Update

A lot has happened.

P’s last round of chemo was in early August.  He then had to have scans to establish one of two outcomes: the first was the most positive – that the “Stormtrooper” chemo had shrunk the cancers in his liver sufficiently that they could operate and still leave enough liver left to function.  And the other was palliative chemo – essentially, keeping him alive for as long as he had the quality of life to bear it.  Even before chemo had ended, P was saying he really didn’t want any more – he was unfailingly stoic about the side effects but it was relentless.  It was only me bursting into tears and begging him to do anything that would keep him alive and making him promise, that made him back down. 

We saw the oncologist just before his final round of chemo who said we should hear the end of that week or beginning of the next week but that he hoped he wouldn’t see us again – that he hoped the next appointment would be with the surgeons as it would mean that P could have the op.  And we waited.  The end of that week went, the next week went – and then we got an appointment with oncology for a fortnight’s time.  I tried to think of any way this could be interpreted positively and came up with nothing.  My birthday was in the middle of all this – it was not a good birthday anyway, but I had no interest in celebrating anything with the prospect of terminal cancer hanging over us.  I couldn’t help but wonder where we’d be next year – whether I would be ‘celebrating’ alone.  I got to the point where I practically begged P to speak to the specialist nurses.  No, not “practically”, I did.  They kept saying they’d call back and then they didn’t. 

Three days after my birthday, I got a text message from P.  I’d been in a meeting and he hadn’t been able to get me.  I found it incredible hard to read and had to call him.  But what I thought it said, it did say – that, despite best predictions, the Stormtrooper chemo had not only reduced the cancer lesions, it had destroyed them.  There was no sign of any cancer left in him.  My legs went to jelly, I thought I was going to pass out, that I was going to cry, that I was hearing things.  The euphoria of relief was overwhelming.  It felt like winning the lottery – except this was so much better than winning the lottery.  No sum of money could be better than the prospect of having a future with P back. 

I have been touched by others’ reactions too: several of our friends cried with relief.  Others desperately want to celebrate with us – we’ll be celebrating until Christmas!  People we barely knew were jubilant – my new colleagues, two of whom flung their arms around me (not simultaneously), my hairdresser (who also cuts P’s hair (although he’s lost a lot during chemo))

The next week P was due at the GP as his current sick notice was due to expire.  She offered to extend it, but, with his usual phlegmatic level headedness, he’s actually back at work.  Only working a half day, in the middle of the day, so that he doesn’t have to travel in the rush hour (with all the germy people).  His immune system will be depressed for another 6 months.  And he gets very tired.  But he’s hurtled back to normality.  And we go on holiday at the beginning of next week for 10 days to Marrakech, so he can have some rest and some sunshine (although hopefully not a dodgy stomach as he’s had quite enough of that).  And then we’ll see.  I know I will be terrified again in November when he has more scans and then an appointment to check it’s not come back/popped up elsewhere.  But I’m determined to deal with that terror then and enjoy the blessed relief of now.  Now we can properly celebrate his birthday on Friday ahead of our holiday.

And then, after Marrakech, I need to get properly back on the wagon.  Over the last month and a half, I’ve put on a stone and a half – which is mind-blowingly appalling.  And that’s with me getting so terrified I couldn’t get food down me sometimes.

Helpless

Well, after your praise and admiration that I’d lost nearly 4.5 st, I have lost the plot entirely and put a stone of that back on.  It seems that anxiety is a HUGE trigger for me (no pun intended, although…).  When I was lost in the exhausting treadmill of work/hospital/(briefly)home (rinse, repeat), I don’t recall being massively hungry – I really only ate marmite on toast for dinner for almost every day that month and maybe a snack at the hospital by P’s bed. 

Now, though, the eating is out of control.  I’m constantly hungry, constantly greedy and always thinking about what I can eat next.  I’m also intensely anxious – and that is still increasing.  Next week we ‘hope’ (if hope is the right word) to hear whether the ‘stormtrooper chemo’ has worked, has worked enough to shrink the tumours and that the tumours have shrunk enough that if removed, there would be enough liver left to perform its function.  Every day I feel more anxious about this – it actually feels like someone is turning some kind of key, tightening my anxiety. I am simultaneously desperate to know and terrified of knowing.  I have (probably) a week to wait – maybe more.  They seem to think if they don’t make the purpose of the appointments explicit, you a) won’t realise and therefore won’t be worrying and b) you can’t hold them to anything.  I can always worry.  I was good at worrying before – now I am truly world class at worrying.  But he has a scan tomorrow, ahead of the final dose of chemo next week and another scan on that day.  

