caffeine withdrawal and SHOES

Ugh I am so over PET scans. They are BORING. Mother and I turned up at the Christie in Manchester nice and promptly this morning. Started off with the whole caboodle of "yes I am Rosalind White and yes that is my address and yes my date of birth is blah blah blah and NO there is no chance at all that I could be pregnant yes I will sign a document to that effect so that if I do end up giving birth to a grotesquely radiation-deformed creature it won't be the NHS's fault".

Then I had yet another cannula put in my arm, and after a quick blood glucose test I had to sit in a room for a whole mind-numbing hour by myself while radioactive glucose hummed round my system and got gobbled up by my brain/liver/kidneys. The only way I kept sane was by singing American Pie to myself in my head. (No reading is allowed because your arm muscles would take up the glucose instead). I could feel the caffeine withdrawal headache building and building. I was HUNGRY because I hadn't eaten for 12 hours.

(Seriously, even by my rather high standards of food worship, breakfast is absolutely sacrosanct. HOW do people skip breakfast without fainting before lunchtime and killing anyone who looks at them the wrong way??)

Then I loaded myself onto the PET trolley thingy to be jerked back and forth through the scanner for half an hour, trying to stay very still and also hoping that the picture they were getting was clear and cancer-freeeeeeeee. (Thanks to peeps who have been keeping everything crossed for me and wishing me luck - I hope it damn well works.)

After all this I was not exactly in the mood for shopping - in fact my main priority was to find caffeine, paracetamol and food and then possibly a bed - but fortunately things looked up after once we got back into Manchester city centre. Because I saw THESE:


and they are now MINE MINE MINE forever and ever. It matters not that I cannot walk in them (I can learn) and that am practically six foot in them (I will look thinner) and that they were £80 (they were substantially reduced). They are quite simply my soulmates, in shoe form.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed but there seems to be a strong footwear theme running through my cancer experience: the brown leather birthday boots which I hugged and smelled for their leathery comfort when the thought of "a possible lymphoma" made my chest hurt; the new running shoes I bought as a promise to myself to keep fit through the chemo malarkey; the Converses Mother got for me on the morning of the first chemo. And now THESE. It's official: shoes are therapeutic. We should all buy them more often! Hurrah!

(Also, if you see him, don't tell Father the shoes were £80 - we're pretending they were oh, about £20.)

PET scan results should be in about 4 days apparently - will keep you posted.