49. Baking, Vampire Rat, Aches, Numb Toes

There was a lot of baking done this past week, often with nieces and nephews. I made breadsticks, scones (twice!), mushroom soup, a chocolate birthday cake and a cauliflower, broccoli and rice casserole. The breadsticks were delicious and quite easy to make. They went very well with the mushroom soup. The casserole is for dinner tonight (Sun 23rd) and I am looking forward to that coming out of the oven for dinner. The rice was the brown rice and quinoa mix you can get and I used the aged strong cheddar cheese, so super flavourful. I am better with eating, tastes and smells now. Some things are still horrid but doing much better. I still have forgotten to eat sometimes and don't feel hungry. Though, when the breadsticks were cooking in the oven I almost felt hungry.

The first time I made scones they were plain English scones that were cut out in rounds and had jam and cream on top. April and Ash helped cook those and then they were shared with Josie (from next door) and her friend. Josie wanted a plain one so her mum ended up eating the one with jam and cream. Mither and Pither enjoyed some too for afternoon tea. The second scone making time was with Evie. This time they were savoury, Cheese and fresh oregano (from my garden) and they were cut into triangles. I think these were much more to my liking but maybe needed a bit more oregano and maybe even some parmesan cheese added to the tasty cheese. Evie and Jon had cooked a cheese and tomato frittata (or Key-ta-ta as Evie said) for lunch and the scones went perfectly with it. Add some sliced cucumber on the side, some whipped butter and you have a very gourmet meal. Evie was adamant they needed whipped butter on the scones. I'm glad she did as it certainly raised the flavour profile.

The birthday cake was for April - she had her 7th birthday party at Symbio on Sat. It was themed Avatar: Way of the Water as she really likes the movie. Rach, April and Ash mostly baked, I offered some baking tips like don't mix it when the flour goes in too much and then it was time to figure out how long to cook the cakes as there were three smaller cake tins than the two larger ones the recipe called for. They turned out great and the decoration was done by Rach and it looked amazing!. I even had a small piece of cake and was able to eat it without feeling like it tasted like rotten pineapple rolled in dirt.

Don't worry, we don't have rats and certainly not vampire rats but April was colouring in on Monday. Who Gives A Crap toilet paper company had the inside of one of their boxes decorated with a whole bunch of designs to colour in. One of them was a rat, or maybe a mouse, but April said it was a rat. She added two blood red fangs and exclaimed "Look, a vampire rat!". I hadn't laughed that hard in quite a while.

My aches and stabbing pains are still making life a bit harder to do things I like to do. Having a massage every couple of weeks if helping I'm sure. I had one on Monday and I always feel lighter and freer afterwards. At night a few times I have taken pain killers but yesterday I wished that I had some with me at April's party as my hips, left knee and right foot were not happy. Rach had organised a hunt where she gave a little rhyming poem and the kids had to figure out what animal it was and then go to the enclosure to find a character from the movie. I stayed at the picnic tables to mind the stuff and lay down and had a bit of a rest. I did get up and play with the kids at the playground towards the end but I was pretty tired when I got home and spent the next 3 hours or so lying in bed watching some YouTube.

I did an exercise class twice this week, Wednesday and Saturday morning. On Wednesday Lewis asked me how i was feeling and I said I ached like I had walked a 3 day hike with a 25kg pack on my back but I had some energy. I'll do a class tomorrow (Monday) after my blood test too. Doing the classes definitely do help, even though they make me tired and sometimes I have to lie down for an hour or two afterwards.

Chemo IX (Taxol V) on Tuesday. I think it was a record, I was in and out in just over two hours. Lauren was my nurse, I hadn't met her before. My neutrophil count was 2.55 so that was good. Lauren had a long feel of Persephone and then wasn't really sure about how to access her and so Sarah came over for a feel too and said to lie me right back so I was almost lying down and use her non dominant hand to really push hard to surround Persephone to get the right spot. Breath in deeply and hold....needle is in. I hardly felt it this time. Sometimes it HURTS. Oh course Persephone didn't want to bleed and just as I was about to say it, Mocs calls over the room and says "Sit her right up and lean far forward". Yep, a full syringe all nice and quick. Sitting back up again. I'm all hooked up for a pre chemo flush, saline I think. That doesn't take too long and then I'm hooked up with the chemo but of course I have to do the lean right forward thing to get a blood return. Once the Taxol is running free I have about an hour or so to concentrate on my hexagons.

When Lauren was asking how I'd been through the week I mentioned that on Monday night I'd had two nose bleeds. The first was light and stopped almost straight away, the second one a few hours later took over 10 mins to stop and it was pouring out like a running tap. She wrote it up and said that my platelet count was ok but sometimes nosebleeds can be a sign of low platelets so we will have to see what they are next week. My toes have been a bit numb for short times, usually in the morning. Fingers sort of the same. Except yesterday, my big toes especially were numb on and off when I got up for about an hour and a half. Today my little toe and the one next to it on both feet have been numb sometimes. Fingers have been ok, just slightly less sensitive. I'll see how they are tomorrow and when I got for my blood test I might pop into the oncology clinic and change my appointment for Dr Michael to a week earlier. I find that without fingerprints my fingers are more slippery and I have to grip my steering wheel a bit harder when turning corners. Make sure I concentrate and remember that one when driving.

While I was sewing along nicely on my hexagons Jasmine comes over and asks if I would mind if a new patient could come and oggle Persephone. Well, she said "take a look at how a port works" as he was trying to visualise it to decide if he wanted a port or a PICC line. He had a look at where the needle was and we had a discussion about placement and of course big boobs and gravity came up and I said he probably wouldn't have a similar issue and he said "What, you don't think my moobs are big enough?". Most people in the clinic all burst out laughing. It's not like you can have a private conversation in a room that is about 6 metres by 7 metres and has 7 big chairs (for patients) and at least 3 nurses plus other staff members constantly coming through. He decides that he'll get a port. He wonders how long it takes so I said it should be about an hour for the procedure and then one or two hours recovery. "I don't mind, I'll be asleep". I mentioned that usually it is under moderate sedation but he would find that out when he gets all the info. I told him that if he was interested he could look up the procedure on YouTube and then he would know more details and I think he may have gone a slight pasty green colour at the thought of it. Guess he's not like me in that regard! So in the end I only ended up doing 37 hexagons today.

My latest count is 2,657. I need to cut some more fabric and a few more templates as well. I started organising and designing how they are going to go together and even having sewed 19 together. They look great!!! I also have figured out how I will want to quilt it as well. I'm still finalising the overall design but I have a lot of time to think it through as I sew. I am getting closer to a more final idea though. A friend is going to give me some big pieces of styrofoam so that I can make a design board. That way I can poke a pin straight in the hexagon and keep them in the right place as I sew them together. I also wanted to start designing so that I can see what colours I may need more of.

Back to baking - I am making some lemon meringue New York style chunky cookies. I don't like meringue but two friends once made me a lemon meringue pie for my birthday when I lived in WA and one of those friends will be visiting this week, has a birthday and loves lemon meringue pie. I thought it was funny to revisit that memory and also, I like to try different recipes.