Australian Sisters
Comments
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Haha to the up and about... I'm in bed on my ipad :-) Yes, I have the Emend, Kytril and this time the dex for the first couple of days. Then I have Zofran and maxalon tabs to go on with. Just about to take my first dex after breakfast.
No snakes in New Zealand :-) And only one poisonous spider, the Avondale spider. I lived in suburbs around Avondale almost all of my 21 yrs and never saw one of these spiders...
regards Jenn (munching on a white choc and cranberry easter bun (Woolworths).0 -
Jenn, I'm still in bed too, going through all the overnight posts on my phone and listening to the political stuff on ABC radio lol.
It's harder to keep up with BCO when working, which I'm not today.
We are expecting torrential rain over the next 24 hours.0 -
Thanks for your welcome everyone
Chrissy - I'm up to my 7th rad treatment today. Have developed red spots (? thrush) under my boob but no discomfort. I have to have 30 treatments. Am using Sorbolene and Dermeze and also Johnson's cornflour powder if I get sweaty.
Trish. Do you have any stock on your land? I have 2 alpacas
Aussie-Kate - I've had the maggots dropping on the floor from dead rats in the ceiling, but usually its accompanied by a terrible smell. I'm told it's quite common in rural Australia. It's rather gross I agree.
Hope you get the port sorted out Jenn
Gerri
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Hi everyone. Well today I am back to normal. No temp and energized again. I want to ask though have any of you on FEC and Neulasta had heart palpitations? I have noticed that I have them nearly constantly, but only for the last 3 days. Never before. It is a bit scary to have your heart suddenly thumping in your chest for no reason (no exertion). So could the neulasta do this? I'm thinking it might be that and not FEC because I didn't have palpatations with my first FEC only cylce.
Should I be worried? xx
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The epirubicin in FEC can cause heart problems. I would call your nurse or onc and tell them if you haven't already...
Jenn0 -
My, you girls sure have been busy while I've been sleeping! Yup I said sleeping............finally! I took a pill and hit the hay about ten and woke up at 10.30 this morning!.............now that's what I call a good sleep! I got on the scales this morning and I have to crow that for the first time in three years I'm finally under 100kg.........just......but I'm under..............oh happy, happy me!.......lol What I am doing is obviously working even though I can't exercise and that's a really good thing!
Maggots! Red Backs! Oh my goodness! Sheila and Kate I laughed myself silly while reading those posts! Where I live red backs are everywhere, you don't even work in the garden unless you have gloves on....just in case. Every three or four months I have to let a spider bomb off in my laundry as for some reason not just the red backs but the common black spider likes to hang out in there............lol. I think the worst spider here would be the White Tip as for some reason the ones I've seen and I've seen plenty, are huge! Their bite isn't deadly but the bacteria they introduce is truly awful and what it does to your flesh, well I think I'd rather a Red Back bite! So far, I've not had a problem with maggots falling from the ceiling but I get where you are coming from Kate when you say eeeww! For something that funnily enough is actually clean and have been used to help clean wounds, they sure do invoke a heap of disgust!
Racy good that you are relaxing taking it easy after your days at work. Hope you are settling in and will find your niche very quickly there. These new iPhones are great for all sorts of thing and not just making phonecalls....lol......they are becoming an ultra mini computer and I think we will all find that that is exactly where the technology will head. The only problem is the key board is so sensitive and there is that premptive suggestion that if you don't watch it, you can write some pretty funny stuff that really makes no sense at all!
Jenn I know what you are feeling is just awful and it's hard to express in words to convey it. Please just take it easy and rest........only do what you really must and leave the rest or better yet do nothing until you are feeling better. Fighting nausea is one of the hardest things to do, I think often if you can vomit it does make you feel better but while doing chemo that is not a good option. ((((((Hugs)))))) Take care of you veins as have been said before, gently massage the needle stick points. I didn't have Herceptin as I'm Her2- but if you are still facing a whole lot more needle sticks I would definitely get that port sorted asap.
Gerri not sue what your red spots are and it sounds like you are on top of the skin care for the radiated area but there are a lot of girls here on the different forums that highly recomment Emu Oil as a skin protectant and moisturiser and another girl I know in Cairns used it and said it did really well for her as well. Just be aware that as you get more into the rads the damage being done to the skin cells compound and that also goes for the fatigue that also builds with rads.
