Chemo number 3 of 6....... delayed by a day and whisper it quietly.......2 more books!

One of the things we have discovered on this coping with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma "Journey" (sorry, hate that word used in this context but couldn't think of another) is that things rarely go to plan and they get changed at short notice.

Colin rang yesterday morning to check they had a bed for his 3rd Chemo session, -  they hadn't, but we had to trek to hospital anyway for  9am appointment for his scan in the frighteningly named Nuclear Medicine Centre! (They weren't able to do this Wednesday so we could have organised some more help with packing after all - Bother) He popped into the ward just to check they hadn't suddenly found a bed for him - No. The consultant was on the ward so Col asked him about the X Ray results from the other day, all was OK but they are concerned at his lack of energy and shortness of breath. They really need him to have the Rituximab which helps the other chemotherapys to work but that was the one he had a bad reaction to and they had to stop it quickly. They plan to try it again with this 3rd session. The nurses on the ward said ring at 7pm and if they had a bed he could come in. So he did and they had and another trip to Ipswich. Two 50 mile round trips in one day and my driving is improving all the time!
 All these changes play havoc with meal planning - will there be 2 people here for dinner or just me? Do I need to get more bread out of the freezer on not? Do I need to buy milk or will I be on my own for a few days and not use it? The only thing to do is just to go with the flow.

As I write, this afternoon, he has had the first lot of chemo and has just texted to say the nasty stuff has been going for 20 minutes and all is OK this time............Phew!. I won't go up today but hopefully will be able to pick him up tomorrow. 

I went down to Leiston this morning....... paying a bill, a few bits from Co-op, picking up tablets from the doctors and taking the last bag of unwanted items to the charity shop. Of course while in the charity shop I Had to look at the books and spotted the book on the left "Letters from an Airfield"

Subtitled - The True story of a GI Bride of The Mighty Eighth. It was the mention of The 8th Air force which made me look again as of course our son- the archaeologist - is working on documenting the buildings of the 8th USAF, and I wondered if it had any information that might be useful for him. When I got home and had a look it turns out to be even more interesting as it's about a girl from Knodishall! What the connection is between Jack Rosenthal - well known playwright who died a few years ago, and a girl from Knodishall I shall have to read and find out.
Then I noticed the second book " Lake in the Clouds"  by Sara Donati. It is set in the newly independent American States and has over 600 pages and a huge list of characters - according to the first pages- a bit daunting. It might be a good read ........one day. I forked out £1 each for these two.

Now, in reply to lots of lovely comments from the last two posts............

My friend Mary in Bath reminded me that our Penny Pincher Paper Penfriend group has also been writing letters for 15 years. We take it in turns so only one letter every few months and I really look forward to receiving and writing. Our numbers started at 7 dropped to 6, went back to 7 then 8 but now the two newest people aren't writing so we may be back to 6 again, I have to admit that I'm not keen on sending letters to people who don't take a turn to write.

Vintage Singer at Mendingmakingcrafting said that I always sound so calm with all that's going on at the moment and do I ever go "arghhh!". I think I'm past the stage of getting in a panic! I like to think I'm quite organised - helped by all the years of being a Cub Scout leader when being un-organised meant 30 boys in  a Scout hut running riot!

Gill asked if my penfriend W from the windy Scottish island and I have ever met up, and no not yet.

Hello and thank you to Donna who said she is enjoying reading the blog

That's my lot for today except there is a new follower BUT when I clicked to see who it was a warning came up that the blog contained Adult Content - Oh dear, not the sort of follower I wanted to attract at all! how can I get rid of this person? any ideas?

