Fucking February

February has not been a picnic, but as Stevie said in a text this morning, he's never been too keen on picnics cos of, you know all the flies.

As outlined at the start of the month, I had become a wee bit breathless, and not in the heady romantic way of a teenager in the early throes of love. When walking up a few stairs is enough to take your breath away, teenage frolicing is about the last thing on your mind. And so the smart strong stomached fellas slurped out the shit and I thought, 'Yippee that's the end of that little episode'.

But you guessed it, I was fucking wrong.

The mud was sent off for pathology and instead of it coming back as being meds related runniness, which is what we all figured it was, it came back with non-descript signs of malignancies..... FUCKING CANCER.

Well let me tell you that if I wasn't  short of breath before I sure was after hearing this.

Even though my darling Dr Geoff was due to have started his very well earned retirement, he saw  me immediately and blood was test-tubed and I was thrown through test tubes and we had an urgent  meeting with delightful Graeme, and even though Stevie and I were yet to move into our new cottage, a plan was in place for a whole lot of horrendous as soon as our furniture hit the lounge room.

So in we moved on the 12th Feb. And it really is the most lovely wee place. Sure there are typically a million things wrong with it, but what can you expect from a 100 year old grand dame. It's gone for a bit of a wobble and there are floor boards which have provided gourmet feeds for a number of worm families which we are hoping might have voluntarily moved on, YEH a pest inspection might be in order sooner rather than later.

We are settling in. It's just bloody lovely.

But the pisser is that I reckon I am fast becoming as familiar with the hospital as our new home. BUGGER, FUCK IT, INDEED, and it certainly has been a jolting intro to Brisvegas peak hour traffic for Stevie. Reckon the Tom Tom is almost surplus to his requirements now as he chants my instructions.

We checked in last Thursday, after a week's grace to move, and I fronted for the delightful sticking of lung to ribs all the while harvesting as many samples as possible so we know what the specific very fuck is going on in there. This is called charmingly enough a PLEURODESIS. Yeh sure Graeme had a good dig around while he was there and I reckon that Pathology is seeing every second sample labeled ELLIOTT.

What we don't know is far more than what we do know.

We know that there is some sort of tumor in my left lung, whether it is a new primary lung cancer or a secondary breast cancer is yet to be determined, but those are the most likely scenarios. And then there's the little issue of hotspots in my brain and shoulder bones.

Oh well, What are you gonna do?

We have all had a little weep and for the first time in 30 years Geoff was a bit discombobulated but next week I reckon we might have a bit of a handle on it all and then a plan, and then maybe for the first time in more than a month we can all take a bit of a breath and feel some sense of control.

Ah a bit of CONTROL. That will be good.