Ugh! I've done it again, wanted to respond to Lyndall as well but can't remember what I was going to say and if I go back a page I will loose what I've written.........so, I will post this bit and go back and read and then do part two.................lol.
Chrissy0 -
Ah ha! Lyndal yes, thank you, I think I'm pretty much back to my normal self.........if you can call myself normal..........hahahahaha! Don't know what the cause was but whatever it was it's gone! Now I'm just concentrating on trying to loose some more kg's before the knee surgery. The paper work is all done the only thing left is all the blood tests and the ECG but they will be don on the Monday before surgery.
Trish I'm with you on the Brown Snake thing as I've lost so many animals to them. When I lived on a property in the Adelaide hills they were a big problem as were the Red Belly Blacks but like all things, if your are aware of them you can take precautions. I remember one summer there, it was so hot and my house was an ols stone house tht was always cool. I had a cat door in the wall of the outer entrance area so they could come and go as they pleased but one day my DD1 and I were preparing to go out, (can't remember where now), and she was going out to make sure the back door was locked and then she came running in all paniced saying there was a snake in the lobby. I went out and sure enough yes there was a snake but it was about 12" long and about as thick as a pinky finger.................obviously a hatchling but a hatchling with a deadly bite! It was a red belly black!!! The closest thing was a bucket so I upended it over the little snake to keep it from disappearing while I went to get my BBQ tongs (because they were long) and a container to put it in. So I caught this little thing, put it in a very large jar and when my DH got home that night asked him where he was going the next day. When he told me I realised that he would be way out in the country and would pass a few creeks so I told him to let it go near one of the creeks. I don't like killing anything unless I really have to and this was the best way to preserve it's life and mine.
Thank goodness I don't have to worry about the Funnel Web spider as they are a spider that really scares me!!!!
Love n hugs all!!! Chrissy
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More congrats on your weight loss Chrissy. Keep it going!
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Glad you got some sleep Chrissy. We have the white tail spiders too - they are nasty things. I once worked in an office where red backs had made a web on one of the telephones! I called the pest exterminators, and they told me that a red back bite on an adult's finger is nothing to worry about - apparently the skin is a bit too tough for the venom to get through. It's another matter if it's a child with softer skin or those other "tender bits" that men expose when on the loo lol, which is why the red back on the dunny seat has its fame lol. I told him I didn't care - just get rid of the things!
Kate - I didn't have the neulasta - but I do remember some heart palpitations - not bad enough to worry about, but they did happen on occasion. As Jenn says - the Epirubicin might be to blame? I'd get it checked out though.
Jenn - one thing to remember - if you are having problems on FEC, the Taxol might be easier on you. I had no problems with FEC, but lots on Taxotere. I know the Taxol and Taxotere are different - but close enough. I've heard lots of women swear they'd never do FEC again, but would do Taxotere. Just keeping my fingers crossed for you. You won't have to do FEC again now xoxo
Trish
xox
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Gerri - we don't have stock - just 2 goats who think they are dogs lol. We quite often have the neighbour's horses on our paddock as we always seem to have more grass than them, so help them out.
Chrissy - after I'd lost my lovely boy Monty to a brown snake (he was a rough collie - like Lassie) I came home one afternoon and found Monty's litter brother Gus standing over a brown snake and barking at it. I nearly had a heart attack. After I got him inside I went at the snake with a shovel only to find out it was already dead. When I rang the vet - I didn't know if Gus had been bitten or not, I had to take him in to have a test to see if he'd been bitten, AND I had to take the snake with me too! The vet said if he could id the snake and say it was defenitely a brown and not a tiger snake, then if Gus had to have treatment he'd only have to have one. It would save me around $500! So I had to pick the snake up and put it in a bag and take it with me. It travelled in the boot in two plastic bags lol
Gus wasn't bitten - so all was ok.
Trish
xoxo
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Hey all...sounds like everyone is very busy...welcome to the new Oz and Kiwi girls...I'm on my last day off today and planning to head back to work on Monday flexi hours...I'm recovering well from my hysterectomy and feel I'm going mad at home...hope I'm doing the right thing!
I loved the stories about mags and snakes and spiders...thought I'd share this with you...on my winter break up North my hubby was working as a seasonal ranger and I went to visit for 5 weeks...and OMG this was right near out van
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Wow Sharon! That photo is amazing!!! One thing for sure, while it was busy eating another snake at least you knew it wasnt going to bite you!
