Good and bad

Saturday:

Starting with the good news: this morning Tim and I were out the back discussing the soft landscaping (plants) and we saw Craig in his backyard (we have a high fence but if we are on the high part of our backyard and he is in the low part of his, we can see each other) so we called him over to ask how he felt about the heat pump noise. "Is it on right now?" he asked. I almost danced with glee. He was about 2 metres away from it and he couldn't hear it! So yay. He says it's fine, our air conditioner and the pump in the shed are louder (possibly an ungracious way to give in, to mention our other noises) and we had a nice chat. So the heat pump is fine, we can get on with the landscaping. Only one more hurdle to go - "final inspection" of the pool from the council. They already approved the fences, so I don't know what problem there could be, but you never know! I'll organise that on Monday, I was waiting to hear if we needed to move the heat pump first.

Now the bad news. I mentioned a few weeks ago that my father-in-law Des's partner Jo (they've been together at least 5 years but could be longer) found out she had lung cancer. Apparently she did smoke for 50 years. She is 70 years old and very obese, so the prognosis didn't seem good. The doctors spent a few weeks doing more painful tests - she wanted to get the lump removed straight away but there were frustrating delays - then operated yesterday, planning to remove the affected lobe of her lung. But the cancer had already moved into her chest. They closed her up without removing the lobe, no point. When we heard from Des last night, Jo was still recovering from the operation and didn't know yet. But this is obviously very bad news. They are going to try chemo and/or radiotherapy and ever-optimistic Des thinks she still could have a good few years. Having had both my parents die from cancer, I am more pessimistic. I feel very sorry for Des, he looked after his sick wife for years before she died about 10 years ago, now he is going to go through it again. I don't know if we'll be visiting her in hospital this weekend, we'll see what she wants us to do.

Maybe I shouldn't be so pessimistic. Some people respond very well to treatment. I tend to expect the worst, I think.

Today we did a lot of gardening, just about all the dirt is moved to where we want it. It was beautiful outside, like spring which is only a week away. Lots of hard physical labour with shovel and wheelbarrow. I had a lot of energy today. No interest in sitting inside, I wanted to be outside doing! The dry mouth was much less today which is great. Good appetite control.