1 Cycle down, 5 to go!

A lot has happened over the last 4 weeks! I think when I last posted I was about 4 hours away from getting on a plane to Australia – really strange to think that was just a month ago!

So Australia… wow! I arrived incredibly dazed from a lovely (as you can imagine) 24 hours of flying and aimlessly wandering through airports. Well, to be honest for such a long couple of flights it wasn’t that bad! The planes were always quite full but it wasn’t too cramped, the films were pretty good and the food really wasn’t that bad! On my trip out I had 3 full meals which were all pretty nice and on the flights back I had four meals (two were breakfast which I don’t really understand because they were about 6 hours apart and one was afternoon tea – I don’t know either but it was all good, and I’m never one to turn down cake!).

When I arrived in Perth the heat and humidity hit me straight away, it was 2.30 am and the temperature was about 22C – not to make anyone jealous or anything hehe! My Uncle picked me up, we got to the house and I went to bed and didn’t get up until about 1pm the next day (I know, typical teenager!). The first few days I spent trying to work out why it was light outside but I thought it was midnight, but I figured it out eventually! My Aunt showed me around for the first week and we had a great time exploring Perth and trying out all of the cake and coffee shops we could find! One day we went to a wildlife park and we got to walk through Kangaroo and wallaby enclosures and at the end I got to hold a Koala!

The second weekend my Uncle showed me around, on one of the afternoons we went to a restaurant which was about 30 floors up and revolved really slowly which was incredible! Ok, at first I felt a bit sea sick but when the food came out (which was so good!) my appetite mysteriously returned. I visited Perth city a few times on my own and it was really different from anywhere I’d been. It was like London with all of the tall buildings and shops but like Canterbury because it was quite small.

It was an incredible trip and really amazing to see My Aunt and Uncle and their family again. I had such an amazing time and I’m so glad I got to do it before starting treatment again.

So when I got back (after being met at the airport by my Mum and Dad and a massive balloon!) it was back to business. I got back to college on the Monday (2nd March) and after a day of scans and appointments on the Wednesday I started the chemo on the Thursday. It’s a different chemo from last time because obviously it’s trying to affect a different area and tumour. I need to have 6 cycles, each 3 weeks long and I am going to loose my hair again (so far not yet, but watch this space!).

So I started at 11 am on Thursday and after 1 hour of one chemo and three hours of another quite honestly I felt fine. In fact I felt high! I didn’t think it was too obvious until one of the Doctor’s came over to me and asked who I was and where I was. Apparently that didn’t happen often and my pupils were like pin pricks! Once I was released – which took a while because I wasn’t particularly with it,  we went back to the hospital hotel and I fell asleep. We had to repeat this for two days (although after the first day they decided to slow the chemo down a little because they said as fun as high Emily was, they didn’t really want that again!). I got to go home on Saturday night.

Over the past week I’ve tried to keep up with normal life, I’ve been to college as much as I can and I’m planning to keep doing that. So far (touch wood) this chemo has been better than the last – so I’m just hoping it stays like that for as long as it can! At the moment I feel pretty normal (or as dad would say – as normal as Emily can be!).

I’ve been cooking lots of shortbread recently at college and at home and as you know I love a bit of orange flavoured chocolate so this is one of the latest recipes that I really like!

Chocolate orange shortbread

Ingredients:

• 200g plain flour
• 50g caster sugar
• 125g softened butter
• 3 bars (small ones) Terry’s chocolate orange

Method:

1. Line a small rectangular tin with greaseproof paper and set the oven to 170C.
2. Chop the Terry’s chocolate orange bars into rough chunks.
3. Mix the sugar and flour together. Add the butter and the chocolate and mix by hand until the mixture becomes like breadcrumbs that you can mould together.
4. Put the mix in the tin and using your hands spread it out into the tine. Mould it and pat it down into the corners.
5. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the biscuit is golden. leave to cool for 5 minutes, cut into fingers. Then leave to cool completely.