This post is slightly out of sync due to all the health updates we recently shared.
It doesn't seem like that long since we saw Amber up at Clacheranmor, but she had a couple of days holiday and came up to see us again mid-July. She brought good weather with her and we managed a couple of nice things to do - the first was cycling on the loch shore of Loch Striven from Colintraive, which we'd done before but is truly spectacular particularly when you meet a real classic - a Jaguar XK150 coming the other way!
The second nice thing was a walk from Lochgoilhead to Glen Donich and (for Amber) a refreshing dip in the water! We took a slightly different, longer route this time and it's all very beautiful and we didn't see a single other person. Liz is a little envious that she missed the swim.
We also popped over to Oban to see the Clipper racing yachts, and have some of the best fish and chips we know of! There wasn't quite as much going on as was advertised, but we were impressed with the route map of the round the world journey these boats had almost completed, having taken almost a full year. There was a harbour race going on in the distance and the usual bagpiper to entertain people, and Oban Chocolate and the Highland Soap Co were an added bonus.
Throw in some other good times like playing some board games and picking some of the local wild raspberries and it's been a lovely few days.
John doesn't miss work, but does miss the people he used to work with - a great bunch of people, many of whom he worked with for decades. Lisette had left JLR a couple of years back to go work for Lego, but they kept in touch on and off. They came up to the Cairngorms for a family holiday and did a detour via our house on the way back. It was lovely to see her just for an hour or so on a particularly bad day for John as he was coming to terms with a long term liquid diet due to continued blockages. It's so nice to have visitors to lift the spirits as beautifully as Lisette did.
Amber came back again a week into September and was able to help out getting John to and from various hospital appointments. His first being the insertion of a Hickmann line to enable the next round of chemotheraphy, the next being chemotherapy day itself. We played a few games during the days and evening but John was pretty exhausted most of the time. Not the most fun for Amber but essential Dad and daughter time.
Liz and Amber did some gardening together to keep the side garden project on track, which was much appreciated. We took a nice bike ride round the glen and found some blackberries. Amber did make a big batch of home made tomato pasta sauce to freeze, but a disaster ensued when the pots slipped out of her hands on the way to the freezer and resulted in the kitchen looking like a volcano had gone off. I think we will be finding sauce splats for some time to come.
Jess, Liz's sister, joined us for the second week of September and we all had a lazy week. John was struggling with tiredness, nausea and vomiting (which the community nurse team and the local GP were working to solve) which meant that trips out weren't really possible...that and the weather anyway. We did some baking, making some excellent onion pretzels and Anglesey biscuits, and we did some lovely watercolour paintings, made cocktails and listened to a lot of music. A very nice, chill week. So much love and thanks to Jess for being so understanding, accepting and supporting whilst witnessing our lives falling apart in quite a dramatic way that week - she is a genuine diamond!
Mum and Dad arrived the third week of September, which was another week where we were very grateful of not only their support but also of their help in the house and garden. The first full day (Sunday) saw us trimming trees and weeding in the morning whilst it was dry, before running inside when the rain arrived. Dad refitted a carpet in the spare wardrobe that had been taken out to cut a new hatch to the underfloor void, and filled a gap in the floor where a wall had been taken out to make way for the new door and full height side panel back in March and had been annoying Liz ever since. Liz filled in some nail holes in the internal door frames ready for a final coat of paint at some point, and mum made a delicious fruit salad for lunch. Already I feel like we've done a lot.
Monday was not a happy day as John went in for a short stay (we hoped) at Ardgowan Hospice to try and get his various symptoms under control so that he could better enjoy his time left and hopefully tolerate the chemotherapy better rather than giving up. I dropped him off mid-morning and made sure he was comfortable before heading off to work. He seemed more relaxed about it once he had seen the place but of course will miss being at home, and I will miss him hugely. Whilst I was out Mum painted the external window reveals with black render paint and cooked a lovely sticky chicken for dinner. Dad sanded an internal wooden door frame, which we stripped the paint off a year ago, ready for staining so it will finally match the rest of the woodwork. This is the most progress we've made for months.
With John being cared for by the hospice it meant that Mum, Dad and I could get on with more DIY and not be worrying about him. So Dad painted the front door step with some paint I found in the garage, I painted the hallway ceiling and Mum painted the newly sanded internal door frame and the newly plastered bathroom ceiling with a mist coat. That evening after a chat with John, reporting that he was feeling better, I did the second coat of paint and the new bathroom is finally finished and looking amazing! (See the recent bothroom blog post.) Dinner was an incredible chickpea curry Mum made and we all went to bed tired.
The final day Liz spent visditing John, who was doing incredibly well under the full time care of the hospice staff, and Mum painted the hallway walls at the bedroom end in order to finish off that half of the house! Dad investigated fitting a loft ladder but it was a bigger job than he had time for. They set off home early Thursday morning. It's been a busy, disrupted but very productive and enjoyable visit and we are extremely grateful to them for coming such a long way.
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