Cat poo

Here I am at home recovering from my first cold since the stem cell transplant. Last week I travelled up to Liverpool to attend my father in law's funeral and caught a cold. I returned home on Monday and have spent the last few days lying around and eating toast in between bouts of coughing. Nick is at a conference and I am home alone. I can't believe how weak and tired I am after a week of inactivity apart from walking 50 yards from train to taxi. I decided that a shower would liven me up and ventured into the bathroom only to find that Rupert had pooed in the bath. Rupert does this as a protest when he doesn't think his litter is pristine enough. It looked alright to me and anyway I am not supposed to change litter or nappies with my compromised immune system.

I removed the poo from the bath - there was rather a lot of it but fortunately it was quite dry (made me wonder how long it had been there) and flushed it down the toilet. There was no way of getting around this - I needed to change the cat litter. We use a brand of litter that comes in its own bag that you just open up and place in the tray. That way you never have to touch it and the tray does not get all mushy. I cleaned the bath, rinsed and dried the tray. During this whole process I was naked as I had stripped off and put my stale night clothes and dressing gown into the washing machine. As I picked up the pack of litter it split and the litter poured out onto the bedroom floor boards.

Our Dyson vacuum cleaner was sitting behind me. I have not touched it since I was diagnosed with leukaemia 14 months ago and it now sits where Monika, our lovely cleaner, left it last week. I have had this cleaner for about 10 years but when I picked it up I could not remember where the plug was kept. This was quite a strange experience and made me wonder what was happening to my cognitive functions. It got worse when I decided that the cleaner needed emptying and after managing to get off the thing that holds the dirt realised that I could not remember how to get it back on again!

Ok now all done and I am showered and preparing to dress. The last couple of weeks have taken their toll with the sudden and sad death of Nick's dad and my ensuing respiratory tract infection. I am reminded that I am in complete remission and that I am alive.

the old blog

http://sallymountgrove.blogspot.com/

Fracking Blogs

Does anyone else have about six different blogs on the go? Yesterday I was moved to comment on an article I saw in the Guardian. It described the journey of a woman who had been diagnosed with a blood cancer when pregnant with her third child. She is now nearly four years post stem cell transplant and doing well coping with 3 children and life on it's own terms. It had such a resonance with my own story - in fact brought me to tears as I sat in a cafe on Highbury Park eating a cooked vegan breakfast - well I say cooked vegan breakfast but actually it was a compromise for a living foods vegan. Oh, the shame of the relapsee! More about that later but back to the article and being moved: when I got home I went to the author's blog to make a comment, as for some reason I could not comment on the Guardian site, and found this blog that I had started some time ago. This was to replace the original one I had created that was called something like Sally's stuffing recipes or words to that effect. Of course that was all years ago before I became a professional sick person......

Well back to the vegan breakfast. Saturday mornings our cleaner comes to spend three hours doing hoovering and mopping and other stuff that I have been advised against doing. Can you imagine how wonderful that is? It's almost worth having a life threatening illness to be told that you can no longer dust, touch cat litter or change nappies. Monika is our cleaner and she arrives at 9 am each Saturday morning. At this time I have to get out of bed and vacate the house. I could of course stay in bed - in fact I did for the first few weeks post hospital discharge - but now it would be far too embarrassing to actually lie abed whilst someone else cleans my house. It would further render it impossible for her to change the bed which is such a luxury. For the past 5 months I have been going out to breakfast and have explored several of the cafes in the vicinity of N5 and N16. There are absolutely dozens of cafes in the area and new ones seem to spring up each week but I am constrained by my raw vegan diet. Actually my diet does not include breakfast other than green juice and it certainly does not include coffee but I allow myself generous amounts of time off. Still, I like to try to keep to a vegan breakfast.

On Saturday as I read the Guardian article I ordered a cooked vegetarian breakfast and asked them to hold the egg. They gave me an extra hash brown to compensate. It came with baked beans, mushrooms, spinach and grilled tomatoes and a slice of white buttered toast. I tend to ignore the non veganess of butter as it is reputedly more healthy than some processed oils that go under the guise of vegan spreads. For the most part I do try to be gluten free or at least avoid white flour. Sometimes I think that my new Austrian stem cells have bestowed on me the ability to digest gluten - after all isn't Austria the home of pastries and cakes? To wash it all down I had a cappuccino made with milk (they did not have soy milk although I usually ask for this despite it being a Hippocrates no no). I followed this up with a black coffee which I drank with a grimace. By this time there was a family with two small children sitting at the next table. One of the children was coughing and spluttering and this prompted me to take my leave.

