A Scare - or What a Day

If you have been following this blog you will realise that as a result of operation etc in the past my right hand no longer functions. What this means literally, is that I have to do everything with my left hand.

This not only means signing documents, writing notes, using the computer, washing myself and really more personal hygiene things, I blush to mention them, however most people will realise what that means.

With Swine Flu racing around the world - do you blame me for being alert, but not alarmed?

No offence to anyone, but going out with an illness arising from unacceptable use of my left hand is and was was not on my agenda.

Anyway - if you have to use your right hand whenever I have to use my left hand you know what I mean.

Alarmingly, I can no longer type the codes necessary to create accented letters, because for them you have to press the left hand ALT key - while using your right hand to press the numeric keypad at the far right of a keyboard. Damn it!

This is no longer a scare it's just not capable of remedy unless I become an octopus.

Then again, what I have discovered is that all of the time I have been spending in bed, or my lounge while I am really sick with the Taxotere, or or something else. This means that the fingers and thumb of my hand, so long just used for typing has remained without any manly callouses. The net result being that even with the gentle use of skin repair cream, it is breaking up. In other words I am having to wear gloves to try and protect them against the effects of normal use.

For those of you who are still mourning the passing of Michael Jackson, this is NOT an attempt to either emulate or mimic his wearing of gloves, it really is an attempt to save the skin on my left hand and to ensure that the effects of all this typing does not break the skin and so does not expose me to infections that take me off into the wild blue yonder before the cancer does.

Yesterday, for example, I asked to have some band-aids placed over the offending digits. Good idea, wrong instrument. The sharp edges protruding from the front of one digit was particularly sharp, and could actually penetrate certain types of paper. This is not a useful thing to happen. hence the gloves today.

The things I do to bring you the news.

My temperature went up all of a sudden today actually crossing into the 38 degree level - it is most likely that the amount of phlegm that I have had to eject, or the delayed reaction to the chemo drugs, or something else is getting the better of my system. The Oncologist and the lovely people at the chemo unit I attend are going to call me back when the results of my blood work up arrives on the hospital system, so that I can know about the state of my white cells. Thankfully, blood was taken from me today, so the results would be available to the Chemo team later today the very same people who will commence my next round of Chemo next Tuesday

This scare is still on - but I may be able to report further news a little later on.

Meanwhile - there is a major event happening here on Sunday. A really big day. Looking forward to this is all I can say.

More as it happens readers - more as it happens.