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Bag change day

Having written about a chemotherapy hospital stay, I think it’s time that I also described having my 5-FU bag changed, as that is the other side of my regular chemotherapy treatment. Once a week I travel to Worcester to meet the oncologist and report weekly progress before the bag that delivers my 5-FU and the dressing that covers the PICC line are changed. I aim to make a mid-morning appointment so that I don’t have to get up too early, which has the useful side-effect that I can usually find a parking space in the main car-park. Earlier in the day it can be a bit of a scrum, so that time is best avoided, if possible.

As with the hospital stay, I have to prepare for a bag change. The first thing is to take a packed lunch. Cancer patients are decidedly unpredictable, and there are often times when things take longer than expected, although it is usually another patient who takes the extra time. Not that it matters, as there are only a limited number of staff to deal with all of us, so any delay affects all the following patients. It’s definitely worth taking a packed lunch of some sort. Today’s was a couscous lemon and sesame chicken salad, with added dried pear, trail mix, and honey roast cashews. All the waiting means it’s also worth taking something to stave off boredom. I usually take a book, and Gillian will take a novel too.

The other aspect of the preparation is to think about the conversation I will have with the oncologist. I like to report how the week has gone, with all the ups and downs. I can’t remember a week without some adverse incident, probably a bout of nausea or vomiting, or some back pain. This week had more to report, except that it was already known because of the unscheduled trip to Cheltenham on Sunday and Monday. But it is also important to think about what has gone well, and I’m pleased to say that there are always good things to report too. Finally I need to know whether I am about to run out of any of my prescriptions so that I can restock. Last night, for example, I did an audit of my pills and found that five of them needed topping up.

When I arrive the very first order of business, after signing in, is to make an appointment for next week. The receptionist is well used to me doing this, and I find that if I don’t, I’ll forget, so it’s good to have a routine. It also makes it easier to get an appointment for about the same time, which suits me fine.

Then we wander along to the waiting room, where we greet all the other regulars and catch up on the week’s doings. I love it that we see the same patients week after week. We all get to know each other, and we’re very friendly. Most patients are accompanied by at least one loved one, so it’s never just a simple comparison of symptoms. Sadly, sometimes we see that a patient isn’t doing so well, and as he or she will tend to be a little listless we try not to over-tax them with too much idle chatter. Today when we arrived there was a treat: some fairy cakes and a home-made Victoria sponge. It turned out that the Registrar who frequently stands in for the Oncologist when he is on call in Cheltenham was moving on in her six-monthly rotation, and in celebration she had brought the goodies. I’m happy to tell you that the cake was excellent. Once we’ve exchanged the news, we start to wait. Today was one of the long waiting days, as it took over one-and-a-half hours before we got to talk to the Registrar, due both to problems with other patients and also sheer pressure of numbers, I think.

The meeting with the oncologist/Registrar comes next, in which we discuss the week’s events, think about variations to my anti-nausea medication, and plan the things I need to do during the coming week. This week I need to keep a diary of my nausea and vomiting, so that we have some evidence on which to base a better anti-nausea prescription for me. It isn’t that the nausea and vomiting is a big problem — more of a minor niggle, in fact — instead it’s an indication that something is happening in my body that we don’t understand, which might develop into something more major. But whatever the reason for sorting it out, I would rather not have the nausea, so I’m going to do my best to help solve the problem.

Then it’s back to the waiting room to wait until a nurse is free to change the dressing and bag. At least, that’s normally what happens. This time I had had my bag disconnected before seeing the Registrar, and the nurse doing the work had noticed a minor problem with the line, during the solving of which she had had to move it out of my arm a little. It’s important that its other end is in the right place in my chest, so I was sent off to get a chest X-ray, while Gillian went to the Pharmacy to collect my new prescriptions. That’s another good reason for being accompanied, as it allows some sharing of the waiting. But that didn’t fully occupy the time before my bag was due to be changed, so we ended up back in the waiting room. I ate lunch: delicious. So was the fairy cake I had for dessert. The patients were thinning out as more and more of them were dealt with, so I was able eventually to wait in one of the comfortable chairs in the treatment room.