Back Soon
Sue

4 Things

Sooze at Her Indoors,Him Outdoors had this on her blog a while back, she saw it on Facebook first, so now I've borrowed the idea for a quick post

4 THINGS I LOVE

Books and Reading
Being by the sea
Sitting in the sun
Getting on with things 

4 THINGS I HATE ( hate is a too strong word - I prefer DON'T LIKE)

People who swear continuously
People who sniff all the time
Rice and similar milk puddings
Waiting

4 PLACES I HAVE WORKED

A library and another library
A mobile library
The smallholding
Election Poll clerk

4 PLACES I HAVE BEEN ON HOLIDAYS

Sandown- Isle of Wight
All round the Cornish coast
Cumbria
West Wales

4 THINGS I LOVE WATCHING ON TV

Countdown and quizzes
Six nations Rugby
Police crime stories like Shetland and Vera 
Strictly Come Dancing

4 THINGS I LOVE TO EAT

Chocolate
Scones with jam 
Chinese food
Home made tomato soup

4 FAVOURITE THINGS TO DO

Read
Sit in the sun
Bake bread
Craft cards

4 DRINKS I LIKE

Frothy Coffee with chocolate powder on top
Really cold water
Tonic water with ice and lemon
Drinking Chocolate

4 THINGS I WISH I COULD WAVE A MAGIC WAND AND CHANGE

Colin's health
The weather in Wales so we could go and live there
The food in hospitals
The huge amount of traffic on the roads 


Reading and sitting in the sun seems to feature a lot!

Back with a normal post soon
Sue

A letter from the past and recent diary entries

A few weeks back I had a letter from my penfriend who lives on a windy Scottish island, in the letter she wondered how long we had been writing to each other (although I'm a bad penfriend who doesn't write as often as I ought!). I hadn't had a chance to sort through the drawer where I keep old letters to see if I could find out, when another letter arrived and with it W had included my very first letter written to her in May 2001 and typically it starts by me apologising for being slow to reply to her first letter! She said it would probably be sad to read as back then we had milking goats and we bred sheep, Col was still working for the County Council and our eldest was at uni, our son was taking a gap year between high school and uni and our youngest was just 13.

 It was a bit sad to read but also  interesting and I'm so glad she kept the letter. I know she will read this so Thank you W for that little window into what things were like and I will write to you with our new address very soon and I'll probably still be apologising for taking such an age to write!

Sunday, and  the bloke who had bought the old caravan chassis came to collect it at just the same moment that the man who's been storing a boat here for the last 3 years came to take it away. He owed us £40 so another little bit of money into the kitty.
We Think we have sorted phone connections/un-connections  and abandoning Talk Talk - if it works properly. Sunday seemed a good day to ring. The broad band connection speed is 10 times quicker in Ipswich  than here, which should make loading photos easier.

On Monday I zoomed to Woodbridge to take our signed contracts back to the solicitors, hopefully it shouldn't be too long now before exchange. My sister and brother in law came over to help Col burn some rubbish and load the horsebox trailer with all the stuff that we don't need at the bungalow. Then we took it to a friend who is storing it for us until we need it at a house with bigger garden or to sell it at the auction rooms one day.
That just leaves the things - for garden and workshop - that we will take to the bungalow, to be loaded onto the flat trailer.Then all that will be left in the shed are a few bits waiting for our youngest to collect and smallholding stuff left for the new owners.

Today, Tuesday and a bit more tidying, sorting and packing in the morning.  The most difficult thing to pack?..........a roll of Christmas wrapping paper!  - Too long for any boxes, I've been wondering where to put it for weeks, in the end gave up and chucked it into a cupboard in the caravan.
Found out today that the price of postage stamps is going up again at the end of March. I shall stock up because there will be lots of change of address cards to be posted out soon. Last March, pre last years price rise I bought £20 worth which lasted me right through to Christmas.
This afternoon another trek to hospital for Cols pre-chemo blood test and to see the consultant who decided to send him for an XRay  and then back tomorrow for a scan. Thought I would share the view from the 6th floor of the maternity block where the oncology and blood clinics are being held while they build a new specialist wing.

 Exciting view of part of the hospital car park, the Australia Estate ( so called because the roads are named after Australian cities) and  across Rushmere heath golf course with Foxhall Heath over on the right. The small white dot on the horizon is  BT telecommunications  research centre which looks like this when you get closer.



Welcome to Penny, a new follower in the Google pictures and thank you for lots of comments.

