Lusse o katter

Oh my God, it is soo much snow outside now. I think we have to start shoveling the driveway today
At 14:00 pm Dad and Karin came over to have some 1:st Advent coffee. Then we went to Nybro Christmas market. It was windy, snowy and relly cold.



Yesterday I made elk casserole (it was sooo nice)and I baked "Lussekatter". It is a Swedish type of bun with saffron and raisins in it. Today I will bake a spongecake as well.

Snowy roads

It feels good that it is weekend again. Now I only have 2 more treatments left to do!

This week has been so boring. All I have been doing is being sat on a bus all day up and down to Linköping. The roads have been really bad with snow and ice so the bus has been delayed every day. Instead of it taking 3.5 hours to get there it takes about 4 hours now. There is no time to chill or take a walk or anything when you get there. There is just time to do the treatment and to have a quick lunch, and then it is back on the bus again.

On Wednesday I had so much pain in my legs (again…I don’t know why…) so I could not drive to Kalmar. Mike had to drive me, which meant that I had to take a taxi (the hospital paid for it) from Kalmar to Örsjö on the way back. It took ages before I got back home.

Yesterday Mike´s friend Rocko was here. We had some dinner and drinks together.

Today I am going to see Ida and later I will decorate the house for Christmas.
I think that I will make elk casserole tonight for dinner and watch some good films.

The bus



Coffee, cake and newspaper is a must for the journey

The enterance to the oncology unit of the hospital

Yet another day

Today the weather is really bad. It is snowing and it is windy, wet and cold...
At the moment I am sat at the coffee shop at the hospital waiting to eat lunch before I head off home with the bus. I hope that the roads won´t be to bad.

I slept at the hostel in Linköping yesterday.
I was planning on meeting up with Chritel but I got a terrible headache so I just stayed indoors with a gyros and chips meal and watched TV.

The hostel told me that I cannot stay there on Wednesday night because they were fully booked, so now I have to travel on the bus everyday to and from Linköping-Kalmar for the rest of this week.
So, up at 5.00 am in the morning and back home for 17.30 pm in the afternoon then. But it is ok, it could be a lot worse. It just feels like so much hard work for only 3 minutes of treatment each time...

Cat in a box

I spend yesterday afternoon going through the wardrobe, packing and sorting out the basement. The cats helped me out.



Purrrfect fit
Mike made us a lovely roast pork dinner and we saw the film “Midnight meat train”.

Today I am going to see Ida and my mom for a while before I continue the packing later this afternoon.

On Monday it is back to Linköping again.

Linköping with Annie

It is so nice that it is finally weekend again and I get to be home for two whole days!

Yesterday I had my treatment as usual but it was a more fun day because Annie came with me.
We took my car and drove off to Linköping from Nybro at 7.00 am. We stopped at Kisa city for a coffee and sandwich break. At 11.00 am we got to the hospital, just in time for my treatment, perfect!

When my treatment was finished (after like 6 minutes) we did town. We did shopping, shopping and some more shopping for Christmas gift. I did not by anything for myself actually. I am a bit scared now to look at my bank statement.
After about 3-4 hours of shopping we got hungry so we ate some really nice Thai food before we drove home.

We drove road 25-22-34 on the way up and road 35-22-25 on the way home. The weather was awful the whole way….dark, rainy and icy roads, but we both came home safe to our boyfriends (around 19.30 pm) who had made us lovely dinners :)

Mike had made proper English fish and chips (potatoes for me of course, I cannot stand chips with fish) with peas and tartar sauce with cherry bake wells for dessert. Yumm!
We watched “Road trip” on TV and after 2 glasses of Rosé wine I feel fast asleep from exhaustion. I had a great day!

Halfway through already!

I just finished the 9:th session of my radiotheraopy. That means that it is now only 8 sessions left. Im halfway through! So far it has been going really easy but I have now started to feel some side effects: my skin is very red, gastric acid hurts my stomage and makes me feel a tiny bit sick, my throat hurts a bit when I swallow and I have a constant pressure and pain in my chest. I also feel a bit more tired than before but not too much. The doctor has prescribed me some medicine to reduce the gastric acid, the pain in my throat I have to just "deal with" and take some paracetamol.

Yesterday I met up with Christel (my friend that I worked and lived with in Gran Canaria 2003) we had some dinner in a Thai restaurant and talked. She had some photoes with her from GC and it was so fun to see them :)

Now I am going to eat some lunch here at the coffee shop in the hospital and then I will get on the bus at 12:45 to come back to Kalmar.

Tomorrow my friend Annie will drive me to Linköping :)
We will have a stroll around town after my treatment and then drive back home after we have been X-mas shopping. Im looking forward to it.

Hospital, hospital, hospital...

I have not been posting anything lately because nothing special has happened.
I have been traveling up and down to Linköping Monday-Friday.
At the weekend I was at home but I did not do much, just been relaxing and cleaning out the basement (yet again) because we have decided to move house!

