What am I up to now?

When I first told the students at school that I had cancer, one of them asked "What stage are you at Miss?" I replied "Too early to say" which was quite clever of me as I had no idea what she was on about. I know now that I am just entering stage three. I have the BIG lump on my neck and another swollen gland on my collar bone. That takes me from stage 1 (one lump) to stage 2 (more than one lump) then the body scan revealed that I have one swollen gland below the diaphragm - near my tummy - and that takes it to stage 3. However this gland is 11mm when they class it as enlarged at 10mm. I have some other glands near my heart which are enlarged but only 5 or 6 mm. My breasts, armpits, adrenals and kidneys are clear. Stage 4 is when your bone marrow is affected and I won't find that out until next Wednesday. That's serious.
I have diffuse large B cell of non-activated germinal centre. Ok so that the "tech" report.

Getting ready

Just a week until we see Dr Forgeson, the specialist from Palmerston North who will come up and design my chemo cocktail - it will be a version of the RChop regime. Ha ha since my nickname as a kid was Chop (hence 222choppy was my radio call sign when I was playing radio announcers. Yes I did all the singing and the news broadcasts.)  There will be 6 treatments in a 3 weekly cycle. So I have ordered 6 Agatha Raisin Detective books from the book registry. They are very light reading. Duncan will order 6 bottles of (good) champagne for us to have as each cycle is completed. Although they do say my taste buds will be affected and it will have a slightly metallic effect. We were very pleased when Jill found some information that alcohol has a slightly protective effect from Lymphoma. I am saving all the easy puzzles in my sudoku book for chemo days. It is 6-8 hours for treatment no1, then 4-6 hours for each successive cycle.
Liz and Barry were down last weekend, and Liz bought me her wig block. Her wig she called "The opossum" and advised me to spend a bit of my own money to add to the government grant to get one which doesn't look like roadkill.
At present my neck is very swollen as I have a bit of an infection in my mouth. It makes me realise how careful I will have to be once treatment starts.

Premonitions

This is the first of the BLOGs now that I know that the lump on my neck is a lymphoma and will require chemotherapy.
I had always said that I would be retiring at the end of my 60th year and I can remember a dragging feeling as I headed back for school this year. Now it doesn't look like I will be able to make it through this year, and I am very doubtful about returning next year.
It wasn't long after the lump appeared that I had a nightmare. I was in the kitchen (at 36 Wylie St, Rotorua) and heaps of smiling faces were coming in the door to greet me. All of a sudden a large black bird (like a black magpie, or maybe a crow) flew in and gripped onto my forearm and started pecking at my neck. I was screaming "get it off" -I may have even called out in my sleep. All the smiling people just kept on smiling and chatting and doing nothing! Then Jill came pushing her way through the crowd and lunged at the bird... At this point I woke up in a very agitated state. From that point on, when they said "it's probably viral, but we'd better check that its nothing more sinister"  I think I secretly knew the answer.

There are about 5 possible causes of lymphoma including presence of the Epstein Barr virus - a flag for Glandular fever which I had about 6 years ago and agricultural chemicals. However Duncan thinks it is highly suspicious that this should strike during the period when I could not get Marmite even when it was back on the market! I guess what we mean is - who knows what caused this to flare up?