New opportunities

I thought I’d write a brief update as I have been back to the fracture clinic this week….and am pleased to say that I have been told that my foot is finally healing well and whilst not 100%, it doesn’t require me to stay in a boot!

It’s brilliant news although I had already started doing small walks etc without the boot on as my foot felt so much better. I can still feel it a bit and I can’t say I’m ready to go running or anything like that yet, but it is nice to feel that things are progressing in the right direction. The consultant was very clear, physio won’t help it particularly, and I shouldn’t play netball or racquetball for another 10-12 weeks.

I can’t say I’m pleased about the second part of the outcome, but nonetheless, I do realise that it isn’t just me that it impacts when I have these breaks. Nick ends up having to do so much more, both around the house, and in terms of driving and ferrying the kids around. And then there are all the family and friends that I also end up having to ask to help pick up the pieces. So, I have promised that I won’t go back to sport too quickly and that I will make sure I take it easy when I do. And here, in writing, I promise, that if I break that same bone again playing sport, that I will stop the netball and racquetball altogether 😦 .

That said, I do need my sport. It makes me feel so much more positive and so much better about myself. But if I have another break, I’ll have to find another way of challenging myself without doing high impact sport. It won’t be yoga, pilates or swimming, but perhaps tennis is slightly less ‘bouncy’!

In terms of my myeloma, it continues on a gentle path. Since just before we moved to the Midlands, my figures have been ever so slowly rising. And I mean REALLY REALLY slowly, so no need to panic anyone! I’m certainly not. It is so slow that I would imagine that I’ll have well over a year before I even have to consider restarting treatment….and if the numbers stop going up, much longer! I was talking to Nick the other day and all it means is it gives me a focus on not procrastinating with things that I want to do. I’m going to think of it as a timeline to work against and if that timeline extends, even better!

So, I’ve started trying to find a venue for my next fundraising event which will be some sort of large cheese and wine dinner. I’m hoping that we might get the venue where Nick and I got married, but we’ll have to see….I’ll need to work some magic with pricings to make it effective! I’ll be looking out for sponsors and some auction prizes too so if you have connections, maybe you can start thinking…..it won’t be as big as the Glitz and Glamour Ball, and the auction certainly won’t be so big, but I really want to raise this extra £10,000 and reach £100,000 before any relapse gets hold of me!

Over and out for now….got some bits to get sorted for #myelomaawarenessweek in June!

 

Blips and botherations

Every time I write a post, I swear that the next one won’t wait until I am feeling fed up….and every time, I seem to fail!

So to update on the last blog post, my back is now perfect! I thought it would be…I was 95% sure that it had been caused by driving for 8 hours in a pick up truck! But the paranoid side of a myeloma patient meant that there is always that slight fear that it could be something else that has kicked in. However, the anti-inflammatories did their job and just before the time that my consultant might have re-considered the need for an X-ray, my back recovered.

I was so relieved. And so pleased to be able to get back into my circuit training, my netball and playing racketball with Sam and Nick. I love sport. I particularly like active, adrenalin rush stuff where I can push my competitive nature to the max. So I re-signed up for the racketball league and we got the in-laws ready to babysit while Nick and I went back to our Thursday night games (date night!). Alongside weight-watchers, I started to lose a pound or two and everything felt better.

Around this time, I decided to get back to fundraising and set up my new page (www.justgiving.com/thefinalcountdown) to start me off in my target to raise £10,000 this year. So I decided to give up alcohol, chocolate, crisps and nuts and I signed up to the Windor Colour obstacle rush with 3 of my friends. Life was feeling really good and I couldn’t wait to get fit….I was even thinking, in the back of my mind, whether I could possibly do the Great North Run in October.

But, then, in February, the rollercoaster started to go downhill again. It started when I rolled my foot slightly playing netball. But it wasn’t too bad and just felt a bit sore. So I carried on playing and booked myself in for a GP appointment to try to get a referral for it. Last year I had broken it in two places and it was the 5th metatarsal break that was still feeling sore now and again so I decided I ought to get it checked out. But I’m not the sort of person who takes things easy, so while I was waiting, I strapped it up and carried on playing netball and racketball. Then, one evening when Nick and I were playing, I lunged for a ball and heard the snap. I knew immediately that it wasn’t good news, and I couldn’t put any weight on my foot at all.

I have to say that for once I absolutely devastated. I sat on the floor of the squash court and sobbed my eyes out. Despite hating the phrases ‘It’s not fair or ‘Why me?’, I’m afraid that both were used. I had/ have totally had enough of it. Since my diagnosis in 2009, I have worked so hard to be positive, to find the best in my situation and to make the most of it through how we live our life as a family, and how I fundraise to try to make a difference to Myeloma UK and myeloma patients. But when, every time things start going well, you get hit with another illness or injury, it can start to become so wearing and depressing. It turned out I had yet again broken my 5th metatarsal.