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Yeah that's what my lovely husband kept saying as I was trembling with fear! He assured me it's mouth was full but I was extremely grateful for my 200mm zoom lens and wishing it was a 1000mm zoom lol...pretty amazing stuff, on that holiday I have about 10 bloody different snake shots, everyone was callling me the snake lady! Nice...have hundreds of bird shots too which are a little less stressful on the old nerves I might add.
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Yes. No more FEC, and indeed yesterday was only FE with no C because of my liver...
I am so hoping the Taxol will be better. My onc and nurse seem to think so as did my infusion nurse yesterday. Only thing is that I'm scheduling it for Fridays and its weekly for 12 weeks. So written off weekends all that time (including Easter) :-(
regards Jenn0 -
Trish, these days you could just take a picture of the snake with your phone and take the dog and phone to the vet!
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I did it. I couldn't stop thinking about it, so today I went and bought all the ingredients to make peach crumble. I also bought the nicest looking minted marinated deboned leg of lamb. Sunday lunch is certainly going to be treat. I hope I do it justice
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lol @ Kate - I've started something :-) If you weren't so far away, I'd send you some lovely fresh juicy sweet peaches that had just come off the tree!
Sharon - great shot!
Racy - no pic won't do - they actually feel the belly part of the snake and count the ... the .... things! I can't remember what they are called, they are sort of like concertina parts. So many for a brown and so many for a tiger. I kept telling the vet I know the difference between the two - we don't usually get the tigers here, there are lots a bit further south in Cooma (where the vet is). But he likes to be sure "sigh" We get the red bellie blacks too - but not so common. We actually have lengths of irrigation pipe - about 2 meters long - at various places around the house, and I whack them with that first - it breaks their backs and then they can't go anywhere and use the shovel to take the head off.
Lovely place we live in lol
Trish
xoxo
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Jenn - I'm hoping that the Taxol is so much easier on you. Easter is over rated anyway
xoxox
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ahh gross Trisha. Ive only had one snake in my yard to date and that was enough and it was just a big ole carpet snake that decided to live at my next door neighbours one winter.
I'll raise ya heaps of cane toads though. Revolting ugly critters that Im scared stiff of but that cant hurt me - go figure lol.
Gotta say the 2 years i lived in England where the best 2 years of my life as far as insects/reptiles etc. Saw nothing but the occasional green frog over there. ahh the security and peace of mind in knowing I wasnt gonna come face to face with a Huntsman spider or a cane toad.
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Yumm...those peaches sound superb Trish:)
Jenn I had the AC x 4 followed by Taxol x 4...the Taxol was different for sure, more aches but less nausea ... hope you find it easier but see the new regime is weekly all these years on...I chose chemo Friday's so I'd not have to worry about lunches etc...and by Saturday arvo I wasn't too bad...fingers crossed for you xx
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I went to bed late one night and, as is my habit, I lay down to read for a while. Our bed was an old, low, ensemble type and sagged a bit and, when I lay down, the sheet sat on the floor. My bedside light faced my book and the wall and, as I lay there, I became aware of a tiny glittering spot on the wall.
Moving my book aside, I jumped when I realised that I was looking into the eyes of a HUGE Huntsman spider! Not four feet from me!
Hubby, whom I had thought was asleep, told me not to worry about it, it would be gone in the morning. That's all right for him to say, it would have to crawl over me to get to him wouldn't it? No worries for him.
Then to my horror, that creature (no....not my DH, the eight-legged one) started down the wall and came straight at me across the floor. Naturally, I did the female thing, grabbed the sheet off the floor and stood up in the middle of the bed sort of prancing around, trying to keep my balance.
This totally woke up DH, who bounded out of bed in his glorious birthday suit and proceeded to look for a handy broom with which to defend us from this nightmare. I know a lot of women who keep long handled things in their bedrooms...........don't you?....and because there wasn't one I was supposed to go and get one..........he's always been such a joker....doh!
He proceeded to wave clothes and sundry items at the spider which ended up right on top of us on the 12 ft high ceiling. This move precipitated my fast exit out of the room while hubby yelled at me to get the vacuum cleaner with all the extensions it came with.
So that's how I came to be in hysterics at 1 in the morning, watching my naked hubby chase a spider around the ceiling with a vacuum cleaner while he staggered all over our bed, which because it was old and a bit jiggly made him jiggle a bit too!
