KiwiCat's updates

On Friday I happened upon a local retailer holding a sale and in the spirit of buying local I bought myself a set of very nice bamboo double pointed needles in five sizes and a nice case, and some locally dyed yarn

Having balled the yan I decided to start on some socks. I’d done the ribbing and gotten 6 rows into the lace pattern when I had to go to church. Returning, things were not as I’d left them.

I didn’t take a photo at the time but my socks had migrated across the room and the needles were no longer smooth and functional. They don’t look so bad in the photo but there are toothmark imdentations at both ends of every needle, plus three broken tips.

It only affects one size, but still very annoying.

I have only circumstantial evidence, but I think I kniw what happened…

Determined not to give up I unravelled the socks and moved on to a simple hat on a (metal) circular needle.

I’m about 4 rows in to the ribbing, but somehow I’ve managed to twist the loop.

You probably can’t tell from the picture but this is definitely twisted.

It wasn’t twisted on the first round but I fumbled the needles and yarn while dealing with something urgent (cats or kids I’m not actually sure) but the end result is I need to unpick at least two rows.. or start again.

I think I’ll look at it tomorrow.

Just as a quick reassurance to anyone wondering, we are ok. We had about a month’s worth of rain in 12 hours yesterday and many of the roads are still closed with flooding and slips. Here at home we had some minor flooding into the garage during the heaviest period, but we never lost power.

The sun is now coming out after morning drizzle. The sea is very brown with dirt washed into it, and never really went out as the water from the rivers and shore kept feeding into it.

But we’re okay. In a day or so the roads will be open again… probably just too late for the long weekend holiday makers. We’re soggy but doing a lot better than some places further south.

Here I am, 1 week from the failed surgery, starting on my second week of leave before I return to work next week. My hand is less swollen than before,  which had the unfortunate effect that the splint kept falling off. I’ve been back to the hand physio who has adjusted it and I’ll see her again on Thursday ahead of the coming long weekend (Monday is anniversary day)

I had thought Monday would be the only disruption to next week but it’s not. As of this afternoon I have the new surgery date: Thursday 29th.

I’m so pleased, grateful we’re getting on with this quickly, and I have high hopes for the outcome.

It does, of course, mean I’m once again going to squeeze in only a few working hours before going on sick leave again, but this is the last foreseeable extended period of that.

My next cancer-related day away isn’t until mid-March, for the next CT scan.

On the home front, I’ve finished and blocked a knitted shawl. The drying process was sped up a bit by my ‘helpers’.

They swear they didn’t shed on it, nor pull any threads.

I don’t really know where this week has gone, but it has. I was going to post a picture of my bandaged finer, but it’s quite an ugly sight with splotches of dried blood, so instead I’ll share images of the latest splint. This is how it looks now, probably to be adjusted at my next appointment on Monday.

On the upside I get most of my hand back since this latest splint only covers the one finger. On the downside, it’s quite sore and I’m less physically capable than I’ve been for months which is quite frustrating.

But it’s a beautiful day, and I’m sutting on the deck enjoying the breeze so no real complaints.

Yesterday I was in Hamilton for my long awaited hand surgery. I broke my finger in July, had the x-ray initially misread as a simple self-healing break, had a fresh x-ray in September that revealed the truth that the bone was smashed and needed surgery, and then had to wait for an oncologist go-ahead. Having finally got that, I was ready to go.

I figured I would end the day in one of two places. Either it woud have self-healed in such a mess nothing could be done and I would just have to live with an unbending finger, or the surgeon would be successful and I would have some level of mobility restred.

To paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, as it happens there was a third possibility I hadn’t even counted upon.

As the surgeon explained, initially the surgery went well. He located the broken pieces and reassembled them and they fit together nicely. There was a bit of a gap where the bone is naturally hollow, so for extra support he took some bone from the top of my wrist and fitted it in snugly then screwed it all together and it looked great. Pleased, just before sewing everything back up he tried bending the joint… and the part of the bone that had seemed undamaged fell apart. In his word, turned to mush.

It seems that there were tiny, invisible cracks in it that were just waiting for some pressure.

So what happened? Well apparently my body isn’t healing bone, which is a rare side effect of some cancers. He’s never seen it happen like thi, but it can. In retrospect there were a couple of ominous clues. Firstly, there had been no calcification.That was noted on the September x-ray, and was the same yesterday ehen everything got opened up. Secondly, post-surery in Auckland I waslow on potassium, which is stored in the bones. Clearly my body is doing something else with it and not directing it to my poor broken finger.

At this stage I’m presented with three options. Firstly, he could leave it alone. It’s now floppy at that joint (currently held straight by a splint) so will get in the way. This doesn’t appeal. Secondly he could remove the mess and shorten my finger. Essentially amputation. This would be better than a floppy finger but still not appealing. The third option is a posthesis, a replacement. This is my preference, and I think his too.