If the tumours have shrunk, I imagine they’ll want him in to operate on pretty sharpish, in case they start growing again. 

I feel sick (and not just because of the amount of rubbish I’m eating) and constantly on the edge of tears.  At night I lie awake, not even really able to think clearly, just with a whirlwind of impressions going through my head. 

P is impressively sanguine.  He has determined that it will all go well and seems to be able to just exclude any other possibility from his mind.  I don’t want to confess how much weaker and more scared I am as I don’t want to give him the burden of dealing with me, as well as whatever he may face next week.  I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep it up, mind.

And really, the eating lots of rubbish thing is not helping with the feeling that I’m careering, out of control, in some terrifying analogous car.  And yet, I’m finding it very difficult to stop.

People are strange

They really are.

I have to say that mostly, people have been very kind.  Admittedly (and naturally) these people tend to be friends or colleagues.  I have been moved to tears several times by the kindness of people who go out of their way to show and/or tell us that they love us.

Then there are people who are not kind – usually through clumsiness, rather than malice, I know.  I was furious and extremely distressed when my band nurse told me that I had to get rid of stress from my life or my band would react.  I said it wasn’t really possible to rid my life of stress at the moment or for the foreseeable future – and they do know about P.  She then started going on about mindfulness exercises and playing music.  Excuse me, but a piece of music that would make me feel better about the very real prospect of losing the person I love most in the world?  That piece of music doesn’t exist.  And what an unbelievably crass and stupid thing to say.  I was crying but I’m still not sure if it was anger or misery – a bit of both, I guess.

But then there are others.  I have a friend who I thought was a good friend.  She’s not in touch a lot – but last time she messaged me to see how I was, I did actually say that I was struggling, that I was finding it very tough.  I actually find it quite hard to admit just how unhappy I am and just how poorly I am coping.  I haven’t heard from her since.  It’s hurtful.  I know that not everyone can find it easy to deal with this situation, it must be hard to know what to say.  In fact, I know there IS nothing that anyone can say or that anyone can do, but it’s very lonely and even a ‘thinking of you’ message helps.

Another drab update

Thank you for bearing with me. Life is upside down and I post infrequently, off-topic and in a most un-engaging way.  Let’s get the health stuff out of the way and then I’ll do a half-hearted post on weight loss.

P is about to start on his 2^nd round of chemo.  He’s had side effects but nothing too bad or too dramatic.  We understand that these side effects can be cumulative – but hopefully he won’t have too rough a time of it.  He is positive and cheerful.  I find it difficult to follow this admirable example.  The odds sound scarily slim to me: the chemo has to work, it has to work sufficiently that it shrinks the lesions so the surgical team can remove them from his liver – and then there has to be sufficient liver left if they are to do this, to ensure it can still do its job.  There seem like an awful lot of dependencies here.  We won’t know whether it’s worked and whether they can operate until sometime in August.  It feels relentless.  I’m beginning to find it sapping, emotionally.  This has been going on since mid-February.  I just want it to be over.  But of course, I only want it be over if it’s the right over.  If we can get back to our lives.  If we have another 20+ years together to look forward to.  If we look back on this as a terrible time, but one in the past.

The uncertainty.  It’s my birthday at the end of August.  I’ve booked us somewhere nice for dinner.  But hopefully, he’ll be in hospital.  What a horrible thing it is to hope for this.  We’re due to go to Marrakech in late September.  It’s impossible to look this far ahead.  The flights are booked and paid for, the hotel is paid for.  We just don’t know if this is money wasted or whether we’ll get our, frankly, much-needed break.

