BASKETTCASE

Day 10.  Yesterday morning I phoned my nurse contact in the oncology dept to ask at what stage I should be concerned that the tingling had not gone.  She said that if I still had it by the time of my teleclinic appointment the day before my next infusion, I should mention it and would probably need a reduced dose.  Having done this I went out into the garden and stayed out there all day, gardening in gloves (which I have to anyway to guard against injury and infection) and thick woolen socks.  I had next to no tingling all day.

I did some very satisfactory gardening, weeding the new flower-bed round the patio, planting out some plants I had grown in the greenhouse and mulching with a layer of compost.  Dave has dismantled the compost bin, moved all the mature compost to the bottom of the garen and re-built the structure complete with hinged lid!  The soil on my flower bed is very poor and dry, I have been having to water nearly every day, so hopefully the mulch will prevent too much drying and give the new plants a chance.  Unfortunately the compost became available after I had done some planting out, so I have probably buried some of the seedlings, which are really too small but had come to a standstill in the greenhouse.

I was also able to do some re-designing.  Last summer it was a question of cultivating the land the builders had churned up, and filling it with whatever came to hand.  The planting round the stream is looking quite good, but the foreground had numerous seedlings of catmint and some sort of mallow.  The latter have grown very tall and are just beginning to show colour, which is not the deep red I was hoping for, so I have dug most of these out.  It is now nearly nine weeks since my surgery.  No-one gave me any advice about what I could do, so I have decided a bit of digging won't hurt.  I am fed up with having to ask Dave to dig out individual roots of buttercup and unwanted plants, and worrying about where he is putting his feet.  I don't appear to have done any harm.  Shovelling compost on the other hand found a muscle that didn't want to be so busy, but it will recover and be the better for it.  It's a novelty being an invalid, but novelty wears off!

Anyway, the tingling has hardly been any problem for two days.  I find I am still nervous about drinking cold things, and fancy my throat prickles.  I am still taking a flask to bed with hot water, and taking my tablets with water from the kettle, but that's my neuroticism rather than a side-effect.

My car is sold and gone.  I haven't driven it sinnce hospital, and so am unlikely to miss it.  It does mean I can't go any distance off a bus route without Dave, but I don't think it will be a problem.