Many things have changed since my leukaemia diagnosis. In just over a year I have been forced into early retirement and have become a grandmother. My body has changed in all kinds of ways (not just the DNA) and after almost a year of baldness I now have a head of curly, white hair. Prior to the illness I was just coming to terms with getting through the menopause and was planning my next career move. Now it appears that I have been propelled into old age and grannydom and am not quite sure how I got there. Ok, back to the blogs - now that I have rediscovered this one I will be on here from time to time - well until I lose the password ....

My background

My name is Sue and I was born in Liverpool in 1952. I attended Holly Lodge High school and left in 1970 when I went to work as a library assistant in Huyton for 3 years. I left just before my 21st birthday and spent the next few years travelling and working on and off in various jobs. In 1978 I started training as a nurse at Broadgreen hospital and in September of that year married Nick. Our first son Gareth was born in 1980 and a few months later we moved to London where Nick had started work as a computer programmer. 8 months after arriving in London Adam was born a month prematurely. We moved to Highbury in 1981 and our sons attended Ambler Primary and Islington Green schools.

In 1990 I started to work for a charity that provided a 12 step model of treatment for people with drug and alcohol problems. During this time I studied English part time at Birkbeck college, University of London and gained a 2:1 BA (Hons) degree. I wanted to work with children and in 2003 completed an MA in social work at Middlesex university. I then worked for London borough of Lambeth in the substance misuse team before moving to RBKC to work with children and families. My work in RBKC included a year at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital and two years in the adoption team. During the time I was at RBKC I trained for four years at the Institute of Family Therapy and in 2008 was awarded an MSC in systemic psychotherapy. For the last 18 months I have been employed by the London Borough of Islington in the local CAMHS team.

Why I am asking for your help

In September 2010 Nick and I went on holiday to Mexico. We had been there two years previously and had been looking forward to returning to the idyllic paradise of Tulum on the Yucatan peninsula. This time Mexico was just as beautiful but we didn't feel right. Nick had caught a tummy bug and spent the first week unable to eat and sleeping a lot. I had an infected cyst on the back of my neck and had to be prescribed antibiotics. When we returned home I was prescribed more antibiotics and a week later caught a heavy cold. The cold symptoms continued for weeks and I developed a sinus infection for which I was prescribed more anti biotics. I then developed a bladder infection with high fever and had no choice but to take even more antibiotics. Earlier that year I had had a routine blood test which showed that my neutrophils (the white blood cells that fight infection) were low. I had been diagnosed with hepatitis C many years previously and my doctor suspected taht this was the reason for the low blood count. I had been seeing a Chinese herbal practitioner to strengthen my immune system with herbs and acupuncture. I had been reluctant to take anti biotics but an infection can rapidly turn to sepsis in a compromised immune system. My doctor admitted me to hopsoital for tests as he was convinced I had caught a tropical disease. As well as Mexico I had been to India and Nepal in the previous year. All tests proved negative and I was referred to a haematologist. On December 14th 2010 I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia and admitted to hospital to commence the first of several rounds of chemotherapy. I have now completed 3 rounds of intensive chemotherapy. My consultant suggests a stem cell transplant but I have a rare tissue type and they have not been able to make a match.

I had been seeing a Chinese Medical practitioner and a Gaia healer as I have had chronic Hepatitis C for many years and wanted to help improve my immune system. When diagnosed with leukemia I wanted to treat the condition with a similar approach. Unfortunately AML is an aggressive cancer and the advice we received was that without the chemotherapy I would die very quickly. Although in a great deal of shock we agreed to this but continued to research alternative methods. I had a lot of support and advice from friends and eventually we decided on the living foods diet that Hippocrates Health Institute advocates. We completed a detox at Health Etcetera in March and I am booked in Hippocrates for the end of May. Whilst they do not claim to cure cancer Hippocrates work on the belief that we need to heal the immune system to prevent the cancer from returning. The chemotherapy has effectively destroyed the cancer cells but there is no guarantee from the conventional medics that the cancer will not return. With a healthy immune system any emerging cancer cells will be dealt with before they can progress to doing harm.

What I want

Alternative therapies are not funded on the NHS. I am very grateful for the treatment I have and will continue to receive from the NHS. (One round of chemotherapy costs £30,000). A week's detox costs approximately £1,000. Three weeks at Hippocrates Health Institute is nearly £4,000. I estimate that I will need approximately £100 each month for supplements including fresh wheatgrass. I should save money on my food as I will only be eating raw, unprocessed, sugar free, organic, Vegan vegetables. We have already invested in a range of equipment to create raw dishes. That includes juicers, sprouting jars, a dehydrator and various other bits and pieces. My husband has given up work to care for me and prepare my meals and we are living on my sickness benefits. I will be returning to Health Etcetera and Hippocrates clinics a couple of times a year over the next few years in order to keep the treatments going.

