The Recovery Room

This is my first blip since March as I have not felt much up to blipping since then. At the end of February I was shocked to be given a diagnosis of bowel cancer, having been referred to a specialist to investigate IBS or similar. At that early stage, my world seemed to fall apart and it was only when we got the results of the initial tests that the doctors could feel confident that the cancer had not spread elsewhere.

I had surgery at the end of March to remove the tumour and I have been on the road to recovery since then. That was major surgery and by the time I returned to work in June, I was only able to work short hours as I got quickly fatigued by the drive and the need to concentrate on work matters. This was not helped I suppose by the fact that I now had a temporary ileostomy, which essentially by-passes the colon to allow it to heal but in doing so removed much of my ability to absorb the goodness from food and drink.

In the middle of August, I returned to hospital for further surgery to reverse the ileostomy and, although I’ve have been returned to a state of weakness, it is nowhere as bad as last time so hopefully my recovery will be much quicker.

So that’s why, having come back to Blipfoto after an extended break, I disappeared again. I am not going to make any bold promises that I will blip every day, but I am feeling a renewed sense of enthusiasm and could do with something to focus on other than my urgent rushes to the toilet from time to time. This will include a fair amount of back-blipping as my absence has not meant that the camera has been out of action for the entire period.

That is the backdrop for today’s blip as we have had this wonderful summer house installed in our garden. We ordered it a couple of months ago in the hope that it would be here in time for me going into hospital again but at least it is here now. I will be making the most of the opportunity to spend time in the garden without having to have good weather to go with it, hence my title, The Recovery Room; it will surely help my recovery to spend time out in daylight.

We have looked at summer houses for years and felt that they were just a bit too expensive for the use we would get from it. When we saw this model, we fell in love with it because it is big enough to be a practical addition to our available room space: we don’t have anywhere practical to put a conservatory, which would have been my preferred option but would have ended up operating as an external structure anyway. This faces south and gives us a view across our neighbour’s huge garden to trees beyond, so actually affords us a great deal of privacy and at least the illusion of space.

So, it’s good to be back and I’ll come along and visit your journals very soon.