Weight loss: well, it’s been a year since surgery.  A bit longer since I’ve been getting my head down and dieting.  I’ve lost almost 4.5st.  I’m almost at my post LL weight – albeit that it’s taken over a year to get (back) here, rather than 100 days.  I know it still sounds like a lot – and it is a lot and I am pleased (as much as I’m pleased about anything now) - but it has been slow and frustrating.  My pattern seems to be for the scales not to shift for ages, then to drop quite a bit and then to bounce back up, before inching back downwards.  This is illogical.  I still don’t have the result from the band that I should have – I am still very hungry.  Much over 1000 cals a day and I start putting it back on.  I had to have a de-fill recently because I couldn’t swallow anything – but in another month or so, I’ll try another fill.  It should mean I’m satisfied with small portions and not hungry again for c4 hours.  I think I eat less, but I last c2.5 hours before I’m hungry again.  I spend a lot of time hungry.  It does add to the general feeling of finding life quite hard at the moment.  But equally, I know that if I started steadily putting weight on, I’d feel a lot worse.  Apparently the band can tighten as a result of stress – this is why they think I needed a de-fill.  So I may need another one yet, rather than putting it back in again!

As my friend said to me, all I can do is ‘keep buggering on’.  I’m trying.

Firstly THANK YOU SO MUCH for all your kindness, it means more than I can say.

I’ve not heard the details because I was at work, but of the scenarios Bad, Worse and Terrible, it’s Worse. Which is to say it could be worse, as it does offer him a shot. It’s aggressive chemo to shrink the cancers and they hope they will then be able to operate and remove them. We get more details on Monday.

We battle on.

Update

So, he came home after a 31 day stay in hospital. Quite a lot longer than the 4-7 days we were expecting. The first few days were really tough - he was still very ill but without the reassurance of medical support. I had to learn to do a few things - and I could never have been a nurse, I am so squeamish. I had to keep a very firm mental grip not to faint.

Then, he began to improve and improve. The last couple of weeks, you wouldn’t have thought he was ill. We saw the oncologist who said that they were confident they had removed all the tumours, they couldn’t guarantee it was or wasn’t elsewhere because it was in his lymph nodes. We agreed that he would take up the offer of chemotherapy, just to be sure. Six cycles - to end in November. Over by Christmas, thought.

Then. They had found some “markers” so wanted to do (yet another) scan. After that, we were given a n appointment to discuss the results. This made me nervous. But I have a tendency to catastrophise so I tried to keep a grip. Then we got a letter for yet another scan.

Sometime even a catastrophist underestimates. He has 11 cancerous tumours in his liver. Aggressive and have appeared in the last c6 weeks. Best case scenario (and ‘best ‘ is absolutely not an appropriate word) is that they can operate and remove the lesions, then follow it up with chemo to try and prevent any return. Next least bad option is that if they zap him with aggressive chemotherapy, they can shrink the lesions so they can be operated on (then more preventative chemo). The truly terrifying ‘option’ is that they see that they cannot remove the lesions - either before or after chemotherapy. Then it’s about a “comfortable way to live out his life”.  Palliative, in other words.

The scan is on Tuesday and the oncologist will call us on Wednesday with which of these plans will be the one.

I am so terrified I can hardly breathe at times. It feels so unbearable that my mind races with an attempt to escape. But there is no escape.

Think of us, please.

Update

The update is that there’s not a lot to update.

P is still in hospital – day 29 – and his latest release date (of very many) is Easter Sunday.  Given that he was told 4-7 days when he first went in for the op, I’m not holding my breath.  Or rather, I am just to prevent myself falling apart. We’d been told for the last week that it would be today.  To be told yesterday that it won’t is very upsetting.  Probably disproportionately.  I am so tired and I have kept telling myself that I only have to get to Easter and we could relax together.  Trying not to think of the holiday we had to cancel.  So that hasn’t worked out and I feel like I can’t keep on like this.  I’m eating rubbish – I’ve even started having a glass of wine at night and I have never done that, I’m getting far too little sleep and I’m constantly so tightly wound that my back and ribs ache from being so tense. 

I start a new job at the beginning of May and it seems inconceivable that I will manage the level of energy and enthusiasm required for that.  They’re very good though and have said I can have the time to go to his chemo appointments with him and travel home with him afterwards.  He won’t start chemo until he’s discharged – at least he gets to do that as an outpatient.

I’m going through a particular bout of self-loathing too, triggered by a photo I had to send for my new job and probably from the undisciplined eating and the scale going up. 