At last it was time for the new bag to be fitted, and the dressing change completed. It took about 15 minutes and was trouble-free. As we started to go, one of the other patients commented about my bald head, which sparked off a general conversation about hair-loss amongst all of us who were left. To great hilarity, Gillian suggested that it would grow back ginger and curly. Most of the others thought that it would really be curly for a little while when it grew back. Then I put on my celebration hat (thank you, P+J!) to more general hilarity, and we left.

We were home by 3:30, approximately two and a half hours later than expected. Always take a packed lunch. If not, you’ll have to eat hospital food, which probably isn’t as good as your own.

Tomorrow I go back again, this time for a CT scan, but I won’t get its results until next week’s bag change visit.

10 03 2010 icyjumbo cancer Comments (0) Permalink

Taken ill on public transport

By Gillian

I thought I’d give my version of the events on Sunday, as I am convinced that Chris can’t remember half of what went on! We’d had a really good day on the Saturday. I had been worried about Chris standing for hours in the queue for the Hoard, but the vast majority of the time was spent inside the museum in a long queue that snaked first around the gift shop and then through the galleries.  There were plenty of comfy seats scattered around the galleries, so I stayed in line and Chris moved from one seat to the next and didn’t spend that much time standing after all. Phew.

Sunday started fine, but when we got to Stoke station he suddenly started shouting “Bag! Bag! BAG!” at me. It took me a while to work out what he meant – I though that maybe someone was trying to steal my handbag or one of the suitcases. But what he wanted was the sick-bag I had stashed in my handbag. By the time it became clear what he meant, it was too late – he’d projectile-vomited all over the station concourse. Messy and surprisingly copious….. Fortunately there were some transport policemen handy – keeping an eye on the football supporters I think – and they sent for a cleaning trolley to mop up the yuk.

We’d left plenty of time for the train, so there was no rush – Chris was able to sit & rest on the platform, and said that he felt much better. The train was on time and although it was very busy we managed to get two seats opposite each other with a table in between. About 10 minutes into the journey, somewhere near Stafford, he had a “funny turn” – his eyes rolled up into his head, he couldn’t hear me, and had clearly lost consciousness. This was the second time he’d fainted on me when he was wedged tightly into a small space – last time he was  stuck between the toilet and the bathroom wall, this time he was sitting firmly wedged up against the table. It took two of us, me and the woman sitting next to him, to unwedge him and get him onto the floor of the carriage in something approximating the recovery position.

The journey to Birmingham was only about an hour, but it  felt a very long hour to me! Chris fainted fully at least one more time on the way, and the rest of the time was drifting in and out of semi-consciousness in his seat. Distinctly worrying, to say the least. At Birmingham station, four complete strangers helped me get him and all our luggage off the train. There was another policeman on the platform, and he radioed for Customer Services to come and help. It was at this point that we realised that we had misread the train timetable, and that the next train to Malvern (where we’d left the car) wasn’t for another two hours! So when Customer Services arrived with a wheelchair, I over-ruled Chris’s protestations that he was fine & could walk (he clearly wasn’t and couldn’t) and asked the porter to wheel him to a taxi. An expensive option, but better than hanging around at the station with a sick husband.

The taxi driver had never even heard of Great Malvern, and had to ask a colleague which direction Worcester was. He was a real Brummy local and had never travelled that far away from the city! But he was cheerful and willing, and when I asked him to try to drive gently as Chris was still feeling sick, he drove very smoothly indeed. Chris was still not much more than semi-conscious, so I had to direct the taxi-driver to Malvern station, where he helped me transfer our luggage to our car, then set off back to Birmingham. He said that he had all afternoon to find the way home if he got lost!

