Ok, bring it on!

It took a while, but I'm back! I feel fine, Pesach is behind us and chemo hasn't started yet. I do have various little aches and pains, but nothing that can stop me from having fun on the last ten days before getting hooked up. Mum and Dad are here for a flying visit this week, and I mean to enjoy it to the hilt; today we went to Ceasarea to have lunch at Helena's and I had a DELICIOUS spanish mackerel fillet with niuki and a rich sauce containing jerusalem artichokes, olive butter and basil, all blended into a creamy paste. It was excellent. They brought me a big carton of English chocolates too, yum! We sent them back to their hotel with a big bag of avocado, lemons and pecans from Oren's parents garden, so they have their dinner ready. It is really nice to see them and this is the perfect week for them to come, although the weather isn't really cooperating, it is sharav weather today. Sharav is very hot weather which comes with an east wind, drying out the earth and you too if you don't stay in the shade and drink plenty. I hope it will break this evening and then the weather will be nicer for the rest of the week.
In stomaland news, the stoma nurse finally showed up last week and advised me to change to a convex base because my stoma is quite flat and there are little hills of (lets be honest) flab round it, so it looks a bit like a little red castle with a moat surrounded by rolling hills. This is picturesque, but means that it is hard to get a good seal close to the stoma and I am getting some irritation and skin peeling. So, I ordered the convex bases and they should be here tomorrow, I hope. I will be glad if it helps because it gets pretty itchy, and you just can't get at it to scratch properly. (Probably a good thing anyway, it would just get worse.) Apart from that it seems fine, I have been adding foods gradually and nothing has been a problem yet. Even lettuce, an 'advanced' food, went in and hasn't been seen since, hmmm! If I don't chew really well the food tends to suddenly get shot out like a little bullet a few hours later, but it doesn't hurt or anything. If I made a little hole in my bag I could have quite a bit of fun with that, but I'd probably get banned from places. On the other hand a lot of the interesting noises it used to make have subsided, making eating out less hazardous, and the output seems gradually to be getting more organized, with sometimes a few hours of relative quiet. So all in all a good week.