Sorry, I can’t manage anything more upbeat at the moment.  I do know that things could be worse …

Still here

I have no levity to offer. My heart feels heavy.  It could be worse: the scenario in which P might have stage 4 cancer has, I believe, been discounted. And I am thrilled about that. Of course I am. But it’s buried under a whole lot of anxiety and stress and unhappiness. They said it would be a hospital stay of 4-7 days. Of course he thought that meant 4. I tried not to get my hopes up and tried to assume 7. It’s been nearly a fortnight and he won’t be home this week. It’s one thing after another. He had to have a deep line put in to the major vein (? I have zero science brain. Nor many others) to get some nutrients into him. It’s a dicey business, making sure there’s no risk of infection being plunged in right there. Now they’ve decided that the op let some fluid into his lungs - he’s been really breathless, with white lips, which has scared me. So another deep line inserted under X-ray to drain that. At the end of last week they were casually talking about a further op - I think this is currently off the table.

I hadn’t realised how much I was holding on to a trip booked for the end of this month to Devon and w. It was a (significant) birthday present from me to him. It’s all booked, we were looking forward to it. And I suppose I was hoping it would be the point where we looked back at all this... this shit, and put it firmly in the past. I have to cancel it. It’s not (just) the losing money, it’s what it symbolised. I won’t get the flight money back. And one of the two hotels give only 25% back. I’m not sure about Fifteen. Or the vineyard tour. I wondered whether we could rebook for the end of June. P thinks June is too soon and said November. To be fair, we have a holiday booked for September/October. November is no good. It would have to be next year. I don’t think the hotel will go for that.

My life is work until lunchtime, get to the hospital for visiting time, leave at the end of it. I get home 9.15 - 9.30pm mostly. And then it’s shower, eat, get stuff ready for the next day. It’s always a late night - but I don’t sleep well anyway.

So, at the moment everything feels very bleak. It could be a hell of a lot worse. But it’s still pretty miserable. It will pass, I know.

Waiting

I’m sitting on yet another hard, plastic, hospital chair. Thus time waiting whilst P has an operation to remove c70cm of intestine, including a 2.5cm tumour. It’s been suggested to me (with emphasis) that I might like to go home. Or go shopping. Or go to a coffee shop (this is Whitechapel but I guess Starbucks has even got here (not that I’ve seen one)). The consultant had said I could sit outside theatre whilst he had his op - but the place the nurse (reluctantly) indicated is some way away. So I won’t know when he comes out. They will call me, but not necessarily as soon as they finish. I cannot imagine whiling the time away, shopping- even if there was anywhere nearby to shop. I am keeping a firm grip on my nerves, my hopes and my expectations.

Then - assuming it all goes well (and I AM assuming that) - he’ll be in hospital for up to a week. It could be another fortnight before we find out whether he’ll need “further treatment” (chemo). The waiting is interminable - every time I think we’re getting to a point where we’ll have enough information to make (or break) plans, they whip the goalposts away, re-siting them on the far horizon.

Some days it feels unreal. Some days it feels like it was ‘just’ a bad dream. And some days it feels like we’re stuck inside the bad dream.

The C word

Thank you all for your words of support.

We’ve been very carefully prepared for a diagnosis of cancer – they’ve mentioned it’s “sinister”, that’s it’s a “growth of cells”, that an oncologist will be present.  And we have that diagnosis tomorrow, alongside the treatment plan.  At least we’ll know what we have to deal with.  His GP has said, today, that it “may include an operation” – and my research has said it’s likely to be an operation and radiotherapy. 

That’s for the cancer – he has more tests to come on his heart but nothing until the end of this month and then halfway through April.  So it can’t be that bad then (crosses fingers).  

I just hope that the cancer isn’t an aggressive form and they found it early and they can treat it.

The important thing is that he’s home.  I know the op will mean a hospital stay and I guess I’ll deal with that when we get there – I’ll be so desperate to get rid of the cancer that I’ll focus on that.  Suddenly life feels very fragile.  He’s tough and optimistic and I am (almost) sure he’ll get through this – but I had thought being separated (by death) would be a long, long way into the future and now I’m having to think about how that would be.  I am not sure I’d survive it.  I’m not sure I’d want to.