I drove us home, and put Chris to bed, but he was shaking and shivering so much that I was still really concerned about him. So I phoned the Chemotherapy Hotline at Cheltenham, and they said they wanted to see him in person to check his bloodcounts. I packed an overnight bag for him in case he was admitted to hospital, and drove him to Cheltenham. We got there about 2:30pm. There were two very ill people in the assessment ward, who clearly took priority over us, and by the time the doctor reached us Chris was feeling quite a bit better and was really rather perky although he’d missed his anti-emetics in all the disruption so was throwing up again.

The duty oncologist put him through a whole battery of tests and was clearly puzzled that she could find nothing much wrong with him. She phoned her on-call consultant for a second opinion, and they decided that there were two options. Either they could admit him overnight for observation, or we could come back the next morning when our own oncologist would be on duty, and we could discuss the situation with him. But they didn’t want me to take Chris all the way back to Malvern overnight – that was too far away from the hospital in case of problems. Fortunately I’d remembered that our friend Richard’s parents were at their Cheltenham flat that weekend, only ten minutes away from the hospital. I’d only met them once before, but when I phoned them and said we were in trouble and needed help, they leapt into action offering food and a bed for the night. The oncologist and her consultant were happy with that compromise and I felt so relieved that we were in good hands.

We went back to the hospital on Monday morning to talk things over with our oncologist. He was happy to discharge Chris back home, but said that slower-time he would want to do some more tests on him, at Worcester, to see if he could get to the problem of what had happened. But it could well be a “multi-factorial problem” which I took to mean “just one of those things that happens when you are seriously ill and pumped full of so many different interacting drugs”. We finally got home at lunch time on Monday, and I got into work only half an hour late for yet another important meeting on the project I’m meant to be running.

I’m still having flashbacks and nightmares about what could have gone wrong, but the main point is that it didn’t. I wish it hadn’t happened, but we got through it fine and everything seems back to normal now.

09 03 2010 Gillian cancer Comments (8) Permalink

The Staffordshire Hoard

As I mentioned earlier, we went to visit the Staffordshire Hoard this weekend, at a temporary exhibition in the Stoke-on-Trent Potteries Art Gallery and Museum. We had tried the previous weekend, but the queues were three-and-a-half hours long, we were told, so we decided that the easiest way to make the visit was to stay overnight, get up early, and join the queue as early as we could. We were there at 09:05 which wasn’t a moment too soon, as the queue was about to reach the three hour mark. Fortunately the museum staff opened the doors an hour early, and we soon reached the two-hour-wait mark, and then made it inside within a few minutes.

Once inside, however, the queue’s movement slowed down quite considerably, so we were quite pleased when some of the museum volunteers showed up dressed in costume to keep us occupied. King Raedwald was the most gorgeous of all of them, dressed as he was in a full replica of the Sutton Hoo burial armour, including helmet, sword and belt decorations, purse, and various other fittings.

This was a good indication of the sorts of things we were to see when we finally got to see the treasure, for it consists mostly of jewel-inlaid gold armour and decorative pieces, some for weapons, and others for garments. Interspersed with these war-like objects were a few with more religious overtones, although they had been treated less than respectfully, and were freuquently badly damaged.

We finally saw the treasure after a little less than two hours of queueing. The pieces were not very clean. It seems that it is forbidden to attempt their proper conservation until after the ownership has been finally decided. You can still see the mud in the detailed view linked to this image of one of our favourite pieces. This image, like all the others in this post, is linked to a larger version, although this is the only one from a set on Flickr. I encourage you to visit the set and see them for yourself. For an extra treat, make the browser window full-size (use the F11 key), and then view the slideshow.

After we saw them, we went back downstairs to make our donations, so that the Hoard could be kept in the region. You can donate, too, if you think keeping this treasure locally is a worthwhile goal. While we were queueing, more volunteers had arrived to entertain the visitors. I particularly enjoyed the off-duty atmosphere down here. These foot-soldiers were enjoying a comfortable chat, while a man was clearly not sure about being groomed in public.

