BASKETTCASE

Tomorrow is my last day of chemo tablets for this cycle.  Hardly any side effects now.  The tingling comes back if I try to wash vegetables under the cold tap, but is hardly noticeable most of the time.  I was out in the garden all day yesterday, only a little of it with my book.  I made a good clearance of weeds in the fruit cage, and discovered a few strawberries struggling to see the sun.  I shifted two barowloads of gravel from the centre path that friends used to rudely call our runway, moving it behind the shed at the bottom of the garden.  We have laid membrane there, and it will be a useful out-of-sight storage area.  It will need weedkiller though because although the path was laid on membrane, years of digging and weeding round it have mixed soil and organic matter with the gravel.  It wasn't our best design feature!

I was very good with my Factor 30 on my face, long sleeves and gloves, but forgot my eyes.  Either I got soil in my right eye or burnt it, so I'll need to find my sunglasses today.  I hate working in glasses - they keep falling off!

What I really wanted to record today was a psychological shift.  I realised that I no longer take my chemo tabs with a feeling of self-harm, but as routinely as the handful of vitamins Dave used to give me every morning.  I do a rather odd thing though: I was told that no-one must handle the tablets except me as they absorb throught the skin!  Imagine swallowing 3 tablets that would damage someone else if they touched them!  So to make sure I don't contaminate anything I split the foil with my nail and take the tablet straight into my mouth.