The Future

I fully believe that my immune system will recover and that I will live to continue the work I was born to do. I have deep spiritual beliefs and have a great deal to offer to the world. I have been a Buddhist and studied A Course in Miracles and these practices have contributed to my desire to help others, especially children, fulfill their potential. This year is going to be extra meaningful to us. My elder son, Gareth and his partner Emma are to become parents in mid September. I am beyond proud and delighted. I see this child graduating from university, becoming a parent and I can just about see myself becoming a great grand parent. In addition we have a lot to look forward to this year. My wonderful husband, Nick becomes 60 in July and we are planning a party in Liverpool with friends old and new. My son, Adam, graduates from Central St Martins with a degree in Fine Arts in July. We also plan to take some time out to visit friends and family in the British Isles.

How you can help

Thank you for reading this. I could never imagine the shockingingly horrific way that a cancer diagnosis can change one's life. Neither could I imagine the amount of love and support that would come flooding into my life. Lots of people have offered to make financial contributions and Yes to Life has offered to facilitate this. The treatment is expensive and anything you donate will be very much appreciated.

Namaste

The Past

Where's My Passport?

Oh no, here we go again. Flight booked for Stockholm tomorrow morning. The snow started yesterday; by now it's probably six feet high in Stockholm and iced over. Maybe I had better call that insurance line - Insure and Go - and pay some money just in case I fall over in the snow. I approach the whole concept of travel insurance in the same way as I do buying a lottery ticket but then again insurance works in a different way - if you buy the insurance nothing happens and if it does you are not covered anyway. Still the whole purpose of insurance is to make me feel assured that nothing will happen to me.

Ten minutes later and ten pounds lighter - insurance is booked. Now to pack the suitcase. I start to throw underwear and toiletries into my still unpacked suitcase from two weeks ago when I visited my mother. Oh good it's already filled with the stuff I didn't use last time including a hair dryer that I have never seen before in my life. Hang on that's not a hairdryer. What the heck is it? Oh yes, it's a gun. A replica I hasten to add. Phew, good job I saw it - that would have held things up at the airport. It would have been worse than the incident at Moscow airport when I was stopped for carrying a brick in my luggage. Actually it wasn't a brick but an ancient architectural relic from Bangladesh that I wasn't really sure I could take out of the country.

OK, so insurance booked, suitcase packed, contraband removed, Ryanair print out rescued from recycling bin and positioned in handbag. I start to relax and congratulate myself on my organisational skills. Then I open the middle draw of my dressing table to reach for the passport that has been kept safe since that trip to Rome in November. I can't find it. Suddenly I'm plunged back into the memory of the trip to Barcelona in 1999 when with perfect timing two days before we were due to fly I discovered that I had indeed irretrievably lost my passport. I had also lost my birth certificate, my degree certificate and my husband (but that's another tale). To acquire a replacement passport in two days stretched my mind, finances and mood but I did it. Oh no, not again. This time I knew that I would not be able to achieve such a feat and after a frantic search I began to resign myself to abandoning the trip. Leaving the drawer and its contents ripped out on the bed to the consternation of Tom who was endeavouring to get in his twenty three hours of feline sleep necessary to maintain his appetite I staggered downstairs to explore the drawer of documents lurking in the hall whilst harbouring a pessimistic premise that there was no way my passport was going to be there. It wasn't. What handbag did I have in Rome? Was it the one that I sent to the charity shop?

Hang on, a glimmer of light in my 5-HTP, work-stressed, addled, feeling fat and having no clothes brain. Didn't I need my passport to register with my work agency in December? I unclearly recall sending it off in a big, sellotaped envelope together with other detailed documentation proving my every movement for the past 15 years. It must have been returned mustn't it otherwise I would have remembered. Is it lurking on my desk in the tower of doom 5 miles away? Or is it with the slope of crap holding up the Halliwell's in the kitchen? A quick search ensued, my heart beating rapidly in the red, Gap fleece dressing gown, central heating full blasting, face flushing, temperature rising - imminent cerebral vascular accident. Oh, unmanageability your name is me. And then I see the blue folder filled with plastic sleeves containing my certificates, diplomas, dog tags, tattoos and all the other stuff I need to prove I exist. And there nestling in a window of plastic is MY PASSPORT. Oh joy, and how impressive that I am so organised. There's nothing like a little drama to help me feel good about myself.