And The Days Just Keep Dragging On

I had the blood tests on Monday to see if I can have the chemotherapy. There is a part of me that wants them to find I have a strange White Blood Cell count, or a rampaging infection, or am anaemic, just so I can delay the treatment. However, I know I am none of the above so I find out tomorrow when I am to start having chemotherapy.

On Tuesday I have a medical wonderland day. I see the orthopod in the early evening about my foot after the operation whereupon I will mention to him that I still have no sensation around the scar or below it and I will say how much it hurts. At lunchtime I am seeing the substance misuse people at Plummer Court which I am scared about. It is only for an assessment but I am scared they will either make too much out of it or dismiss me. I am also terrified that they’ll take one look at me and my background and jump to a stereotypical conclusion that I’m “not the sort of girl who has a drug problem”.

We’ll see.

Sorry this is so short but just can’t be bothered writing at the moment. Everything just seems a little too much effort.

Ruth

 

Too Busy For My Own Liking

Sorry that the updates for this blog are getting further and further apart. This is the curse of not having the internet at home and although I have been issued with a laptop at work I am still not sure what sites I can an cannot access via it. Also I don’t think updating my blog with all it’s secrets about me at work would be a very good idea.

On the whole I am loving my job. It is nice to have something to do. At first it was hard and I felt as if I was being ganged up on a bit by the rest of the technicians but I seem now to have proved myself and proved that I can do this job. I do seem to keep having all the extra crap (laminating, colour printing, rearranging computer resources etc) dumped on me which I am sure is outside the remit of a school science lab technician but I keep doing it to please everyone else, even if this does measn that I’m still cutting, glueing and printing well into the early hours of the morning.

I am enjoying it so much that I have applied to complete a Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) for Secondary level general science starting in September at the Institute of Education and Goldsmiths College, both in London. I’m not sure if I really want to live back at home but Newcastle doesn’t have any vacancies anymore as I have left it really late to apply, and it is only a year course so I’m sure that I’ll manage.

I’m not sure if I should be making any plans for September yet. I got my plaster cast off on Tuesday which is lovely because as the weather now turns warmer I am not stuck with a fibreglass heat enduring thing round my leg. However, now that the cast is off and the foot appears to be healing, even if the orthopaedic surgeon did have a bit of a go at me over the fact that the scar wasn’t as neat as he thought it should be (not my fault – for once I couldn’t pick and stratch and interfere with it as it was in a cast) we have to turn to the more pressing nature of the fact that the tumour is still in my tibia. They took another x-ray on Tuesday and compared it with the pre-op and post-op x-rays and with the MRI scan I had back in February. The tumour has grown, quite significantly and they are now concerned about it.

A few months ago they told me that they were 90% certain that it was benign, although as the boyfriend said, that always left a 1 in 10 chance. They did a biopsy which showed an abnormality so they did another one which proved inconclusive, because of this they decided to watch and wait and treat the injury first. Now it has grown quite significantly they are worried that it is quite aggressive.

They even mentioned the C word and were talking about possible treatment options. These range from amputation, through to removed the tumour and completing a bone graft or inserting a metal rod to support the bone (the tumour is now occupying about 35% of the bone space in my tibia), through to drug treatment if it does turn out to be malignant, through to watching and waiting. I’m not good at coping with the unknown and this is one of the biggest unknowns I have ever had to face.

I have an appointment with the North of England Bone and Soft Tissue Tumour Service people on Wednesday. There I will see a nurse specialist and another orthopaedic surgeon to see what is the best way to progress. I will have some more tests, including a bone scan and be booked in for another biopsy, possibly an open biopsy, and undergo another MRI scan. As the boyfriend said earlier in the week, it never rains but it pours!

Otherwise things are OK. I have been preoccupied and nearly on the verge of tears with the above and on Wednesday morning I nearly didn’t go into work, but I did eventually, but then went to A&E straight afterwards after cutting myself. The doctor who treated me tried to be kind and sympathetic but acknowledged it was a stressful and worrying time for me and if I needed to cut then I should get angry with myself for doing it. She gave me the basic talk on harm minimisation and then steri-stripped me up, stuck some dermabond on top and let me go. She did ask if I wanted to see the Deliberate Self Harm Team but I said there wasn’t any point and she agreed saying that they probably wouldn’t see me as there is a clear stressor for the event. I also saw C (my psychiatrist) on Friday who said she was glad that I was panicking because if I was calm then she would have been worried and that it is a great improvement on a few months ago that I actually care about my life and my future.

It’s been glorious weather and I actually braved Newcastle city centre in a t-shirt and knee length skirt yesterday. I got some odd looks and some stares but I don’t care anymore. I also went for a mooch round Leazes Park where I bumped into one of my named nurses from when I was on the section and her little girl who were feeding ducks. I also got told that I was ‘well cool’ by a group of wannabe emos who were sitting and smoking. One of them made me sad as she stared at my scars and told me that she was ‘well impressed with them’, as I looked at her she had faint lines all over her arms. I really wish self-harm wasn’t seen as the cool thing to do, it makes me angry and sad and scared that people are doing it to fit in. Of course it is a topic that makes me agry and sad and scared anyway, but the idea of teenagers damaging their body permanently just to fit into a social circle distresses me somewhat.