Initally, when these things happen, I tend to just get on with it. Everyone is so kind and giving and even up here where I don’t know so many people, I had lots of offers of help. My lovely sister spent 5 hours overnight in A&E with me so that Nick could get some sleep and be able to go to work. Parents of Sam and Rebecca’s friends, Nick’s parents and my sister sorted out the school runs as it is my right foot and I can’t drive. My sister took me to hospital appointments for both my break and for my regular myeloma appointments. My old friends from Wycombe even came up over half-term as I couldn’t get to them like arranged – so kind as it meant the kids didn’t miss out on their friends yet again.

But now, nearly 4 weeks on, I’ve had enough of it. My foot is back in its boot and still hurts as much as it did and I am embarrassed to be asking people I barely know for lifts all the time for the kids. I’m scared stupid in case it doesn’t get better for months or in case I end up needing surgery on it….I can’t see how I can keep asking people for help….no matter how much they offer to help, I worry that with them not knowing me, that they won’t understand how hard it is for me to accept help. Or that they’ll resent me for asking. Part of me really wishes we were back in Wycombe where the kids could walk to school on their own had they really needed to (although, please know that we have all settled really well up here – I don’t want to be totally negative!)

I love where we live up here…in the Clent Hills. It is green and beautiful and while I write this, there are blue skies and no clouds to be seen. But at the moment that is all I get to admire about the area as I can’t walk anywhere and barely get out of the house. There isn’t a shop around so apart from hobbling to the letterbox 100 yards down the road, I can’t get out and about at all. It certainly becomes wearing and lonely, and is enough to put you off any house!

It has probably all been made to feel worse with it being Mothering Sunday yesterday. It’s 16 months since mum was killed…and it all came to a head yesterday. It took me a while to work out why I was in such a bad mood and finding the day so hard. The kids have made/bought me lovely cards and I should have been happy as larry. But I did really miss her and couldn’t stop thinking of how the car would have hit her and how that second of shock must have been. I kept thinking back to the autopsy report and how awful the injuries would have been if she had survived it. And I just felt a massive, empty space in my heart. I miss her voice, I miss her top trumping anyone and everyone (my family will understand that one!) and I miss her love for us all.

I’m sure this is just one of those blips…by the time I next write (knowing me, not for a couple of months!) I’ll probably have had 2 months of being on an upward journey again! We have had some quite exciting news in that we have had an offer accepted on a house so could have moved again within 2-3 months if it all goes through. In addition, my niece who lives locally, has got engaged which means that in 2016, we’ll have been lucky enough to see 3 of them get married – and I feel so lucky to get to do that as it was one of my sad worried in the early days of diagnosis.

So, I suppose the reality is I need to keep focusing on the positive things that are going on. That said….it’s not always a bad thing to acknowledge the things that drag you down….at least then you can work towards dealing with them.

 

 

Give me a break?

I’m over the moon at the moment. Yesterday, my plaster cast was taken off my foot, and, to my delight, I haven’t even had to have an aircast boot put back on! It sounds like the bone is healing nicely (we didn’t look at the old break!) and he was happy for me to slowly build up my strength in it again. So the crutches have been discarded and I’m on the go again! I’ve even started driving short distances although am a bit wary of doing longer distances for a few days in case anything happens. The only thing is that I have to wear walking boots to do long walks for a while…… I didn’t ask about netball. I don’t want to know! I am desperate to get back to it, and am hoping that perhaps in a couple of weeks, my foot will feel strong enough to at least play a quarter of a match. Not that the team wants the responsibility of me getting it wrong, so I think I’ll have to be more sensible than I might like!

I am so lucky to have had such amazing friends though. Since I broke my foot, I have had great friends taking me to work, picking me up from work and helping wherever else they can. And poor Nick, who has recently had the luxury of a little more time from work, has spent most of his time running me or the kids around, doing shopping or other chores, or generally being my dogsbody. And most of the time he has done it with the most amazing grace! I owe him, and the others, big time. I hate taking help from people but have had no choice with this. It was worse in many ways than when I had my transplant…then I could force myself to do stuff even if it laid me up afterwards. This time, I couldn’t even drive. I lost ALL of my independence…and anyone who knows me will know how that will have affected me! But as always, I just feel blessed to have such fab friends!

So here’s to things in life starting to look up in the Gascoyne family! There is lots that could go wrong (Nick has just taken redundancy, the house is back on the market, my mum’s final coroners report is next week and there is the obvious black mark over us with my myeloma) but I feel like it is our time for things to start going right after a pretty torrid 6 months! I think we are both using this time to focus on what we really want and I hope that we’ll both make the right decisions, both workwise and personally. We normally do pretty well, so hopefully this will keep going!! Life is too short to make the wrong decisions or to be unhappy!