Hi all,

I know I'm still being quite quiet on here, apologies again, just the chemotherapy affecting my eyesight enough to make reading and writing give me nausea headaches.  Still, cycle 5 went ahead yesterday, bloods were still rubbish, even after the blood transfusion last Thursday, but it went ahead anyway, so only cycle 6 to go then we'll see whether it's surgery next, radiotherapy or something else entirely.

As some of you know the day I learned I was stage 4 I set myself the goal of doing the Race for Life 10k here in Jersey.  I only managed to train through cycles 1 and 2 as after that I couldn't leave the house without vomiting until my stomach was empy, so I couldn't get anything in me to sustain me for a run or even a walk.  Shortly after cycle 4 we got on top of my vomiting and I haven't been sick in over a fortnight, fantastic :) annoyingly I started blacking out 3 weeks ago though and have had some spectacular falls.  Blood pressure seems to be playing up suddenly so we've lowered my hypertension meds, but my platelets were also severely low so they did a blood transfusion.  I swear the transfusion was mainly because the palliative care locum was really worried that I was still planning on doing the 10k just days later.

So, on Sunday my team Legs Misérables (16 of us by the time the race came around) undertook either the 5k or 10k.  I did the 10k and, to my surprise having ended up resigned to walking it all, I jogged around a third and walked two-thirds.  I could have jogged more were it not for the blisters, I guess that's what happens when you haven't managed to do the training :D  I'm not media friendly having been on TV a lot as a child and learned to hate it, but I ended up doing radio interviews, a TV interview, my team were asked to do the countdown to start the race.  Cancer Research UK told me an abnormally large number of people signed up on the day, many of whom said it was the newspaper articles on our team that prompted them, so I can see that the media coverage was really worth it and am committed to doing more in the future, maybe I'll even learn to like it?

https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2019-05-26/reluctant-runners-take-on-jersey-race-for-life-challenge/

https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/2019/05/23/i-find-myself-very-happy-but-with-a-pesky-cancer-in-the-background/

Sincere apologies if anyone finds the 'pesky cancer' thing at all offensive.  I know it is far from everyone's experience, and I know that I've had some really bad experiences over the last year and will have worse in the future, but I'm still lucky that with how happy I am I'm able to take the bad just now without it denting how I feel.  And I know that the buzz from doing the Race for Life and the atmosphere it has will help me through this latest cycle.  Good memories keep me going.

Long one, sorry!

Love LJxx