Monday 11th May

First of all, wishing all the moms following my blog a Happy Mother's Day.  I hope you were spoilt like me.

What a lovely weekend we had, life is definitely getting back to normal and it feels so good!

Fifth day on antibiotics today and I can happily say that this morning I feel like I am on the road to recovery after a bad bout of Bronchitis. 

I probably should not have gone out on Saturday evening to Newlands to watch the Stormers vs Brumbies rugby game but it is the first time in over a year that Jimmy has had the opportunity of going and socialising with Komatsu customers and I just couldn't bring myself to let him down.  We had a lovely evening, it was so nice to see so many familiar faces again and an added bonus is that we won, only by one point, but as everyone always says when it's your own team that has won.....a win is a win.

Such a welcome sight
 

Yesterday we celebrated Mother's Day and my special girls spent the day with us.  We went out for lunch and Jimmy's parents also joined us. I was really spoilt, the girls gave me a beautiful Oriental Lily to plant in the garden and Emma made a Chocolate Ganache cake which was very decadent to say the least.

Such special memories in the making and I feel so blessed. We have learned to savour and appreciate special times together, you never know what is waiting for you around the next corner on the journey called life.

My big priority at the moment is trying to get Megan sorted with her Schengen and US visas.  We have received her contract from Flagship which is the Company who employs her but we are still waiting for the balance of the documentation to come through for visa application purposes.  There is a list of about 30 items that she needs from Flagship, just one of which is a detailed itinerary of the ports of call for the NCL Jade for the next 6 months.  We have made appointments at both embassies/consulates but keep having to phone and postpone them.  And it is impossible to do both at the same time as her passport needs to get sent away and we can't do the next one till we get it back.  If we don't receive paperwork this week it looks like Megan will have to join the ship a bit later than scheduled.  It's very frustrating when it is out of our hands.  Of course I welcome the opportunity of Megan staying longer than planned but she has been home almost 2 months now and I know she is itching to get back as she is eating into her savings where she could be earning more dollars.

As mentioned in my last blog, Jimmy had another platelet transfusion last Wednesday and needs to go for bloods again tomorrow to see where his counts stand.  We also received a 20 page printout on the perils of taking Thalidomide.  This is the oral form medication which he will be on for the next year as part of his maintenance program.  I went to look for the printout out now to share some of the information with you but Jimmy must have taken it to work with him this morning.  He needs to sign an agreement in order to take Thalidomide and agree to telephonic 'counceling' once a month whilst on it.  One single dose of Thalidomide can deform an unborn baby so men who take it cannot sleep with their partners (who can still bare children) without using a condom as it is also present in their semen.  He needs to sign acknowledgement of this too.  The possible side effects are horrific but as with anything cancer related one always has to way up the pros and cons.  A worrying factor of having chemotherapy is that they can actually cause other cancers.

Jimmy is back into the full swing of things at work again.  He is still going in a little later in the morning, although even this is getting earlier and earlier each day, and then stays till closing time.  I know we had to wait for the go-ahead from Prof Novitzky but I believe this is the best thing that could have happened.  Jimmy is happy as Larry again and has so much to talk about.  I believe overall we have been very lucky with his treatments, as hard as they were on all of us.  Our friends Ron and Jeanette are having a difficult time.  Ron was transferred from F4 Isolation into ICU as he has bleeding in his lungs - Jeanette, you guys are in out thoughts every single day. And Jimmy met up with another stem cell transplant patient on Wednesday who was blown away that he is back at work already.  She says it was 4 months before she could go back.  We have so many blessings to be thankful for.

You will notice my new look blog.  Of course this type of thing always comes about when there are more important things to do that I keep putting off, like dreaded paperwork and sorting and clearing out the cupboards in our guest bedroom.  I think it is much more user friendly now, scrolling down the side menu for an eon was a pain!  Any links to articles or photo albums of holidays are still down the side menu,which is now on the right hand side of the home page.  You will notice tabs at the top under our header photo and this make for much easier access into things like 'home', 'about us', 'how it all started' etc.  I have also added a timeline tab which fellow patients will find interesting as I always wanted to see the big picture during Jimmy's treatment.  I will update this as we go along. The 'home page' tab is where all my blog posts are.

Don't forget to send me an email (viviennesmith68@gmail.com) so that I can add your email address for access to my blog once it goes private on 22/05/2015.

I have received a lot of emails already but I'm not sure if I can add them yet or only once the blog goes private.  I will reply to each email once you are added so that you know you have access.

Have a supadupa week everyone <3

PS.  I have just been on to the blogger forum and I cannot add your email addresses until I actually turn the block onto private on the 22nd and then type them all in.  As mentioned, I will reply to your email once you added.