Back Soon
Sue

Ipswich - here we come

Col phoned Friday evening to say I could pick him up Saturday morning as soon as the consultant had done his rounds. So off  to Ipswich again calling at an electrical place on the way to buy a cooker ready for delivering to the bungalow.
 For the first time in 30+ years I shall have to use an electric hob - I'm going to hate it! Although the heating in the bungalow is gas, the cooker that was there was electric. We don't want to go to the expense of having new gas connections and we've been advised not to have a gas cooker in a house that will be rented out (which is the plan for when Col is well again, plan A?). Therefore electric it must be and I'll just have to get used to it I guess. Cookers do seem to be more expensive than a few years ago and freestanding are more than built-in. We don't want to change the kitchen units at the bungalow as they are fairly new and in good condition. I wonder why the elderly lady who lived there had a new kitchen but not a built in oven?

Thank you to Sadie at a life in the English rain  ( another proper Suffolk gal only much younger than me!) for telling me that the library I shall be near in Ipswich has a craft group and other stuff going on - Great excitement. I shall be asking Sadie for all sorts of info about things going on in town because although most of Ipswich is as familiar to me as our little local towns, actually living there will be a whole new experience.

Photo from Mikesbus pages internet

 I've been going to Ipswich for shopping since I was a small child and can just remember these trolley buses which ran in the town centre until 1963. We would catch the 204 big red bus which ran every two hours all the way from Bury St Edmunds to Ipswich. If you look at my header and follow the road from Bury to Ipswich you will see the dotted line which was then the boundary between East and West Suffolk (until Local government reorganisation in 1973 when Suffolk became one county). We lived just into East Suffolk on the main road which was at that time the A45.
Each school holiday mum would take us on the bus to Ipswich and we'd have lunch in a small fish and chip  restaurant right near the bus station. It was always jam packed full because that was before coffee shops and restaurant popped up everywhere. My favourite shop was Cowells

!960s/70s buttermarket Ipswich found on google photos from EADT

because down in the basement was a fantastic toy shop with big trays of farm animals that you could buy one by one and loads of other pocket money toys. (It's strange to see cars in this road in this photo because the town centre is now all pedestrianised).

I'll be sharing lots more old and new photos of Ipswich over the coming months.

We've just spent a "happy" hour trying to contact BT and sort out phone lines for the bungalow. Still have to try and get through to Talk Talk - Oh what fun!

Back Soon
Sue

My very last visit to the library van and other 'lasts'

Today was my last visit to the library van. When I take my books back it will be to a bricks and mortar  library and I'll enjoy sharing pictures of it with you as it's in a very odd 1930s (?) building. I know where it is and what it looks like but have never been in there. With the novelty of having a library within a mile - for the first time since 1980- I  maybe there quite often.

Anyway, here is what came home with me today, when on earth I'll get time to read them is good question, just look at the size of the Robert Galbraith ( aka J K Rowling) and A Notable Woman - Diaries written between 1925 and 1986. Edited by Simon Garfield. Those two alone should keep me busy for a while.

Click to enlarge

 Today I also cooked the last of the beetroot from the polytunnel and made the last lot of bread I shall bake in this house.
In between I've been packing boxes and beginning to run out of things to pack - and running out of boxes too. Col is still stuck in hospital suffering from low blood platelets, a possible infection, lack of sleep and grotty food. They need to get him really well ready for the next lot of chemo. I went to see him yesterday but won't go today as he has two other visitors "booked up".
Forms arrived from our solicitor this morning that need signing, both for selling and buying so things are moving along.

Welcome to D Voorhees - a new follower. Many thanks for comments about cars and good English.

Back soon
Sue

The pretty blue car

So there I was, all by myself, driving a strange car between Ipswich and Knodishall at 11.30pm on Monday night

Why? I hear you ask

Well, it was all due to..................
Our car being in the garage for a new cam belt and the garage lending us a car so Col could get to hospital for his blood test.
Col being in hospital unexpectedly early because he had a nose bleed that wouldn't stop (Yuck - sorry but you did ask!)
A & E being jam-packed full of sick, injured and strange people each being accompanied by anything up to 5 - YES 5 people and Col having to wait for blood test results.

And finally it was decided that he should stay in hospital while I drove the neat snazzy bells and whistles pretty little blue car - no idea what make- home again.