Not only were there soldiers, but also people demonstrating traditional crafts. This man was making brass or copper plaques, hammering a mould into the plaque through a protective piece of lead. Next to him another man was making small pewter coins. I find this sort of revealing of the life of the more common man at least as interesting as the history of the great people that we normally get, which is why I have concentrated on it here.

And here is the final proof, if needed, that we went. Gillian’s hand has the three stamps that she collected while in the queue. The first was given as soon as we joined the indoor queue. The second as we arrived upstairs, with about an hour-and-a-quarter to go, and the final one as we entered the room where the treasure was laid out in cases. I was pleased that we were allowed to go around the room at our own pace, with just peer pressure to govern how long each person spent at every case. There was usually enough room for about six people at a time to see into the case, looking intently at each piece as they worked their way around the case. I was shocked at how tiny some of the items were, but there were large blow-ups of the more interesting pieces around the walls, which allowed us to get a better view of them, and made it easier to make out their designs.

It was a very good visit. The treasure was fascinating, but so was the effort made to keep an unexpectedly vast number of people from becoming too bored while they waited. We were told that the staff expected to get their 50,000th visitor late that day, or early the next, which doesn’t surprise me, but did surprise them, I think. In fact, over 52,000 visitors saw the Hoard before the exhibition closed, which is wonderful. That’s why, although this weekend ended in a way that I didn’t like, I still think of it as a great success.

08 03 2010 icyjumbo Day out
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Cycle 3 week 1 update

What an interesting week! Definitely not straightforward at all. It started with a late entry into hospital for the 3rd cycle, continued with a lovely week of visits with friends and a weekend away, and ended with another unexpected visit to hospital.

The 3rd cycle start itself was uneventful, except that it was the first time I was able to use the 3G dongle I had bought earlier. What a pleasure to get online while in hospital! I found that I was spending many hours online — most of them waiting for downloads and reading — but I was well occupied while all the drips were going through. As ever, the people were extremely convivial, which is part of what makes the chemotherapy visits such a pleasure. Everything seemed to go as planned, and I was home again on Tuesday afternoon.

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I had three different “dates”; one with an old school friend; another with a friend from University; and the third with a group of former colleagues. We ate very well as a consequence. The old school friend brought along a famous chocolate cake, billed as Good Housekeeping’s best chocolate cake in the world! It was wonderful. Dense, rich, thick, and chocolatey, and the best bit is that it is still going strong. The friend from University and I had been swapping biscuit recipes, and she brought a beautiful selection of flavoured shortbreads. They are also delicious. I’m afraid she got the shorter end of the deal as I was only able to give her a single batch of ginger oat biscuits, affectionately known by us as “Cat Biscuits”. (That’s a story for another day, I think.) The third meal was a lunch out at a local pub with a gang of about nine of us, three escapees and six current employees. The food there is very good, but we could have done a bit better if we hadn’t just turned up on spec on a Friday lunchtime. As ever there was far too little time to talk to everyone, but I did manage a bit of a chat with each person, which was great.

On Friday evening we took the train to Stoke-on-Trent, where we were going to stay in a hotel overnight, so that we could get up bright and early to queue for the Staffordshire Hoard. This is a hoard of treasure that was found locally by a metal detectorist, was declared treasure and valued at £3.285M, and was put on display in Birmingham first, and then Stoke-on-Trent. There is a campaign to raise enough money to keep the Hoard in the region and to have it properly conserved and examined. As of yesterday, they seemed well on the way to achieving their donation targets, and so they should! The museum where the temporary display was put on has been inundated with three-and-a-half-hour queues of people to see the treasure, which, of course, is why we went up on the Friday night so that we could join the queue as early as possible. In the event we queued for slightly under two hours, and it was a very jolly occasion all  round. The other people queueing were determined to enjoy themselves, and the queue itself wound around the rest of the museum, so we always had things to look at. Moreover, the museum staff and volunteers exerted themselves mightily to keep us all entertained. One volunteer stood out in particular, as he was dressed as Redwald, the king who was buried at Sutton Hoo in a boat burial. He was wearing a replica of the full Sutton Hoo armour, and looked magnificent. And didn’t he know it too! Another subject for a later post, I think.

