Alaric's Dad Lionel and his step-mother Lynne are currently over from South Africa where they live. They arrived in depested darkest Gloucestershire last night and for Lionel it is a return to the place he was brought up. Tonight we made them a three course meal along with Barbara - this is the first formal entertianing we have done since moving back into the house after the flood.
So I brought out the table cloths and napkins and the nice butterfly napkin rings David and Michelle got us at Christmas. We made yummy lentil cakes with sage in - yesturday Alaric made some of the same lentil cakes with what he thought was the coriander but it turned out he doesn't actually know the difference between my lovage plants and coriander - he thought the lovage were lemon corriander and thats why it tasted odd :/ - still both types of lentil cakes were good 🙂
They sat upon a bed of salad from the garden and we had various dips. We then had ground nut stew cook using the cabbages from the garden (well what were left off them due to this years cattipillar uinfestation). Desert was home-made yogurt and local honey with hazel nuts (I'm afraid these were bought as Jean had eaten the ones from the hedge row I'd gathered.).
The interesting thing to note was Jean's interactions with Lionel - her langage was completely different from how she speaks to dad - eg:
To Dad, 'Ferfer nut?'
To Lionel, 'Grandfather would you like a nut?'
I thought this comparison was very interesting as was the fact she called him grandfather when Al had introduced him as Granddad but Lynne had said Grandfather. I think little bobble has worked out that you can interact differently depending on whats expected of you!
Anyway I did take a photo of the Snells but haven't got round to uploading it yet - I will also shortly be sorting out my cooking blog which I will link to so that you can see the recipies etc... of the fabled lentil cakes!
Mum's biopsy results came back yesturday and the lump was cancerous so now she has to go under the knife for a third time and this time they are removing the lymph nodes (as I thought they should have done last time). There will a third partial mastectimy followed by another lot of radiotherapy.
This is almost a year after her treatment started last time and she has only just started to get her life back in order. Now we are worse than back to square one and the thing that makes me the angriest is that it was there when they where treating the first lot. So they have left her with a cancerous lump for year which could have become malignant and decided to send little baby cancers through her body - I presume we wont know if thats the case until they look at the lymph nodes. Then there is the trumer of operations and the knock on effects of anestitics.
What exactly do they think they are doing?
And so we are back to minuse square one.
She goes in for her operation on her's and dads thirtieth wedding anniversary - we had been hoping to do something joint for that and her sixtieth birthday but I think we might have to see how things go 🙁
On Sunday dad was supposed to burn the tomato plants as they have been wiped out by potato blight - he however didn't get all of this done as he went hypo. So with the promise of a cake (made by Diane from the village) he set off to finish the task in the dark.
He wouldn't have done this and would have been sensible and done it the following morning had it not been for Barbara (Al's aunt) who stated that she had asked us to burn them weeks ago and the blight had now spread to her plants. I was a little confused as I thought she had suggested I keep the plants to see what tomatos I could get off of them dispite the blight. I was origonally going to just destroy them. She then got angry that it was potatoe blight and was worried about her potatoes as well - but I've already had to dig all mine up as the blight had got them about a month and a half ago!
Dad valiantly headed out with his torch and was a bit longer than I expected (I was burning his dinner - I actually managed to set it on fire but don't tell anyone), then he appeared with a soggy leg. Not best pleased he informed me that he had been trying to locate the paths edge miss judged and stuck his foot into the stream, the wheel barrow had then come off of the wooden brigde he was wheeling it across and had pulled him right into the stream.
I tried not to laugh at his misfortune but somehow managed to fail much to his chagrin!
Poor Hat Man.
Mum's second partial mastektamy in the other breast went much better than expected. They used a different tequnic but worringly to me they also did not take any lymph nodes this time. They say they don't need to but then they origonally told her she didn't have cancer when the origonal scan shows both lumps in both breasts and from that they told her she was in the clear.
If they had looked properlly later on they could have just done one operation on her a year ago for both lumps and delt with it all. Instead its two lots of operations and depending on the results of the biopsy from the lump they've removed it may be another third operation to remove the lymph nodes to see how its spreading and then more radiotherapy.
But she is in hoping its all ok as are we and she has been knitting like a demon!
Mum was supposed to be in the all clear then a few weeks ago just before she came to stay with us she had a routine check up and a second lump was found in her other breast. A follow up on it showed that it has grown and tomorrow at about two o'clock she is going for another biopsy to find out exactly what the damage is.
The annoying thing is that the lump is apparent on ultra sounds from when they where dealing with the first lump so surelly it could/should have been dealt with at the same time reducing the amount of physical and emotional strain on my mother?
Jean, Recipies, Relatives | sarah | 
Sun 5th Oct 2008 11:43 pm | 
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