Grey again

The world is grey once more. The rain has returned after several weeks of absence. I'm contemplating putting on the lights it's so dark!

My sense of greyness is not helped by talking to my cousins yesterday.

First I phoned my cousin Alma.  She is the one recently diagnosed with lung cancer. This week she saw the specialist lung nurse.  She also had a biopsy taken. Now she waits for the results. Her sister Trudy & her husband have gone to stay with her, get her to the appointments, provide some support if needed. On the whole Alma sounds resigned & tired. I suspect she will be relieved to actually be doing something to hopefully improve the situation.

After speaking to Alma & Trudy, I rang another cousin Ann, who also has cancer, but of a different variety. She’s had it for a while now & has seemed to have been responding well to the chemo without too much adverse reaction. Unfortunately earlier this year she ended up getting very anaemic & having to have several pints of blood put into her. She restarted the chemo & is now feeling very tired, too tired to walk her beloved dog, & is once more off her food. This course of chemo ends soon. She has two weeks off during which she will have another blood test. I just hope all is well.

To top it all we read in a friend’s blog that he too has been diagnosed with a couple of carcinomas that need removing. He had one removed from his back a while back. It is to be hoped that the removal of these ones will go as well as last time.

Meanwhile, we hang onto the thought of our trip to Italy. I’m feeling rather put out by the hunt for travel insurance. The first company I tried wouldn’t insure the Fox as he is undergoing tests at the moment & the results aren’t known at this point. They would insure just me at the princely sum of over £420 for the 19 days. The next company wouldn’t insure us as I have over 5 medical complaints. I did suggest you could regard the hypertension, Chronic Kidney Disease, hypothyroidism & pancreatitis as all part of the one problem but they wouldn't have it. I’ll look on but I suspect we will be going without insurance. It’s one thing paying the Which average of £20-30, quite another over £420! That’s enough for another holiday!