After the visit we felt a little anti-climactic, but we wandered around and found a good Italian restaurant that I remembered had positive reviews on TripAdvisor. They let us in early and fed us well, and in the afternoon we staggered back to the hotel for a rest. After another nice meal in the evening we had an early night ready for departure back home in the morning.

All was going well until just before the taxi arrived, when I started feeling a little peculiar. The rough taxi ride can’t have helped, and I threw up all my breakfast on Stoke station concourse. In fact most of it went into a sick bag, with just a little missing it, unfortunately. I think the sight of a man being sick on a match-day morning excited the attention of one of the local policemen, but he soon realized that there aren’t many drunk football hooligans who carry a sick bag, and went to summon cleaning help. I felt a little better, and got onto the train to Birmingham in some relief, but was soon fainting repeatedly, even while sitting down totally relaxed. I think Gillian was quite worried, as she kept insisting that I wake up and lie down on the floor of the train. At Birmingham I was subjected to the indignity of a wheelchair. I say “indignity”, but I couldn’t possibly have walked, so it was a huge relief. We caught a (horrendously expensive) taxi back home and put me to bed while Gillian phoned the hospital.

After checking me over for about six hours, they released me into the care of the Richard’s parents, who have a flat in Cheltenham, and who took in Gillian and me without a moment’s thought. They fed and watered us, put us to bed in a much more comfortable room and bed than the hotel’s and generally took exceptionally good care of us. I’m to go back tomorrow to be checked out again by the consultant, but I think the way I feel now (pretty well, actually) will probably be the clincher in sending me home later today.

I think the kindness of people is what has characterized this week for me. My friends who came to visit, bearing gifts of food (always welcome to me, as I’m sure you know by now!); strangers in Stoke, Birmingham, and on the train who looked after me and Gillian while I was in trouble; friends’ parents who offered room and board; all done with extreme good humour and kindness. It has been an utterly heartwarming week, and in spite of its difficulties, I am profoundly grateful for the experience.

08 03 2010 icyjumbo cancer
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Dexamethasone update

I’ve noticed that my food doesn’t taste very good in the first few days after the start of the chemotherapy cycle. I think it must be due to the dexamethasone (steroids) that I mentioned yesterday as being so good at controlling the nausea as well as maintaining my good mood. Last night’s burger and chips were quite tasteless, in spite of plenty of salt and vinegar, for example.

Today, however, not having taken any steroids this morning, I really enjoyed the Italian lunch I had after we visited the Staffordshire Potteries Art Gallery and Museum in order to look at the famous Staffordshire Hoard. What a relief!

I promise there’ll be more about the visit soon, but it’s too hard to do it justice blogging from a mobile device, as I am today.

06 03 2010 icyjumbo cancer Comments (2) Permalink

My typical chemotherapy hospital stay

There were three of us oesophageal cancer patients out of the four on the ward, and the other two were first timers. I found myself telling them about a typical visit to the hospital for chemotherapy, and thought it might be of wider interest. The information in this post is specific to me, so please don’t tell me that it doesn’t work that way for you or a friend of yours. Treat it as a general idea of what could happen.

Normally I know the day I will go in, and am supposed to ring at 08:30 to confirm,  but often the ward’s bed manager will phone the night before to say there is a bed free and that I should come in. Sometimes, however, there is a delay as there was this time, so there is no guarantee that the treatment will happen on the scheduled day.

