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.