Jimmy is constantly cold. It almost seems like his body has forgotten how to keep him warm. I have always been the cold one and Jimmy is always warm as toast but this winter he is an ice block. He is wearing thermal vests and we layering big time, has a blanket over his legs most the day and the heater on 24/7 but the man stays cold. Since the wind wasn't blowing yesterday we thought a walk on the Catwalk at Fish Hoek beach would get the juices flowing and warm him up a bit. It was lovely in the sunshine and it definitely warmed us up too. The good news is that tomorrow all our chickens will be here for the next week and a half and I'm sure the love will warm the house up some.
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| View from the Catwalk looking back towards Fish Hoek |
Tuesday today so it was chemo again this morning. Unfortunately Jimmy still could not have the Endoxan as his white blood count is still too low, although it has come up a little so we hoping Friday will be the day. In fact, all his readings have dropped a little, red blood count and haemoglobin, but this is to be expected. It was explained to us right in the beginning that there may have to be rest periods in between treatment to give his body some time to recover. So....we have a very disappointed Mr Smith...who thought he would be able to go watch Saturday's Stormers vs Sharks game at the box.
We are busy getting our ducks in a row for our next big step, this being stem cell transplant. Jimmy will be in isolation for between 3 weeks to a month so I bought him an iPad. I also found a special lap tray with a groove in the back for an iPad to stand up in and an awesome bluetooth keyboard. We feel like techno junkies lately and I say this proudly. I have downloaded word, excel etc on it and he can also access his emails from here. By the time he goes into isolation his virtual office will be up and running.
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| Jimmy working whilst in the chemo clinic today |
This really made me think...what he said is so true. I also know now that even if I had known every little thing there is to know about Multiple Myeloma, I would still not know the outcome, as this is completely different for each person, depending on how they react to the treatments that they receive. There have been many ups and downs on this journey and the downs (thankfully I can count then on one hand) have been heartbreaking but the ups are so positive. In the beginning an up was all that mattered and I would wipe out everything else and revel in this up. But since then I have learned to embrace the downs (knowing that I can be weak in front of my friends), appreciate the ups like nothing before (joyfully bragging to my friends) and calmly take on the next stage, whatever it is. If it were possible for me to take the whole cancer thing out of the equation then I would definitely wish this journey on you all. I always knew that I had a strong marriage and that I love Jimmy very much (except of course the odd occasion that I put him and his golf clubs up for sale on facebook) but this journey has made it all so surreal. We have spent hours talking about stuff we never talked about. We are brave together and talk about the scary things and we laugh and joke about the funny things in life. We lock eyes across a room and even agree to unspoken things. This journey has not broken us and I know nothing can.
On a lighter note....you may even find me caddying for Jimmy if he is ever allowed to play golf again! Did I say that?
My blessing today are my friends.
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