Before I go, I will pack a bag of necessaries. I think you’d be surprised at what I consider necessary, so I’ll list them here:

  • two changes of clothes, just in case I have to stay an extra night (as I did this time);
  • enough money to get a taxi home, or the phone number of a reliable alternative transport, in case of unforeseen emergencies;
  • washing things, including a flannel so that you can have a stand-up wash — you won’t be able to shower with the drip attached;
  • a towel;
  • snacks and drinks;
  • something to keep you occupied — I like to have a choice of books, and iPod, and a laptop with a 3G dongle;
  • pen and paper, to take notes about when to take prescriptions, and to write down blog ideas :) ;
  • a mobile phone, to keep in touch with the outside world;
  • chargers for all the electronic devices;
  • slippers and dressing gown;
  • all the medicines I have been prescribed, including the ones left over from the last hospital visit, and my drugs chart which tells me what I take, when.

Eventually I will get a bed, and then I try to get to the hospital for mid-morning, certainly by lunch time. They will detach my bag and fit a pre-hydration saline drip as soon as I arrive. The drip is hung on a rolling pole with a pump that is set to deliver a set amount of liquid over a set period of time. The pre-hydration lasts for about four hours. Towards the end of that drip I will get the first anti-nausea injections (through the drip line), and the first chemotherapy drug, epirubicin, also as an injection or three through the drip line.

The second chemo drug, cisplatin, is given from a bag as a drip lasting another four hours. After that come two post-hydration saline drips, each lasting six hours, so the second one is put on some time in the middle of the night. The pumps have sensors to detect when any problem occurs. Each problem seems to have a different alarm code. The most common problem is an “Occlusion below pump”, which usually means that I have bent my elbow and kinked the line going into my arm. That’s a little like putting a tight bend into a garden hose to temporarily stop the flow. This alarm is a bing bing bong. After a few times seeing the nurse deal with it, you realize that by straightening your arm you have removed the “occlusion” and can safely do what the nurses do, which is to re-start the pump. Simple. Other problems are a little more complex to deal with, so take an expert. And you will get used to the sounds of the pumps’ alarms going off. They do it all the time. They even do it to let you know that they’ve finished. Bing bong.

During the day you will get a menu for the following day’s meals. Even though you’re probably going home the next day, it’s worth choosing something just in case. And even if you do go home the next person in the bed will be grateful. The meals are not huge, however, so if you are eating normally when you’re not in hospital, that’s when the snacks will come in useful. But it’s not a disaster if you forget to bring a snack, because you can buy more at the tuck shop in the main lobby. You can also get a daily newspaper. If you’re really lucky someone will bring a trolley with sweets and newspapers so you don’t have to make the trek or rely on your visitors to bring you things.

A few times a day the observations torture team come around with their testing equipment. Perhaps they won’t torture you, but because I have high blood pressure, the cuff squeezes my arm very tight. They measure the oxygen levels in your blood (O2 sats, which they like to be in the high 90%s) and also take your temperature, probably in your left ear because most nurses are right handed.

The other regular-ish round is for dispensing your drugs. You will have a lot. You will likely have your own prescriptions which you will have been asked to bring in with you, and the nurses will dispense both your own drugs and the ones prescribed during the chemotherapy itself. These are mainly to control nausea and sickness, and they work extremely well. I never feel sick at all while I am having chemo, which I put down to the this drug regime. One of the drugs you will likely be given is a steroid, Dexamethasone, which is wonderful. Steroids give you lots of energy, and they make me very outgoing and gregarious. Everyone else is on the same drug, I think, so the ward is almost always a fun place to be. There is always someone to talk to if you want to. Often the nurses will stop and chat too, even though they are very busy.

The last things that happen to me before the visit is over is that I get a new bag with the final chemo drug, 5-FU or 5-fluorouracil, attached to my PICC line, and then that I get a visit from the pharmacist to make sure that I have an adequate supply of all the drugs I need. The pharamacist will be giving you a TTO pack, which stands for to take out I think. That pack will have everything you need to get you through to the next visit you make to the hospital, which is for my weekly bag change in my case. There will also be some anti-sickness drugs, probably more than you need, so you will be asked to bring back the spares on your next chemotherapy visit. It’s worth writing down what you need to take when, because it can get quite complicated.

