soon as possible.  He did mention this week but we will have to see what happens.  So often I think something won't be done and it does and other times we gear ourselves up for results and then we don't get them.  We are also expecting the results of the bone marrow biopsy this week.  Once we have these results we will pretty much know where we stand with regard to what stage the cancer is in and whether any extra chemotherapy will be necessary.

The unknown is quite a scary thing for me.  I am a planner, to the point that I can be quite anal.  I do things (everything) when they need to be done in case something pops up and then regret that it wasn't done.  Cancer is something that is so totally out of my control.  I can't help Jimmy with the thought processes that are going on inside his head because they are his thoughts. I don't know what is coming and I just wish this was something that was done by the book, with by the book results and by
the book reactions.   It makes me feel quite helpless.....