Then yesterday afternoon I drove the same neat little car all the way back to Ipswich to take him all the stuff we forgot on Monday night, meet an estate agent boy at the bungalow so I could check measurements for carpets and cooker, arrange with huge complications how the carpet men would fit the carpets on the Friday before we move in (we have to sign an Undertaking?! collect key, return key and promise not to knock down any walls!). Finally driving home in the car which by now was no longer strange.

This morning I hope to take the pretty little blue car back to the garage and pick up our much bigger dark blue car.
Shame really, I shall miss its flashy bits like the green arrow telling me when to change gear and the mpg display that seem to go up and down at random.

Col is still stuck in hospital - it's all due to platelets apparently - or rather lack of same.

Ho Hum

Welcome to Lynn and Catrina who are new to following. Thank you for comments and I'm quite happy for people not to comment on the health things because I don't really like going on and on about them but without mentioning something I would be hard pressed to find anything to blog about.
Oh and apologies to English teachers who will cringe at my starting a post with 'so'!

Back Soon
Sue

Monday - catching up on all sorts

Thank you for the continuing support through lovely comments. As Marlene said in one of the comments - we do feel like we are on a merry go round, trying to hang on as it goes round and round between hospital and home! 
Welcome to 2 new people in the followers pictures - Chars and Edwina. I apologise in advance as you've started following just as my blog seems to have got stuck on just two subjects - Moving House and Cols Non Hodgkins Lymphoma! At the beginning it was full of self-sufficiency, frugal living and campsite news but our world has changed considerably since April 2013. Follower numbers are now back to where they were before Google started chucking out non google followers, although having said that things will probably go peculiar again.

Col is feeling well after the blood transfusion, it seems strange to think he gave 50 pints of blood between the ages of 18 and 55 and is now getting some back (not his own obviously!). He started giving blood when he worked for a builder in the village where he lived and the men would all go together - what a good idea that was. When he changed to working for the County Council he had to go in the evenings, I went once but felt very faint afterwards then of course I was pregnant, we moved out of town, had the children and it would have been complicated for us both to go. He got a lovely pen as a gift for his 50th pint, I came across  it when sorting and thought it might as well be used rather than sitting in a box in a drawer.

More things got cleared out this weekend as our son and future daughter in law came and collected a settee and also moved a single bed frame and mattress downstairs for us. We didn't think we could take it to the auction sale but I was reading through their on-line catalogue to check our stuff was listed and saw they had a pine bed and mattress on the list so maybe we will take it over there for next week. They have nearly 800 lots for sale today so I think we will be lucky if we get £10 each for our few bits of modern pine. We also delivered a few items of gardening stuff to our youngest as they now have an allotment in Leiston and they came and sorted which of their stuff that has been here since last May can be chucked. Col has organised a friend to come and collect the last lot of scrap during the first week of March and taken a photo of an old caravan chassis to list it on eBay. So little by little the list is getting ticked off.

Some good Rugby on TV over the weekend - England v Italy and some not so good - France v Ireland and did they say it was the 10th time in a row that Wales have beaten Scotland? We also watched the Snooker Shoot Out competition where they got 10 minutes to see how many balls they can pot. Just one chance to go through to the next round. It was interesting to see lots of new faces.

Two books have been added to Books Read 2016 over the couple of weeks. A new-to-me-author writing crime fiction = G. M. Malliet - Pagan Spring. Unfortunately I found it's number 3 of a series but there are two newer ones so they've been ordered. This is another author from the States writing books set in England, a fact given away by the spelling of 'gray' and the mention of 'scallions'! but a good read nevertheless. The other book was Angela Thirkell - The Brandons. One of her Barsetshire series first published in 1939. I love the look at Country Life of the period, where the gentry and the servants Knew Their Place, full of genteel snobbish people but looked at with gentle irony and flashes of humour that make you smile. Her books are gradually being reprinted by Virago Modern Classics, with 6 more due this year.

This morning I popped to Saxmundham  for bits of shopping - still trying to find things Col fancies eating, he has gone off muesli, our usual teabags and home made bread after this last chemo session, it may be different next time - makes shopping quite complicated!  Picked up a mail re-direction form from the post office too.

That's our news up to date

Back in a day or two
Sue