4 DAYS TO GO

OK...FOUR DAYS TO GO!!!

This Friday Ashton is back in surgery for work on the fistula in her neck. It's been a long three weeks waiting for this procedure and we are almost there. As she says its nerve wracking but we are so close now, we're keeping it all together.

Well, I'm drumming up support worldwide. Prayers have started everywhere and I'm hoping for the same feeling I've had before, of a world wide circle of prayer around her. After that as I said on Facebook and many times before, it's in God's hands.

Oh by the way... I tweeted the Pope. Yes he has a Twitter name @ pontifex, so I tweeted him and asked him to pray for my daughter. Will be over the moon if I get a reply.

The husband gets here in three days and then we are ready for the warrior support Ashton needs. I can't wait till he gets here. I really need him by my side. Ciara is working during the surgery. It's her way of keeping busy because waiting does do your head in.

Meanwhile, the book is going well and after this Friday I will finish it. It's rather surreal to revisit some of the last few months but also uplifting when I see the progress that has been made. Regardless  of whether I publish it or not, it's kept me busy and focused.

I may post quite a bit in the next couple of weeks. Hope you don't mind! I need to keep my anxiety levels down and writing is my way.

If you want to leave words of encouragement for my brave 20 year old, feel free and I will make sure she sees them. 25 days till her 21 st birthday and God willing all will be so much better by then .

Till next time...xxx

MY PHOTO SHOOT

Tomorrow I have a photo shoot. Photos of my body will be taken for the pleasure of a select few. I will wear the latest in fashion and later feast on the best the earth can provide.

Yer right!

Let's start that again. Tomorrow I have an appointment for a colonoscopy and endoscopy where all the photos taken will be of my insides, and seen by my doctor. Having already cancelled before Christmas, I have no option but to attend this one. Couture of the day will be your normal blue gown, where your bottom hangs out if you forget to hold it discreetly. And it won't be fine dining. It will be a sandwich and yoghurt. It's always a bloody sandwich and yoghurt.

But before we get to the sandwich and yoghurt phase, I need to get through today. Today is day 2 of preparation. Yesterday was "no fibre" day. No fruit, veg, grains, just some meat and white flour products. It's amazing how unappealing white bread is after years of multigrain. I swear it just melts inyour mouth and tastes like sugar. 

Today after a lovely breakfast of more sugar tasting bread it's a liquid only diet. So far so good but there are distant rumblings and I know it's going to be a long day, one that will culminate in a date with the toilet bowl.

Enter my least favourite drug in the universe - picoprep. Sorry Fresenius Kabi ( what a name), but I'm not a fan. I know it's necessary but honest to goodness, it's like a human vacuum cleaner in a pill. As it says on the package it does a

bowel evacuation. Oh the indignity of it all. I'd rather evacuate the premises.

Because I have far too much time on my hands my brain wanders in many directions. Why is the package green? Green has a strong emotional connection with safety according to Dr Google. Hmm I think a browny/yellow colour may have been more apt in the circumstances.

But marketing people are quite savvy for safety is indeed the reason why I will subject myself to this drug in a few hours. Those of you who have been with me on this blog for a while now may remember  my first date with the gastroenterologist who will perform my procedures 
tomorrow. When I woke from the procedure, he sat by my side and told me had never seen anything like it before. My gastrointestinal system is like a foreign country with waves and waves of what initially looked like polyps. He said that I had literally hundreds upon hundreds of polyps and luckily at that stage I didn't know that normal people freak out if they have just one. What he had just seen was the blanket of hamartomas common 
in Cowdens syndrome patients.

Hamartomas are benign growths. They are not malignant tumours but do  grow along with, and at the same rate as, the organ from whose tissue they are made. Unlike cancerous tumors, they rarely invade or compress surrounding structures but it can happen. It's not very scientific to say this, but in my family if it's rare that will be us. So best they are monitored.

Amidst the hamartomas, polyps can be (and in me have been) found. Thank God all benign so far. The risk of colon cancer in CS sufferers is about 9%. Not sure what it is in non CS people but it's high enough for me to make sure I'm tested and my hamartomas and polyps are monitored.

The time has come to have a stand off with a glass of something that looks like milk...gross...I hate milk. Expecting the salty water taste I experienced the last time I went through this ordeal, I am pleasantly surprised. It's lemon ... a bitter lemon taste. The concoction is drinkable and I knock it off quickly. Now to sit and wait...or was that wait to ...? Yes, I know...not funny. Believe me, I'm not laughing.

Can't wait till tomorrow is over.

Till next time...xxx