I have found every single chemotherapy hospital visit a really good experience. It’s strange to recognize it, but it really is true. You are totally looked after. The drugs keep you feeling good, and the people always turn out to be friendly, and to have a lot in common with you, which gives you someone with whom you can compare notes, and from whom you can get tips. Whatever it is, it’s not something to be afraid of. I welcome my visits to the hospital. You probably will too.

04 03 2010 icyjumbo Uncategorized Comments (5) Permalink

A recipe from hospital

Hospital food is renowned. Even today when it’s a lot better than it was in the past, it’s still not great. Think of school dinners, but with smaller portions. I think most of us on the ward spend a disproportionate amount of time waiting for the next meal. With that in mind I thought I would write about one of my more successful recipes: scrambled eggs.

“What a humble dish!” you’re probably thinking, and often you would be right. If you Google howto scramble eggs or recipe scrambled eggs, then each of the first two hits gives the same sort of instructions. They all start by getting you to break some eggs into a bowl, add salt, maybe add milk or cream, and beat lightly. This is plain wrong. In fact, most of what is written about scrambling eggs gives you the sort of meal you get in a café. My scrambled eggs would not be out of place in a good restaurant.

The traditional way A better way
4 eggs 4 eggs
Butter 1.5 oz unsalted butter
salt seasoning
milk or cream 2 tbs crème fraîche

In the traditional recipe you break the eggs into a bowl, add some salt and maybe some milk or cream, whisk the eggs lightly and then pour into a lightly buttered, small frying or omelette pan. Cook them over a medium or low heat, keeping them moving so that they don’t go rubbery. Add something to flavour them, such as smoked salmon, and turn out over some toast. A perfectly respectable dish. Scrambled eggs can be so much more.

In a medium saucepan, melt the unsalted butter over a low heat. I know it sounds like a lot, but it’s worth it, I promise. Break the eggs carefully into the pan. Don’t whisk them, or even break the yolk. Do not add salt yet. If you do, the eggs will be watery. With a spatula keep moving the eggs around. The whites will start to set, and shortly one of the yolks will break and join the mixture. Just incorporate the yellow with the white naturally. The motion should be a sort of scoop and turn with the spatula. Continue doing this while the eggs cook. They’ll cook quite slowly, and will stay liquid for some time. You want to cook them very slowly, so every now and again take the pan off the heat and stir for a while.

Eventually the eggs will begin to set. When they look fluffy and almost set, but they are still soft, take the pan off the heat and add the crème fraîche. That will stop the eggs cooking any more. You can also add the flavouring ingredients, including the salt. I like chives and smoked salmon, or parma ham, torn into strips.

Turn out the eggs onto toast. Some authorities recommend toasted sour dough bread, which is very good, but any good bread toasted lightly will be wonderful with this recipe.

And now it’s confession time. This isn’t my recipe at all, it comes from Gordon Ramsey:

UPDATE: Edited to correct the egregiously misspelt yolk. Thank you, Carol.

01 03 2010 icyjumbo cancer
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Status report — from hospital

I didn’t expect to be writing this from my hospital bed1 as I had hoped to be here tomorrow, but an urgent phone call from the ward sister led to my early arrival in the ward. A funny end to a funny week.

Things were going rather well at the beginning of the week. The sickness of the previous week seemed banished and I had plenty of energy. I had found an even better arm protector for the shower and I was looking forward to the third cycle of chemotherapy.

But in the second half of the week, I found that I had hurt my back, probably from over-exuberant snow shovelling, which made daily living quite hard and sleep almost impossible. Losing sleep is one of the best ways to lower my mood, so I haven’t felt great during the last few days. Even so, we did manage a nice day out driving around the countryside and visiting an English Heritage site on Friday. Better yet, we went to the John Williams concert last night, which was wonderful. His style is so economical, and he is so normal, that it is a wonder that such great music comes from him. He played Albeniz’s Asturias, Brouwer’s Volos Concerto, and Myers’s Cavatina. I don’t know why he is so keen on Cavatina, which always seems overly sentimental to me, but he is, and it brought the house down. I preferred the Albeniz, which I have played myself (very badly and slowly), and I found the Brouwer quite a challenge.