The eating is going a bit haywire.  I’ve gone from not eating anything to wanting to eat chocolate all the time.  I’ve had a 4 day break from the diet and have put on 3lbs so I need to focus: it’s not going to make me feel any better if my weight suddenly soars.  It’s difficult to reconcile the discipline of dieting with a ‘carpe diem’ feeling.  On Saturday we had fizz and wine and vin santo.  Normally I’d have two glasses of wine or one glass and a G&T.  I wouldn’t ordinarily have pudding – but I made biscotti (which I’m totally doing again – very satisfying).  I ate a LOAD of crisps.  But I can’t eat my way out of this – it’s just that the feelings of panic are very intertwined with urges to eat

Loss

I don’t even know where to start.  P was ill last week.  Normally he reacts very strongly to any attempt to help him by saying it’s “fussing”.  I was due to be out on Wednesday evening, but offered to cancel and go home, secure in the knowledge that he’d be appalled.  He did want me to go home although he was mostly in bed.  On Thursday he actually went to the GP – again, an almost impossible task to get him to go.  The GP sent him to hospital with suspected appendicitis.  We’ve been in hospital ever since.  I was up 41 hours before I made it home for some sleep.  I am not good at crying – I kind of choke it back, but when they admitted him to the Observation ward in Majors, I cried on my own, sat in a corridor, for 4 hours solidly, bursting a blood vessel in my eye.  They think he has cancer.  And in all likelihood has a burst appendix too.  They’ve pumped him full of antibiotics on an iv and he now feels fine.  But he has to have another scan and then we’re hoping he can come home, pending a more invasive test that should tell us one way or the other.  They clearly think he has it.

You read the stuff on the internet and it tells you briskly that half of people survive up to 10 years.  It’s just that I thought we had a lot longer than that.

I’ve barely eaten.  He was intermittently ‘nil by mouth’ and I would not have eaten or drank in front of him.  And I just didn’t feel like anything.  I’d eat nothing all day and then come home and eat a couple of pieces of toast and marmite. I lost a couple of lbs the first day.  And from MFP, I know I’m eating 600-800 calories a day.  But my hateful body has worked it out and is somehow managing to put on weight at that rate.  ¼ lb a day.  It’s inexplicable.  But I’m just too tired and too miserable to really care.

Do or diet

So, what’s new.  Not a lot with me.  Scales of Doom are trying its usual headf*ckery – I have a good loss, then, for apparently no reason, more goes back on.  Then I inch s-l-o-w-l-y back down.  Which is not as satisfying as the first time you see that number.  I tend to be in mourning all the way back down (usually limping along at ¼ of a lb at a time).  Still, I’m still doing this on my own – well, with MFP.  The effect of the band has yet to make itself known.  It’s taking a long time, but when has this ever been straightforward for me?  I’m resolutely remaining calm and sanguine.  And determined.  I mean, mostly determined with short intervals of overly dramatic flinging myself about and hissing.  But I am going down – and at some point, I’m going to get the help from the band and that will make life easier (or less hungry, anyway).

MFP has its faults – many of them equating to it really being designed for the US market (but also their determination to push bananas at me – never, NEVER) – but it’s what makes the difference for me.  I can keep a very beady eye on my calories – which I try to keep to c1000  - and certainly under 1000 – ignoring any of the calories I “earn” from exercise, and I tend to be pretty obsessive about this.  But I am interested in a new but similar app – Fine Dieting.  I read about it on the Mail(yes, I know but I have reasons).  It seems to be similar to MFP but, the thing that attracts my interest is that it works out for you as an individual at what calorie level you lose weight (or maintain it).  On the other hand, it seems to work on a weekly calorie allocation which I’m not sure would work for me – I have fears of getting to Sunday and only being able to have half a lettuce leaf or similar.  They do a 7 day trial (you pay for access to the site on a monthly basis) and I’m thinking about it.  Apparently you need a bit of time as it wants a LOT of information (although not, refreshingly enough, your bank details) – but I’m in favour of all the information.  It can only help hone everything down to you as an individual, right?  I’ll keep you posted.

In other news: I consulted the oracle on the issue of my ears.  P says they are not big.  He can be brutally honest, so I’m trying to believe him.  He pointed out that my mother’s are!  I’ve booked to have one (ear) pierced tomorrow but keep getting attacks of cowardice.  My friend had hers done at what seems to be the Rolls Royce of piercers, Maria Tash in Liberty.  I’ve found an alternative piercer that is perhaps more Volvo – but still not a Saturday girl with a piercing gun, shooting a bolt through your ear.  I don’t know why a needle sounds more scary – but apparently this is the only way to do it as it’s not a wodge of metal forcing its way through.  Will I do it?  I think so…  It’s the rolling on it in bed and it hurting that makes me have outbreaks of cowardice.  And, you know, a needle.  Also I had wanted to do it quietly and see if P noticed.  That game is up.  I think it took my friend’s husband about 36 hours – and her tying her hair up.  P didn’t notice when I had 6” of hair cut off thoug,h so I’m pretty confident it would take quite some time – and would probably be from me yelping as I turned over in bed and inadvertently lay on it.  Still, he’s supportive whereas my friend’s husband was … dismissive, I think I’d say.

