Christmas is coming, my belly's getting fat... 

Thats truer than I'd like... The doctors are worried I'll lose my appetite and weight under the chemo regime. They've been encouraging me to  eat lots and often, including extra 'food substitute'  drinks. Fortunately my appetite is doing fine. Less fortunately I'm spending half of each month in hospital, and am less active when I'm at home so my finely developed abs (I wish....) are converting themselves to blubber.  Well, it's not really that bad - but I am developing a slight pot - which is unusual for chemo patients...

My last session of chemo was different. One drug, high doses, four sessions at twelve hour intervals. The drug is one of the two i have had in previous sessions. The difference is that I get 2 grams of the stuff in the bag, rather than 0.1 gram as in the previous session. That's right - 20 times as much, and the sessions are 12 hourly rather than 24 hours apart. The four sessions stretch over 2 days and left me feeling worse than I have since the first session four months ago.

Apart from nausea and generally feeling like crap the other interesting side effect is dry eyeballs. Really. I woke up unable to open my eyes because the eyelids were stuck to my eyeballs. Truly unpleasant. To counter that and make sure there was no permanent damage to my cornea I was getting eyedrops every two hours for about 60 hours. That meant no real sleep which added to the general unpleasantness.  At the end of the session instead of being up and raring to leave I took the hospital up on the recommendation that I stay in and rest - and slept for most of it.

On the bright side my hair is stating to return.  Still nothing like it was, but I now have a visible hairline again and need to shave bits of my face every two or three days. I was quite getting used to not having to shave at all, but its nice to have a little fluff on my head again.

Also I've had a surprising number of people mention how well I'm looking - that's nice to hear, but of course it makes me want to say 'So I was looking crap last time, huh?'  Actually I think it's the hair, and the fact that it's colder - I have some colour in my face and look less like, er , a cancer patient...

My sister Isobel is passing through Anyway - I'm out at home till Jan 2nd which is great! Two weeks off for good behaviour.for 5 days on her way from Aus to the UK too which I'm looking forward to as well. We haven't seen each other in a couple of years -  though thats not a record  by any means.

More anon - I'll be baaack!

I'VE GOT LEUKAEMIA!!!  OK?? 
So maybe shouting's unnecessary - but sometimes I feel as though I've said it a thousand times and still people are asking me why I shaved my head.  I want my life back.