Superwoman, or what?

This morning Mum had an appointment with her medical oncologist. The look of sheer surprise on his face as we walked into his office was priceless. 

"You're looking so well... so different to last time I saw you!"

(because last time he saw Mum, she was in a lot of pain, and feeling generally miserable and unwell; very different to how she is now).

We talked about the success of the radiotherapy in arresting the spinal tumour, and relieving the excruciating pain Mum had been in. We agreed that there is no point in putting Mum on any more chemotherapy (even though there is apparently a chemo drug that might be a possibility- but he said that in the overall scheme of things it might not do any good, and would probably only make her feel sick, which none of us wants), so we'll just go back for more radiotherapy if necessary, for relief of specific symptoms (ie if the other tumour in her spine starts to give her pain), but apart from that, we'll just go down the palliative care path. We don't have to see him again until the end of September.

After the appointment we were feeling pretty happy and Mum decided we should go out for lunch to the RSL club. So we did. When we arrived there, it was too early for lunch, so we had a bit of a flutter on the pokies (the only time I ever play the pokies is with Mum, as it's something she enjoys, and we have fun doing it together), and then had a pleasant lunch in the coffeeshop bistro. 

Mum had a lamb hamburger with salad and chips, and I had a gourmet pizza with garlic prawns, bacon and brie. We worked out that this was the first time Mum had been out for a meal since her birthday dinner back in May. We got a bit excited, and started thinking about other outings we might be able to make... and it seems that a performance of South Pacific at the Opera House could be on the list.

Mum loved that lamb hamburger!

After lunch, we had another flutter on the pokies, and then went home. Overall, it was a great morning.

This evening, Mother decided that after her mighty effort of consumption at lunchtime, she wasn't really hungry, and didn't want any dinner. I therefore took the opportunity to get some Thai takeaway for myself, as Mum isn't into spicy food (and her gut can't really tolerate it these days even if she wanted to eat it).  

I came home with some Pad Thai, and proceeded to eat. A little voice piped up, "can I have a taste?" so I gave her a bit of chicken and noodle. A few minutes later, "that was nice, can I have another taste?" at which point I offered to put some into a bowl for her, but she declined, saying that the little tastes would be enough.

It occurred to me after giving her those tastes, that it probably wasn't very smart feeding her from the same fork that I'd been eating from, given the lurgi that I've had for over two weeks, but we figured that if she was going to get it, she would have got it by now, and hopefully I'm not overly contagious any more. 

But the way things are at the moment, it's starting to feel like Mum's a bit of a superwoman, so I'm sure she will be fine.