Darn, as Ernie pointed out I missed a prime opportunity in the title of my previous post when I could have gone with a play on a Bare Bear! Anyhoo said bear is now fully clothed – well nearly. Although he looks fully attired his goggles need a press stud and are just tied on and his little jacket needs an open ended zip/zipper.

Oh, and his jodphurs require a bit of white shirring elastic but other than thathe’s fully dressed! The pattern is again from Teddy Bears: More Than 25 Irresistible Designs for Knitted Bears by Debbie Bliss.

As you can clearly see I got the loopy knitting finished whilst at the hospital yesterday. I did have to adjust the pattern as keeping to the instructions was only sending me loopy not the yarn. In fact I also managed to reknit the goggles as the first pair were 12cm/4.76″ short. And then I ran out of knitting, seriously I had nothing left to do, no book to read, I did write out my Christmas present list again, got about five cups of water (they are very small cups) and went for a wee – which was a feat in itself let me tell you due completely to my choice of attire – and then fortunately my Auntie Ann appeared – but back to my clothing.

When we have an appointment with a doctor/prof at the clinic I make at least half an effort (although they may disagree) due to the fact that, as you may recall, we go into Liverpool for a meal but when I go to the Day Unit, for treatment or when I’m feeling ruff, I go casual to the point of completely un-ironed in some instances. So yesterday morning I was all of a do-da – an appointment with the Prof but in the Day Unit – what to wear? Anyhoo, the decision was made for me – I ironed a pair of trousers only to find I didn’t have a suitable clean t-shirt so I ended up wearing a dress with tights. I also ended up getting two units of blood and let me tell you, if you don’t already know, it is quite a performance dealing with tights while you have a cannula in the back of one of your hands – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I got there at 10.50am for my 11 o’clock appointment – I was early as B wasn’t involved, my Uncle Ray provided transportation. I saw the Prof and he asked me how I was. I said I didn’t feel ill but had been tired – and he said yes I would be because I was anemic. So I got to have two units of blood – I could have gone back today but whilst I was already there I said I might as well stay plus if I did I’d feel better sooner.

Due to my haemoglobin count (7.6 – normal min for women 11.8), white blood count (2.6 – min 3.5) and neutrophils (1.00 – min 2.0) the next cycle of Revlimid has been delayed. I go back to the clinic a week tomorrow (11 November) and will, hopefully, start cycle two then but this may be reduced to 10mg every other day or 5mg a day. On the upside my kidney function has improved again and my PP (I think rather than my IgA – you’d think I’d know definitely wouldn’t you) has gone from 15 to 10! We’ll just need to wait until my next bone marrow biopsy to see if it affects (ie, squashes and stomps on) the plasma cell content of the bone marrow.

My appetite was better yesterday I’d managed half a sandwich for my lunch with a bag of french fries (which are a crisp/chip) and for tea I’d been craving spag bol (which is so much easier to type than spaghetti bolognese). Due to the tiredness I fortunately hadn’t decided to make this from scratch so B had got a ready made jar to go with some mince. However subtle hints to B on the phone such as ‘Are you going to make the bolognese?’ hadn’t worked so I got home at 9.10pm (hence my Auntie Ann collecting me as B had gone to work) to find the meal still in kit form. And you know what I did – I made it!

I’m not going to say it was without incident – I ended up with about a quarter of the spaghetti I started with due to a colander and sink incident – but I really enjoyed.

I’d done the mince and the sauce before going upstairs for a shower and realised we had a couple of phone messages. So I had a quick shower, put the pasta on and phoned one of my friends back and had to do something I rarely do, I had to say I couldn’t stay on the phone long as I was cooking pasta. When she called round this afternoon she said she got off the phone and said to herself ‘She’s been out nearly all day, she’s not been home long, it’s 10 o’clock at night, did she really just say she was cooking pasta?’ but apparently I looked and sounded a lot better today – totally like someone who could deal with cooking pasta at that time of night!

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