I tell ya.........how we didn't wake up the neighbours or our kids that night, I don't know. Everytime hubby got the nozzle near the spider, it would move and DH would jump backwards in fright. We must have had that cleaner going for about fifteen minutes until it went down the tube. Then we put the cleaner outside.........just in case the spider crawled out and came back to get us.
Sheila.
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OMG what a vision you have made me have Sheila lol...x thanks
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OK here's my bad bug story. When we were first married, we rented a very cheap little brick bed sit. Heck we didn't even have any furniture to speak of, only a couple of bean bags and I decorated the bare walls with decorative tea-towels. Anyway, this is in Macky Nth QLD and they have lots of bugs there. This one night it was stinking hot and I couldn't sleep. The air was dead still, but then I was aware of a sort of hum noise and I saw the net curtain over the window (there were no screens) blow into the room. I didn't think much of it but about 15 minutes later I got up to get a drink of water, turned on the light into the kitchen area and there were hundreds and hundrends of cock-roaches everwhere, up the walls, on the ceiling, on the bean bags. Heck some of them were 'doing it' and doubled up so that combined they were over 4 inches long. I was just frozen and couldn't take a step, because yep, they were all on the floor too. It was like something from a horror movie.
Hubby was snoring his head off and wouldn't wake up until I could physically shake him awake. He thought I was being a bit dramatic about the 'thousands' of cockroaches (maybe I exaggerated a little bit to emphasise that we had been invaded) but he too got the shock of his life when he saw them.
A lot of them scuttled and hid when we started moving around, under the fridge etc which made things worse, but Paul thought they would respond well to fly spray. Wrong, this just infuriated them and they started flying around everywhere, by this stage it was all just too much for me and I ran back to the relative sanctuary of my bed that had a mosquito net over it and just sat shaking in my little net tee-pee. Can't recall that I slept a lot that night, knowing what was out there and we moved out a couple of weeks later to a better place that had fly-screens.
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I thought I'd dodged any SE's from Neulasta, but oh my, my lower back is throbbing with fairly strong pain - worse when I sit. It just consistently pulsates a bit like when you've hit your thumb, but this is wide spread across my lower back. Well at least I guess it's doing it's job and it's not too bad, more of a strong discomfort and not so bad if I lie down. So I'm going back to bed now.
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Eeewww Kate, not a nice situation. NSW is supposed to be the cockroach mecca. We have the cane toads which you would no doubt have encountered in Mackay also.
Can you take an over the counter drug for the back pain?0 -
OMG - Sheila and Kate - I'm crying from laughing so much. Sheila, I'm sorry but I'm going to have a picture of your naked hubby with dangly bits gaily swinging to and fro while he stabs at the ceiling with a vacuum cleaner after a huge spider for a long time. You'd better not post a picture of him anywhere lol.
Kate - try taking some Neurofen or some other anti inflamatory med. It might help.
Trish
xoxo
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Yes snakes, spiders and maggots I have them all here. Hopefully my fairly new to me dog stays away from the snakes.
Thanks for the tip about the emu oli Chrissy. I'll look out for it. Am finding the cornstarch powder best under the boob in this hot weather but am using moisturisers on the exposed surfaces. I had #7 yesterday and have ? folliculitis in the skin fold under the boob.
Hope you all have a nice restful weekend. The lamb sounds wonderful AussieKate
BTW what type of bras do you find most comfortable?
Gerri
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Hi Gerri
I've bought myself some Ahhh bras. My remaining breast is quite large lol a DD and while the Ahh bras don't give heaps of support, I find it really comfortable. The prosthesis sits quite well in it, and I don't seem to need to adjust it as much as in a berli or similar bra.
Trish0 -
Gerri, your dog looks just like my boy Jack.. I have 4 dogs, two of them border collies - Jack and Jilly) Honestly we had Jilly first then got Jack, but his name was Keanu when we rescued him. Needed a strong boys name and thought of Jack without consciously making the connection with Jill. People think we were trying to be cute. I love them as unconditionally as they do me, and I would not be the happy person I am if I did not have them. They are the BEST therapy in the world, better than any drugs - anyday.
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Have now finished all the peaches - they are stewed lightly and frozen ready for the next round of peach crumbles. Have just dug up some potatoes and cooking them ready for pototo salad. Tonight's dinner is chicken with salad - all the salad fresh from the garden.
Tomorrow - picked the plums today, and am making plum sauce - so tomorrow night is roast pork with home made plum sauce and beans and potatoes from our garden and bought sweet potato and carrots. Yummm ....
lol
Trish
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