Now see ‘ear

Today I heard the unmistakable noise of the lining of my skirt ripping as I sat down.  Fortunately it won’t show.  And I don’t like the skirt (although it is the first time I’ve worn it, it is an ebay cheapie, chosen because it’s warm.  It looks like I’m wearing a not-very-nice, frumpy blanket.  In a bad way).  The better fact is that I am not trying to squeeze into something too small for me, so I won’t self-flagellate ad infinitum.  Although the ripping would suggest otherwise, I grant you.  But it went on easily and seemed to fit well.  Who knows.  I’m thumbing a metaphorical nose at it.

I don’t think it’s the demise of the skirt, but I’m feeling a bit fed up today.  I’ve been trying to think why and I think there are a few reasons.  Firstly, the diet one: I’m just at the stage that any dieter will recognise where it just seems too exhausting an effort.  I just had a little jump down on the scales so I ought to be feeling motivated – but I’ve just got to that point where I am just fed up of being hungry all the time, fed up about all the things I have to turn down that I’d really like.  It’s nothing new and I know I just have to grit my teeth and continue – but I feel a bit buffeted by it.  (No, not that sort of buffet).

The other two things are appearance related.  So not wholly unallied to dieting, I guess. 

One of my best friends and I met up last week to embrace the almost certainly mid-life crisis of a helix piercing (at the top of the ear).  We went to Liberty and I have to say they were excellent (although boy, they must have severe problems getting through a metal detector).  It sounded as if it would be too difficult for me – you cannot sleep on that side, perhaps ever, but certainly for the first 6-12 months.  If you do, you risk the piercing migrating (and, as we are daily reminded, illegal migration is a bad thing).  Seriously though, I don’t need another thing to worry about.  My friend had TWO helix piercings and looks like an Elven princess.  In the course of this, I scanned my ears (mulling over other possibilities, but looking at my friend’s ear and then mine, I came to the unwelcome realisation that I have big, ugly ears.  I’d never really thought about it, although my mother, grandfather and one brother have absolute corkers (well, had, in my Grandpa’s case as he’s dead), so I’m not sure why I’m that shocked.  It felt like that would have been a little boost, especially as I read that if you place it following the angle of your cheekbones (and they’re there somewhere), it gives a face liftening and brightening effect.  That sounded very appealing, but I don’t think adorning an ugly ear is a good idea (although I will continue to wear earrings in my inexpertly, lop-sided pierced lobes, from teenage years). I feel sad that it hasn’t worked out and am pestering said friend on a daily basis, and keep looking at pictures (not all of her, that would be weird…on Pinterest).  I keep going round and round in my head about it – but coming back to the ugly lugholes point which is inescapable.

Secondly my hair.  I quite like the colour of my hair – which is kind of obvious, given that I have it dyed that colour, after all.  But it is very fine and limp.  You know when people say they have fine hair but lots of it?  I have fine hair and not lots of it. It has always been straight and fine, albeit helped a little with the former by use of straighteners.  Recently though, it has completely changed in texture though and become – not curly, not even wavy exactly, more frizzy and kinky. Changed, therefore, for the worse.  And the fact that I’m growing it and it’s at that awkward length where it hits my shoulders and flicks up and/or out and/or kinks unbecomingly.  Quite frankly, it looks dreadful.  I am trying to persist with growing it, hoping it will get beyond this stage.  I guess if it does and it still looks awful, I’ll have to have it all lopped off again. But it’s a lot of (emotional) pain for an only hypothetical gain.

And it’s still February.  But no longer January, thank goodness, which lasted at least  9 weeks.

Absent without leave

It’s been a long, long time.  In the world of immediacy that is the internet, it’s probably a millennia.  I can practically see the tumbleweed blowing across this page, and the wind whistling mournfully across the emptiness.

