shrinking sons, advent and claustrophobia

 This morning as I write, we are well and truly into the festive season. Friends have been posting pictures of decorated trees and mantels for some weeks now! Personally, I am completely unable to even think about putting Christmas decs up until we are safely ensconced in the month of December - Covid or no Covid, but we are here now. 

Our Christmas tree was delivered yesterday. Many thanks to Holly’s husband Si, who always comes up trumps with a beauty. Fortunately it didn’t arrive until the evening so there were other big chaps around to help the poor wee lady driver (and me) to bring it in and position it in the living room. 

I always wonder about what we call this room..... 

Is it a LOUNGE (the term we used when I was a child)?

Is it a LIVING ROOM (the term I’ve just used)?

Is it a FRONT ROOM (works in our house.....)? 

{When the house was built, there were actually three ‘living rooms’:  a front room (parlour), a middle room (sitting room), and a breakfast room. The front two had already been knocked into one when we arrived in the house in the early nineties, and then we knocked the back two together to make a bigger kitchen. I wish we could see what it looked like in late Edwardian times - gas mantles, coal fires and all........}

I’m using “Living Room” on this occasion because it’s the biggest room in the house - the only room which will fit us all in as a family (seated) when we congregate together. However - it seems to have become smaller over the years! We have a mahoosive dining table in there (made by the Legend obvs) which will seat 10 easily, but 14 if necessary. We have a piano in there. We have two sofas in there. We have thousands of books in there. We have a coffee table in there. We have a sideboard in there (made by my grandfather in the early 20th century, and which I refuse to part with)........so we had to jiggle things around a wee bit in order to fit a six foot Christmas tree in there too! 


So, as I sit here typing, I can hear the winter rain thundering down. SO it would seem like the perfect morning to be putting decorations on this baby (the tree, not Ned....ALTHOUGH that has got me thinking....) So that’s my morning sorted. 

This afternoon, I have an appointment on the fourth floor at the Chelsea Royal Marsden - in the Nuclear Medicine department. I have a PET scan booked at 1.15pm. I had a courtesy call yesterday from them - just reminding me about the appointment, and checking that I understand the rules (fasting for six hours beforehand - yup. Had my cuppa, only water now until afterwards). Parvinder (the nice HCA who called) also asked me the dreaded question: “Are you claustrophobic, Mrs Quiney?” 

I paused before answering. I thought about it....... I do consider myself to be ever so slightly claustrophobic (isn’t this a great word? Another wonderful amalgam of Latin and Greek words :- claustrum “a shut in place” and phobos “fear”. I can’t admit to liking it very much, being shut in and confined. No. I wouldn’t choose it. But....do I shriek and have a panic attack? No. 

I told Parvinder that I would be fine - but how long would it last? “Twenty minutes” he told me. I can do that. 

The P,E, and T in pet scan is an acronym for ‘positron emission tomography’ and now I’m going to quote from Wikipedia : “a functional imaging technique that uses radiotracers to visualise and measure changes in metabolic processes , and in other physiological activities, including blood flow, regional chemical composition, and absorption”. 

Any the wiser? Well, as I understand it, the stuff that will be injected into my bloodstream will be a radioactive sugary substance...... cancer LOVES sugar, so if there’s an area of active cancer growth, the substance will collect there..... you hear people describe how scans “light up like Christmas trees”........ 

Well. In my case - we’re hoping that this will not happen today! No Chelsea Christmas trees for me today please!!! I have had four infusions of Nivolumab (my keyboard recognises this name now...... 👍) and I am feeling very well. With hindsight, I am realising that I no longer have the abdominal discomfort that was manifest before, (and that I was ignoring), and that I am as full of beans as one would expect from a 64 year old spring chicken, and that I don’t seem to have noticed any alarming side effects from the immunotherapy as long as you don’t count nodding off at odd moments, and a general level of previously unnoticed clumsiness (tripping over tree roots when out walking, and the smashing of two glasses in one go). 

Right. The plan for today - decorate the six (or maybe seven?) foot Christmas tree, ignore the tummy rumblings, drink only water, use TFL to get myself across West London, and then willingly subject myself to a claustrophobic event in Chelsea! Put like that, it’s a breeze..............

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