Yesterday the statue, today the pigeon.....

It's been an odd day, but far better than yesterday, no doubt aided by the benefit of a decent night's sleep. That and an early cup of green tea.

Today started with a wonderful reminder of why I will fight this. Briony woke early and came into bed with me and was lovely and sleepy so we dozed together. She must know I'm not well as she even got a bacon sarnie for breakfast. Complete with loads of ketchup that she then cheerful went into school with all over her face. I don't care. She was happy and so was I!

Today was the whole body bone scan at Wycombe hospital. It's actually quite empowering as it is a way of finding out where else in my body the little bugger is hiding.
Having dropped Briony off at school I went home to read the scan letter and see if there was anything of note. All fairly standard. However, there was the option to bring a CD with you to listen to during the scan. CD???!!!!! Briony is only even vaguely aware of what these are. Queue frantic searching for some CDs. I settled for Cold Play. The selection wasn't great and even consisted of some of the nursery rhyme CDs we bought for Briony back in days of desperation. I'd love to have seen the look on their faces if I asked them to play that!

The letter also had a wonderful paragraph at the end "Due to security measures at airports and ports, if you are travelling abroad within 7 days of having this injection please take this letter with you as proof that you have had a Nuclear Medicine scan". Sadly I'm not, which is a shame as I would like to have seen what would have happened!

So I duly set off to the hospital. The first challenge was finding a parking space! Parking successfully navigated I made my way to the X-ray department. I was told to sit on one of the very special 4 green chairs out of about 50 other blue ones. I'm all done with special treatment. A lovely 81 year old man arrived a few minutes later to occupy another one of the special chairs so we had a brief chat. He offered me a glacier mint, I duly accepted. Strangers can be so kind!

I had "a small amount of radiation" (oh that's OK then) injected into my veins and was released to wander around Wycombe for 3 hours before having to return for the actual scan. I wondered if there was anywhere in particular that they would like me to wander and whether me and my small dose of radiation could solve some of the problems of Wycombe if I just spent the 3 hours spreading my "small amount of radiation" equally. Decided on the library for a bit of mindless newspaper reading, then a small spot of lunch (pure protein at the BlueGrass BBQ) and then some Christmas present browsing.

I had to drink 2-3 pints of fluid whilst waiting for the 3 hours. Several problems with that. Firstly I hate water just on it's own and I don't think wine/beer was what they had in mind. Secondly, drinking that quantity has obvious effects. I normally have a bladder the size of a gnat even when I'm not drinking loads, so I wasn't more than about 3 minutes away from a toilet at any point.

Had a text message that made me smile. "This is to remind me of your appointment at the BMI hospital tomorrow morning at 9am". Like I could forget! Then another one "This is to remind you of your appointment at the BMI hospital tomorrow at 10am". You get the picture, but there have been several of them given the plan for tomorrow.

Today is about the positives. Don't get me wrong, I'm not standing at the front of the queue jumping up and down and asking cancer to pick me. I wish it hadn't. But it has and we are where we are. There is no point living in the past. I can't change it. All I can focus on is one day at a time and look for the positives wherever they may be to keep me going.

So, good things about cancer:

• Spending more time with the family & friends (albeit at short notice so not much planned)
• Stephen not having to remove my hair from the plug hole (contribution from Briony)
• Breakfast with Mummy every morning rather than breakfast club (also Briony). Although I have to admit that I have had to up the anti on this as cereal just wasn't cutting it when there is the offer of cinnamon swirls and bacon rolls at school. Hence the bacon sarnie which to be clear would never ever happen normally!
• Being able to play Candy Crush more often (also Briony). So I admit it, it used to be my guilty pleasure on the way to and from work (tube, not driving, don't panic). To be fair, it's slipped down the list of priorities now
• Seriously cutting down my getting ready time when we go out. Latest revelation is that eyelashes will also depart, so no mascara needed either
• Spending less money on haircuts in the immediate future (sorry Lucy (my hairdresser), but can I still see you socially?)
• Putting on weight (I've been advised to because of the likely impact of chemo)
• Living in the moment, not the future and not the past.

The scan itself was fairly uneventful. No results until 12th December and I resisted the urge to try and read something/anything into the technician's face. There's no point.

A quick peppermint tea (caffeine is unfortunately pretty much a thing of the past) with an old friend who will soon be emigrating to Oz completes my day. Jennie, don't think because you are on the other side of the world you're getting out of this. You are now officially on my list of people whom I will text when I can't sleep in the middle of the night!

Several people have asked if they can share the blog. I'm flattered and please share away......

Tomorrow is a big day with lots happening, so I bid you all good night. Sweet dreams x