We are going to move back to Klaravägen 4 in Örsjö in the end of december. That is the house that me and Mike use to live in before in 2008.
So, I have started to pack already because I like to have all the things organized and I dont want to drag any extra unwanted things with my to the "new" house. I have 7 more boxes with things to give to the second hand shop (RIA) and about 6 black bin bags with crap to throw away and I am not finished yet...

At the moment I am sat at the coffee shop at the hospital and I have just had some nice lunch. The bus leaves in 30 minutes at 12:45 pm and I will get back to Kalmar at 16:15. I hope that Mike has made some nice dinner for me by the time I get back home.

This time I got a really nice room at the hostel. It was like an apartment with cooking facilites and everything. So instead of going to a restarurant yesterday I went to Netto shop and bought soup that I could heat up in the room. The I stuffed my face with cheese doodles!





I have met some nice people at the hostel: Göran, Yvonne, Ewy and Irene. They are also patients. It is nice to sit and talk to them because they also have cancer and they have had similar treatment as myself.

Tomorrow morning it is up again at 5.00 am to take the bus back to Linköping at 7:25 in the morning. My appointment is at 10:50 tomorrow. I will meet up with Christel tomorrow afternoon to have some dinner together and then I will sleep at the hostel and come back home agin on Thursday night.

My first radiotherapy sessions

Now I am home again so I can write another post.

Last Sunday we celebrated Vendelas 3rd birthday in Lindås. She is so adorable and cute!

On Monday I got up at 5:00 am and drove to Kalmar hospital. I took the bus from there to Linköping at 7.25 am and got there for 11.00 am. I had my first radiotherapy session at 11.10 and it went fine. It took about 20 minutes this time because they took some x-ray photos as well to make sure that everything was in the correct position. The nurses were constantly measuring the distance on my body. I did not feel anything.

This is the radiotherapy machine. It makes a funny sound and crawls around my body.

This is my nurse Manuel, he is so cool :)


After the session I had some lunch in the café at the hospital and sat down at the computers there for a while before I headed down town to find the hostel. It took me about 20 minutes to walk there.

It is a nice hostel (Linköpings vandrarhem) but nothing special. It is just a normal room with a TV and internet (if you bring a computer, which I have not done) toilet and shower. In the evening I chilled out at the hostel because I was so tired.
I get breakfast in the morning (Before 9.00 am) and some sandwiches in the afternoon (before 19.00pm) the food is ok.
I slept in the hostel on Monday and Tuesday night.

My room


On Monday
On Tuesday
On Tuesday I had my second treatment and everyting went ok. It took about 10 minutes. I did not feel anything :)
In the afternoon I met up with my friend Christel around 17.00 pm. I have not seen her since we worked and lived together in Gran Canaria in 2003. It was sooo nice to see her again! We sat down at a restaurant not far from the hostel and we had some dinner together and talked about the good old times and everything else as well :)

Today I had my third treatment at 11:20 am and it only took 5 minutes. It was because they did not have to take any x-ray pictures this time. I did not feel anything. The nurse told me that the doctor had had a look at the pictures and that everything was fine.
Afterwards I had lunch at the café and then I took the bus home at 12:45. At 16:30 I got back to Kalmar and then drove back to Örsjö after a stop at Nybro to drop my mom off and to do some food shopping.

Now I am home again and it feels good. Mike is at work but I can finally hug the cats. It just sucks a bit that I have to get up at 5:00 am in the morning again to take the bus back to Linköping…. I will sleep at the hostel tomorrow.

The weekend

Believe it or not, but on Friday I actually managed to sew more curtains. I have now sewn 4! Wiiiee.
On Friday I also cleaned out the entire basement (again…) and found more stuff that we do not need. I filled 4 more boxes that will be donated to the second hand store and 3 big bags with stuff to go to the dump.
I blame the medicine for me being this hyperactive.
I spoke to my doctor on Thursday and he said that he wanted me to stay on the medicine (Betapred 2mg) for the whole radiotherapy treatment “just to be on the safe side” because if I get any problems with my lungs now it is most likely that the damages will be permanent.
It is not such a high dose, but I can still feel it. I have much more energy and I just cannot sit still, I have to do things all the time, for ex cleaning. It is funny because so many of the nurses that I have met have asked me: -I bet your house is clean now, huh? Haha, that is soo true!

Yesterday my mom and I went to Borgholm to my grandparents grave. We put down a lovely decoration and lit a candle. We had a walk around town but the weather was really bad. It was windy and it rained, proper autumn weather.
In the afternoon Mike and I went to Kosta Outet to see when Göran Persson (The Swedish ex-prime minister) lit all the 2 million Christmas lights. It was beautiful.



There was a Christmas market there and I found a few Christmas presents already. It feels good to have started bying them in time this year. I bet I will find the rest of the Christmas presents when I am in Linköping.

Just now I have been enjoying a lovely English breakfast and soon we are going to Lindås to celebrate Vendelas 3:th birthday!

Tomorrow I will take the bus in the morning to go to Linköping again.
This time the treatment will start at 10.50. I will stay at the hostel for the first few nights. Hopefully I won´t get too bored and I will be able to sleep ok. It is just going to be frustrating that there is not going to be anything to clean there…haha.