Ruth

Plummeting Into A Large Black Hole

I was relatively cheerful, upbeat and optimistic yesterday. However, sometime around 7.30pm last night that changed. There was no trigger, no apparent cause, nothing happened, nothing changed, no one said anything to me and I hadn’t done anything. I was sitting watching a repeat of ‘The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency’ which I had downloaded onto BBC iPlayer a while ago when half way through I felt my mood change. I decided to watch to the end of the programme as it was quite sweet and uplifting the first time around and I thought it might make me feel better, but it didn’t.

When it finished I literally threw my laptop to the end of the bed, shuffled to the bathroom to get a large glass of water and sat back down on my bed in tears. It then dawned on me that I wanted to do myself some serious damage, and I didn’t neccessarily mean suicidal damage, but there was that ambivalence over if the damage was enough to kill me, would I really care?

I threw the glass of water over my extension lead, making sure water got into the sockets, I then unwrapped a paper clip and pushed one end deep into the earth pin (thus ensuring the appliance earthed through me) and pushed my light plug into the socket. I then held onto the paperclip and switched then light on and…

Nothing. A small electric shock and the lights went out. I managed to fuse the upstairs of the house and wreck my extension lead but did no damage to myself. I then rang the boyfriend, with whom I has spent about 2 and half hours on the phone to prevously that day in a cheerful mood, and tried to convince him that I was fine, until my voice wobbled and I started to cry. He asked me what was wrong, I had to tell him I didn’t know. He asked about stressors and triggers and all the normal things you would associate with such a mood swing, but there wasn’t anything. He seemed worried, scared and confused that someone’s mood could suddenly drop so low with no warning and no reason. I sat on the phone sobbing, interspersing the crying with some melodramatic phrase about how he shouldn’t stick around because I would only hurt him, or the words “I need to cut”.

He kept telling me that he wasn’t going anywhere and I didn’t need to cut because rationally it wouldn’t make anything better and it wouldn’t solve anything. I then said that I was just being a melodramatic borderline case, which he said he didn’t think I was being. I said that no one ever believes me when I say my mood can change so fast and I can do really stupid, dangerous things; like trying to electricute myself, in a nano second.

It’s true though. Doctors and nurses and psychiatrists and psychologists all sit there looking at me as if I am exaggerating life when I say I can plunge from high to low, or OK to low with no warning and once there I can go from crying hysterically to laughing hysterically faster than it takes to pour a drink. I think that they think I am melodramatic and trying to make some kid of point that there is something wrong with me, but I make it seem worse as if in some way that will get me treated. I’m not though. It is true, and the boyfriend can now vouch for me (well you know what I mean). I want this moodiness under control, and I don’t just want to be told to up the dose of lamotrigine or venlafaxine, or both. Or to have some minor tranquilliser added into the equation to take the edge off life. I still want to be able to feel and to enjoy life, just maybe on one level, not many.

I didn’t cut in the end. I took my meds and some pain killers for my foot and went to sleep. I maybe took a few more tramacet than I should have done but I got 9 hours of complete zombie sleep. I didn’t dream, I didn’t wake, I don’t remember any of it. That was exactly what I wanted. I don’t know how I feel today; down still but nowhere near as bad as I was 15 hours ago.

I can’t keep track of myself anymore and it’s scaring me.

Ruth

It’s Been A Funny Old Week

I was back in Newcastle this week, which is why I’ve been so very, very quiet. I have been staying with a friend who was worth her weight in gold when it came to picking me up from the airport.

So I had my stitches taken out of my foot on Tuesday and the old cast removed and a new one put on. My foot is in the neutral position now, rather than inverted and I can start to partial weight bear, which is a god send. 5 weeks of being in this cast and then we’ll see. Probably some kind of splint or orthotic put in a shoe, probably still on crutches for a bit. It all seems to be healing rather well and the sutures came out beautifully, were put in exceptionally neatly and the wound seems to have healed nicely.

I have managed to find myself some gainful employment in Newcastle as a science lab technician in a school. My friend is a Biology teacher in the same school and found me the job. It’s only a maternity cover for the next academic term, but it is something to do and it gives me some money to play with and a purpose in life. However, my search for a flat in Newcastle is not going as well. Perhaps it is my strict criteria at present – ground floor or if not then it has to have a lift. I can’t do stairs very well at present.

Some other crap things have happened, but I’ll talk about those later. I am now back in London and my sister is over from Gibraltar ’till Sunday. She wants to go and see ‘Horton Hears A Who’ so I might go with her, especially if she pays.

Ruth

Hello hello

I am back. Very much alive and kicking. Well perhaps not so kicking. Had my foot/ankle surgery on Wednesday and am in pain and plaster cast. On the plus side am drugged up to the eyeballs on pain killers so life is good. Did have morphine but ate it all too quickly so am now on tramacet. Not as tasty but still good.

Expect longer post when am more in the world and not spaced out.

Ruth