We’ll come on to emptiness, fyi…

So, since I’ve been gone, what have I done?  Well, first of all in dieting news (because that is what this blog is about, despite me forgetting this at times), I put on 8lbs over 3 weeks at Christmas.  I have lost that now but it was a shock.  Another shock was weaning myself off drinking more than once a week (and no, I didn’t do Dry January – like January isn’t miserable enough) and thinking that starting the day with a chocolate was acceptable.  Yes, advent calendar, I’m looking at you.  

We’ve booked two trips away – oh, and I have a new job. 

The job: I say I have one, in fact it’s only on paper at the moment.  There’s a long wait to sort out leaving here and starting there, so I won’t be there until April.  And I was offered it in December!  I am terrified.  I have never left a job without being absolutely desperate to escape before.  I won’t say my current job is perfect, but I know I am valued for my contribution, especially with the most senior people here, and that is something I cherish, frankly.  I’m not absolutely sure that at the last moment, I won’t bottle it and refuse to leave.  I practically hyperventilate when I think of it.  But it’s a long time off.  And at the moment it is just me, doing the work of three people in my bit of our wider team so I may get very disenchanted very quickly.

We’re going to the West Country after Easter – this is my birthday present to P.  He’s disappointingly unmaterialistic, which makes him very hard to buy for, but he does like a lovely meal out.  So we’re going to Cornwall, back to Fifteen (one of the best meals we’ve ever had, along with Roux at the Langham).  It’s a long way to go for dinner, but as we’re flying down to Devon, we’re also visiting the B&B in where we got engaged for a couple of nights, as well as a lovely tearoom for lunch in Morewenstow (Cornwall) and a trip to the Camel Valley vineyard.  Weather permitting, we should get two good long walks in – one in Devon and one in Cornwall.

Then we’re going to New York for Christmas.  I did not love New York the one time I went, but I had booked us into a very dodgy bit of Harlem and there were massive protests causing disruption (not about our hotel, though there should have been.  There was old, rusted agricultural implements hanging on the walls for instance.  Or they might have been torture implements, it was hard to tell…).  It will also be different as two of P’s colleagues and their families will be there at roughly the same time – we all overlap for Christmas Day and Boxing Day at least and we’ll all meet up for Christmas Day lunch.  Which is likely to be Chinese.  So it will be very different.  I’ve broken the news to my mother and she’s not impressed.  We’ve yet to tell P’s mother.

But here we are at the beginning of bleak February with Spring just a notion, far into the future, let alone any holidays.  I do hate this time of year – but at least we’re through January.  I’m well and truly back on the My Fitness Pal app, counting all my calories and consistently meeting a daily 1000-1100 allocation.  Much more than this and weight starts to go on.  I am still struggling with moderation – as long as I can count and not have life in the way, I can just about manage.  But days where I have social things, I’m still too prone to think that as I can’t count it, I may as well not count at all that day and have a more lavish lunch and/or sneaky snacks.  I don’t know why I find it so hard.  Other than my appalling lack of willpower, of course.  I am meeting up with a friend on Thursday for a midlife crisis moment (no, no toy boy or motorbike) and we’re going out for dinner afterwards – the adrenaline is likely to lead to wine, which in turn, leads to less restrictive food choices.  It’s just as well that, on the whole, I have a very quiet social life.

This is getting long, so I’ll sign off in just a moment – but I said we’d come back to emptiness.  This is a literal rather than psychological thing (I think), and oh, I’m so fed up of being so hungry.  The band has done nothing for me yet.  I’ve had four “fills” which should stop the feelings of hunger – or rather, partially quell them and I shouldn’t be able to eat large portions.  I think packing on 8lbs over Christmas shows that I haven’t reached that point.  It’s unusual to have no response at all.  Sometimes you initially have that effect after a fill and it settles down a bit.  They’re at the point where I am going to have to have some investigation to see whether I have a leaky band or a baggy pouch.  Both of these sound like something that should be on Embarrassing Bodies (admittedly, I’ve never watched it but…).  If it’s the former I suspect it’s another op.  If it’s the latter, I have to have all the fill taken out and then it de-bags… somehow….  Either way, this would not be good news.  It’s frustrating when it seems like you’re the only person this doesn’t work for.  I’d still have to calorie count – and I am fine with that (kinda) – but I’d like the help we forked out so much for.