Eleventh Day at Home

Sorry not to have posted for the past three days. Been busy!

Richard's Wednesday appointment with Prof Hanna went well. Though exhausted while sitting in the waiting room, when we were called he walked up the flight of steps to be greeted by Melinda and Prof Hanna. A real showman! They were impressed. Prof Hanna reviewed everything with Richard and told him he was very pleased with the pathology reports on the bits they had removed. Apparently it shows that the cancer is very chemo sensitive which is good and if I have this right, cancer cells were not found in the extremities of the bits they removed, a very good sign. Generally very pleased with everything except the cough and continuing infection in the chest. So he said he'd set up an appointment with a chest specialist colleague at St. Mary's Hospital. Prof Hanna and a nurse inspected the belly incision and changed the dressing. They did their fair amount of poking and prodding and seemed pleased enough saying we should just keep having the district nurses attend to it. Prof Hanna said yes, stop the antibiotics for the tummy incision.

We went down a block on Harley street to see Haley, the Speech and Language Therapist for a very brief consultation in which it was decided that everything was going so well we'd wait for a few weeks before booking another appointment.

Ate out at our local with a friend and went to bed fairly early at our flat in London. Around 2:30 Richard had a coughing attack which did expel the largest amount of mucus to date, from his lungs. But it was pretty uncomfortable for him. For most of the rest of the night he sputtered and coughed trying to get more up but with not much success and we both were drained by the morning.

Despite that we got on with the day and Richard walked to his barber Michael, a good ten minute walk away while I ran some errands. Richard returned to the flat accompanied by the loving presence of Michael. His kindness is healing.

Richard got driven back to the country by a friend while I went to an appointment regarding the JoseLondon Show which I am helping to hang in April. I returned to the tail end of a lunch party with three friends which Richard had organised. We had a good, relaxed evening and a pretty good night's sleep as compared to the previous one.

On Thursday the dressing was changed and it's looking better. Melinda called and said she had an appointment for Friday afternoon to see Dr. Kon, the chest specialist at St. Mary's. We also booked an appointment to see lovely Stephanie, the nutritionist as she also offices at St. Mary's. We spent the day carrying out our routine tasks, medicines, flushes of the jujostemy (feeding) tube, meals, puddings, snacks, skandishakes, walking outside, rest, breathing exercises blah, blah, blah. Francois is cooking us delicious food, Caroline is keeping us in clean clothes and bed linen and Mark and Maisie are getting the Walled Garden into a productive state. Rosa and Yooee are watching after us in their wonderful doggy fashion.

So, after a not so good night sleeping-wise because of the cough and having lunch with a good friend who drove down from London, we drove in to the city and saw Stephanie (some new nutient rich drinks to substitute for the skandishakes) and Dr. Kon who after examining Richard wrote out a prescription for an antibiotic to fight what is technically still pneumonia, the slight infection sitting in his right lung, the one which they had to collapse for the operation. He didn't seem too concerned and expected that it should show signs of improvement in two or three days. I frantically ran to fill the prescription while Richard waited in the car and by 8pm he had the first two 5ml spoonfuls in his mouth and we drove back to Whithurst to have Francois' cottage pie and cauliflower cheese followed by amazing custard from our very own chickens eggs.

Had a bit better night, though still not great and carried on with the day seeing the wonderful district nurse at 11am  for a dressing change. Things are slow but improving.

Have been having a few guests for small lunches and some friends just stopped by for a drink so it has been a nice mix of quiet and active times.

We both are trying to learn to be patient and not allow fear to overshadow the light of love all around.