Carrot cake

I wonder what happened?
I was trying to make carrot cake yesteday but it did not really end up the way I wanted....haha.



:(
It should have looked like this...

Today Emmy came to see me. We ate some "carrot cake" :) and drank some coffee.
I have also joined "facket and a-kassan" today! Finally! (the union and the unemployment fund)
Otherwise I have just been relaxing and cleaning the house today. I still make really nice dinners every day. I follow new recipes and it is fun to try new flavors.

I got such a nice letter in the post today.
It is from the class that I did my first internship in. Bless.

Back at home again

My visit to Linköping did not last as long as I thought. I went there yesterday morning. My appointment at the doctors was at 14.20. I did the “simulator thing” where they mark my body exactly where they are going to stream the radiation.
At 16.15 I was sat in a taxi on the way home again.
The reason was that the “radiotherapy machine” was broken. There is a piece missing that they need to order from another country and they don’t know when it can be fixed. Therefor I got to reschedule my visits. I have to come back on Monday at 10.50am to start the treatment finally.

Here is some information about radiotherapy and what the doctors and nurses have done to me at the hospital in Linköping so far:

So does radiation work:
The radiation typically used in radiation therapy is similar to sunlight but with much higher energy. Thanks to the high energy radiation produces electrically charged particles in the area of the body being treated. Particles called ions, and therefore called radiation ionizing radiation.
The radiation also leads to the formation of free radicals in tissue and those causing damage to genetic material, DNA. It is precisely these DNA damage we want to achieve. Damage to tumor cells genome is the basis of radiation therapy effect.
Cells whose DNA is damaged, lose their ability to divide and eventually die. The damage in DNA is repaired often, but tumor cells have less repair capacity than healthy cells. Therefore, the tumor cells die while most healthy cells survive. In addition, shielded radiation so that the healthy tissue is spared as much as possible. In this way the tumor can be shrunk or completely eliminated, while the healthy tissue will be fine.

Preparation before treatment
Before the actual radiation treatment can begin you have to do some preparation. How much preparation needed depends on the type of tumor it is, how urgent it is to start treatment, whether it is curative or palliative treatment, and so on.
Fixation
It is very important to exactly the same area is irradiated from time to time. To facilitate this often produces different types of so-called fixation devices. For tumors in head and neck area makes it a face of a plastic net which is shaped just for the face, neck and shoulder shape. During treatment helps mask the patient to keep your head still on the treatment table so that staff can set the radiation exactly right.
Sitting tumor elsewhere in the body can instead use a so-called vacuum pillow, a kind of mattress where the body makes an impression, which then means that you are in the same way at each treatment.
Anchors are usually made so that you can easily get out of them if needed. Usually it is not concerned about any devices which are clamped.

Computed tomography
Another preparatory step is to do a CT scan. It is a kind of X-ray which can take detailed cross-sectional images of the body. The survey also known as CT, Computerized Tomography. CT Scans prefer the previous fixation. The survey takes about 15 minutes and then it can take up to two weeks before the actual radiation treatment begins. Sometimes also used contrast in this study to better distinguish the various organs and tumor changes. The contrast medium can either be administered intravenously through a vein or by drinking it.
The images from CT scan shows the tumor extent and location. Using this information, since doctors determine the range of radiation need to cover and which areas should be avoided to spare the sensitive organs.

Treatment planning
Then treatment planning. With the help of computers and staff knowledge is determined from which direction the radiation is directed, and the type of radiation to be used.

Simulation
Today it is becoming increasingly common for treatment is started directly in the radiation therapy apparatus, without a previous simulation. But when the treatment is simulated by the use of a simulator, an X-ray with the same opportunities for settings such as radiotherapy equipment. Everything is done in the same way as in the upcoming reading, because you use the tethers that you made.
When the patient arrived in the correct position, check with the aid of fluoroscopy the radiation field with the individual treatment plans. Since the marked boundaries of the area to be irradiated with a permanent marker, or with little tattoo dots on the patient's skin.
The markings are then used throughout the treatment period to verify that the radiation is placed in the right place. They must remain in place during the entire treatment period that may extend over several weeks. It is okay to shower the field with markings, but do not rub with soap. Avoid strongly perfumed soaps and deodorants in the radiotherapy field. Pat dry the skin. Disappears marks must be set on.
The visit at the simulator or the setting directly in the radiation therapy device can take about an hour, thus much longer than the next reading. It depends on many factors should be checked, the radiation fields are highlighted, radiographs should be taken and so on. Sometimes, this visit also include information about the treatment from the responsible oncologist. After a few more days so treatment can begin.

Simulatorn looked like this and I was in it for about 30 minutes. I got tattooed with 3 small dots.

Party!

On Saturday Linn and Sofie had a birthday party to celebrate their 25-th.
I had a lot of fun! On Sunday I was hangover and had a terrible pain in my legs and back again. I also did not sleep at all the night between Sat-Sun. Stupid tablets. The doctor should have phoned me on Friday to let me know about lowering the dose, but I STILL have not heard anything...so im still on the highest dose. It is crazy.

At the moment im waiting for Ida to get here.
Tomorrow im off to Linköping.