I slept very well last night, and was looking forward to a fun day when the nurse phoned to say that there was a bed free, and that I should come in this afternoon, so here I am. I shall be in for two nights, which means, unfortunately, that I shall have to cancel two dates with friends. Such a shame, as my time to see people is limited not only by their availability, but also by my medical necessities.

I have finally cut my morphine intake right down to zero, and am delighted about that. I didn’t want to be dependent on pain killers, especially ones that had such a … errr … clogging effect on my insides.2

My weight continues to rise, and was 11st 10lb (164 lb for our American readers — hello Ryan) this morning. That means that I have put on at least 7 lb in the last two weeks, which I find amazing. I have been told that there is no reason why I should not continue to put on more weight if I can do so. I asked about exercise, and was gently dissuaded from taking too much, not while I am on this aggressive a treatment regime. But walking is OK. How about that! Eat more and don’t bother exercising. Treating cancer truly is a weird way of life!

  1. Last time I was here, the man in the next bed had a 3G dongle that he was using to get online. I was astonished at how cheap it was to get mobile Internet, but it’s well within my budget, so here I am. ↩
  2. As a long-term patient one gets to be very conscious of all one’s bodily functions, in which the doctors are also inordinately interested. Sometimes I forget quite how unusual it is to speak about my  bowels in polite company. Please forgive me if I do it too often. ↩
28 02 2010 icyjumbo Uncategorized
cancer
status Comments (12) Permalink

Chemotherapy Round 3 Delayed

By Gillian

Chris was meant to go into hospital yesterday for an overnight stay to have his third round of chemotherapy. Unfortunately, there is an outbreak of Norovirus at Cheltenham General hospital, and apparently some wards are closed. The upshot is that there wasn’t a bed for him yesterday. We phoned again this morning, and still no bed available. I had taken the day off work to be able to do the driving, so we decided to go out and enjoy ourselves with the unexpected free day. We went to Witley Court, one of our favourite English Heritage sites and had a thoroughly enjoyable time.

A view of the East Wing of Witley Court from the Flora fountain

When we got home at 3:30pm, there was a message on the answerphone from the hospital asking us to call the Bed Manager. I did so, and it turned out that she had called after lunch to say that a bed had unexpectedly become available if we could get down there immediately. But by the time we picked up the message we had missed the opportunity!  We will try again on Monday and hope that there is a bed free.

One good thing about the delay is that we will be able to go to a John Williams concert tomorrow night at Malvern Festival Theatre. We bought the tickets many months ago, well before the cancer was diagnosed, and it was looking very likely that Chris would be unable to go if the chemotherapy had happened when it was originally planned.

26 02 2010 Gillian cancer Comments (4) Permalink

LibriVox needs your help

Since it was founded four and a half years ago, LibriVox has run on donations of hardware and time. We have literally no money and no income. In that time we have produced well over 3,000 audio books, and placed them all into the public domain. Our book production rate is growing constantly and we can no longer trespass on the good will of a small number of kind people and organisations who have donated their resources free of cost to us.

We are therefore asking for donations to help with funding

  • hosting costs for the main LibriVox site, which is where all co-ordination happens, and all information about the project is kept. It doesn’t include the hosting of our audio files, for which we remain indebted to Archive.org.
  • a site redesign to improve accessibility
  • an easier-to-use catalogue for our readers
  • improvements to the management software, to help the admins do their job more smoothly.

We aim to raise $20,000 which we hope will cover our costs for the next four and a half years. Donations are being collected for us by Archive.org, as we don’t have our own means of taking them. We will close the account as soon as we reach our target. If you can help, please donate something to our project, even if it is only a small amount. We, and all the people who listen to the audiobooks we produce, will be tremendously grateful. Thank you.

25 02 2010 icyjumbo librivox Comments (2) Permalink