New Regime: No more Cocktails!

For all you Myeloma fans out there, it is probably worth a quick catch-up on FL's health.

He went to the GP yesterday to get his Warfarin prescription. This is needed to thin his blood in advance of taking Revlimid. Once his INR reaches "2", he has to make a hospital appointment for the great big Revlimid sign-up ceremony.

Of course, the GP didn't know what he was talking about, as the referral letter had not yet arrived from the hospital (sent 23 December). She had to ring the hospital and ask them to fax a copy across. Her first reaction was "But you are looking so well!" - hmmm.... that sounds familiar! She also forgot to give him an anticoagulant record book (I think he has an old one somewhere) or to discuss the banned substances: cranberry juice and alcohol are the main offenders. So that's his Sea Breeze habit out of the window then (joke!). But seriously, he is not amused to think he has to give up drinking. I am not-so-secretly looking forward to it. There were rather too many "wee nips" administered by well-meaning golf friends over the holiday period, leading to strange upward mood swings followed by maudlin slumps: ugh!

The weather has prevented him from golfing for almost two months, although he managed 9 holes on the ice at the weekend. He is still driving me to and from work every day because we only have one car at the moment.

I didn't blog about his car windscreen being smashed while he was parked at the end of the farm road during the snow. (A "24-hour service" repair was booked and has been awaited since 24 December - yes, they have been reminded.) He reckons the breakage was deliberate. His back lights were broken too.

I would prefer to blame bad driving by the snow plough, as I get spooked by the suggestion that odd things happen at the end of our road - bins set on fire, my car apparently having all its fluids drained etc : ( This morning, he took The Girl down the road to meet the school bus, and realised the ice was too bad for him to get back up the hill again, so he walked up the fields, leaving (he says) my car parked facing downhill by the bins. By the time we got back to it (perhaps ten minutes later) it had apparently been turned around by 180 degrees, and was abandoned in the middle of the "main" road, facing uphill. Our first instinct was that something had hit it, but there are no signs of damage. There were weird gouges out of the ice, as if a digger had scraped along it... as if (FL's next theory) someone had scooped up our car with their tractor forks.... and then dropped it again...?! It's lucky we came down so soon as the car was obstructing the road. Bizarre. Horrible. And I have the nagging worry that his memory is playing tricks and that he actually left the car as we found it...

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes - his health. He told me last night that his feet are bothering him. Walking over smooth ground in his thick-soled boots is like "walking barefoot on bones with no flesh attached over rough gravel". Walking arm in arm down the field this morning, he was noticeably unsteady on his feet (and it wasn't slippery on the grass).

He is sleeping a lot in his recliner chair during the day and in the evenings, then struggling to sleep in bed at night.

He is eating a lot more junk between meals and in the middle of the night: pork pies, Snickers bars - all high-calorie unhealthy stuff. It's as if he is (pardon the expression) feeding his cancer. I noticed this when his numbers were rising before.

And he is very cold. He is burning the log fire all night, sitting huddled over it. Which is not a good thing for his lungs as the chimney is badly in need of sweeping (another one of those stories about workmen who refuse to turn up) and it gets very smoky. And he keeps forgetting to take his asthma inhalers.

The mood swings are hard to deal with, but I want to blame the New Year drinking sessions for these. Now that he is forbidden to drink (ha! lets see how long that lasts!) I am hopeful that these will ease off.

Pain? Some in his chest / ribs. His feet, as above. Cramps at night (tonic water bottle still unopened - tsk!). Odd, shooting pains in unexpected and totally random places - it was his eyeball last night.

And memory lapses. He keeps feeding the dog multiple meals, thinking he hasn't fed him yet. I watched him do it the other night and he didn't believe me. I argued the point for some time because I absolutely definitely certainly knew. So he thinks the dog is off his food when he leaves the bowl untouched, and we are getting through tinned meat at an alarming rate. I am going to have to monitor his Warfarin intake or he is going to be in real trouble.

My - that was a cheerful catalogue of symptoms wasn't it?! Sigh.