51. Overcoming obstacles

Mile 48 – with a steep hill at the end.

Anything can go wrong during your race but in a marathon there is time to recover. A good example is the 2023 London Marathon Elite Women’s event, when Sifan Hassan had to pull up after 15 miles when she injured her leg. After stopping to stretch, she caught up with the leaders, then made a mess of picking up a drinks bottle from the water table, losing more time. Regardless, she won the race with a sprint finish.

As she said, “I’m going to finish the distance or the distance is going to finish me.”

Having fully recovered from last week’s cold, it was business as usual at the hospital for my consolidation treatment of Bortezomib, Daratumumab and Dexamethasone. At first there seemed to be no side effects, until the return of the hiccups on Thursday night, which carried on vigorously through all of Friday. They are especially annoying when they wake you in the night. 

I had been exercising well all week, waking up early for my daily physio routines and twice running Couch to 5K training sessions (I’m half way through the programme now). However, after enjoying lunch with friends on Friday the hangover feeling kicked in on Friday afternoon and carried on all through Saturday. Honest, I didn’t have that much to drink! It was the same mixture of fatigue and grogginess that wiped me out each weekend during my induction chemotherapy early last year. It seems strange that I hadn’t experienced it in the first couple of weeks of treatment in January.

All of this cleared up on Sunday and I’ll be carrying on with the exercise whenever I can in the coming week.

Having missed my treatment last week, I’ll have another session added on in March to make up for it, so there should be five more to go from now.

—oOo—

On Thursday we had a trip to London for a check on my dental implants. I had these screwed into my upper jaw a year ago along with a bone augmentation procedure – a bit like putting a rawlplug into a cavity wall before fixing your shelves. They have long since healed, but it was just as well I had the work done when I did.  After four doses of Zoledronic Acid (so far), the dentist would be reluctant to carry out that procedure now due to the way that the drug hardens the bones. I’ll have to go back to finish off the implants, which will just involve screwing on the new gnashers.The rest of the day we spent at the Petrie Museum of Egyptology, where the highlights included linen dresses that were 4,500 years old. Then we caught the Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition at the British Library, showing lots of original authors’ work. There was a lot there and I particularly liked Mervyn Peake’s illustrations for Gormenghast (although his handwriting was atrocious) and Michael Palin’s original notes for Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

—oOo—

The start of the week had seen me climb Wolstonbury Hill twice: once in the mist and cloud that seemed to last all of Monday, then again on Tuesday when we were dog sitting and I was training Bonnie the Shih Tzu to become a sheepdog.

—oOo—

In other news, I had my first haircut, trimming the untidy bits around my ears. There was just enough at the top for the hairdresser to actually catch it between her fingers and do some real hairdressing. It still has a way to go before it is back to normal but how come the eye brows and ear hair never stop growing?

I finished reading The Armour of Light by Ken Follett, the latest in his books about Kingsbridge. It’s a good page turner and he has a great way of quickly developing the characters. I’m now going back to earlier books in the series, trying to work out whether I have already read them or not.

We enjoyed a meal out at the pizza pub, grateful not to be dragging our friends outside in the cold to the garden seats this time.

—oOo—

At camera club we had a competition night on the theme “Out of the Box”, which I took to mean looking for unusual observations. My two entries both scored 18 out of 20.

Thanks for reading and take care.