It will take a few weeks to order and manufacture, but then I’ll be back to have the bone removed and the silcon replacement fitted. It won’t be a long erm perfect solution, eventually my finer will stiffen up and no longer bend, but that was going to happen after this repair anyway. In the meantime,  once it’s done, my healing will depend very much on how diligent I am with my exercises. I plan to do everything I can to get full mobility back.

So it turns out yesterday was effectively just a dress rehearsal.  I’m sore, but the main event is still to come. Another opportunity for me to work on my patience 🙂

Hi drop you a note, surgery went well, on my way home will be their around 10pm

Do a follow up tomorrow…

It’s exactly two months tomorrow since I was last at work. My last day for 2025 was 8 November; 8 January will be my first day for 2026. Hard to believe it’s been so long.

Of course, I won’t be at work long. I’m working tomorrow and Friday and then on Monday I have my hand surgery and will be off for “two to three weeks” before returning. So just enough time to clear my inbox and say hi to the few people not taking these first two days of the working year off.

It remains to be seen if I’ll go for a walk before work tomorrow. I haven’t been getting up at any particular time recently, just when I wake up. Today it was 5:30 but yesterday it was 7. We’ll see.

Today I went a bit further again with my walk, over the ridge and down around the corner. Which of course meant I then had to go back up in order to get back again. I was a bit out of breath but not sore. Not much of a view, but on the way back the sunrise was beautiful coming through the cloud layers.

The photo doesn’t really do it justice.

Meanwhile back in the garden things are coming along. Our mystery fruit seems to have resolved as a nashi…

…while down in the mini-orchard the pears are looking the most healthy, but the few apples and plums are coming along. As are the peaches, but I didn’t get a photo of them this time since they are still very green and blend with the leaves.

Still not really sure what type of plums we have, although one that the birds attacked shows that the flesh is red. Hopefully we’ll get to try some and find out what they taste like, if the birds don’t get them all.

The other thing happening, of course, is the kittens settling in. They’re growing quickly, perfectly happy most of the time except when they’re play-fighting. There’s no real malice in it, and they’re both just as capable of starting a fight as the other, though Daisy Days tends to tire of it long before Leroy does. Right now they’re just sleeping off dinner.

It has not been the best of years for many peopleI know, but in a few hours it will be over and 2026 will begin, a year I hope will be a little kinder to us all.

I thought I’d round us off with a recap, because all the ups snd downs make the story a bit hard to follow sometimes.

July: I broke my finger, and it was initially assessed as a simple break that would self heal. I started physio.

September: I had an ultrasound for the suspected need of a hysterectomy. My finger (still swollen and bruised and sore) was xrayed again and no healing had taken place. The hand surgeon was keen to operate but the results of the ultrasound took precedence and I got put on hold until after an MRI,  CT and a visit to the gynaecologist. The gynaecologist was the first to mention cancer, but at this point we needed a biopsy to know for sure.

October: After several weeks of trying and failing to get a CT guided biopsy appointment my gynaecologist took a sample himself and got the confirmation that it was cancer and surgery would be required.

November: Major surgery on the 11th, followed by almost 2 weeks in hospital, then another 9 days back and forth to hospital emergency departments. The cancer is confirmed as a sarcoma, an aggressive type of cancer that is difficult to treat and generally terminal. Ballpark range is 3 to 18 months, and we won’t know where I sit in that range until we do more scans.

December: Finally starting to properly recover, if still low energy at times. An oncologist appointment on the 19th leading to great news that the latest CT scan shows no growth yet, so I don’t have the fastest growing type and I will be having another scan in March to see what has happened by then but in the meantime can carry on with life. Even better, I can now get my finger fixed.

I go back to work on the 8th just for two days. Then I have surgery on the 12th and am off work for 2-3 weeks to recover, back to the hand physio, and then back to work in February.

This is a brighter end to the year than I expected a fortnight ago. Here’s hoping things continue in this way.

Goodbye 2025. Happy new year, all!

It’s been a very busy day with two very good pieces of news forming a lovely Christmas present.

Firstly, the CT results are in and there are no signs of rapid spread or growth, so no need for any panic or sudden action. In fact, the next step of the plan is simply another CT in March. That’s been booked, everything is organised, but in the meantime I can round out the year without any sudden trips over the hills.

Secondly, this means that I can get my hand surgery done, and after a flurry of emails I am booked in for the 12th of January, just three weeks away. So I am getting the promise of having my finger fixed, for Christmas!

The way this is working out, I’ll go back to work just for the first two days of the work year (probably part days rather than full ones, we’ll see how I go), then I’ll be off two to three weeks recovering, and then back on “light duties” building up hours as my hand recovery allows until I’m back at work full time and that will carry on until March when we repeat this scan-and-see process. But at least by then I’ll be ambidextrous again!

This, so far as I can make out, is a result of my rarer-than-rare oddball variety of cancer doing things that aren’t expected. If it was a typical sarcoma, the news likely wouldn’t be so positive.

Sometimes it pays to be different 🙂

What a long, long day. A bit chaotic but overall good.

We stayed in Auckland overnight, had a filling if mediocre croissant breakfast at a cafe, then off to the appointment with Michelle, the oncologist.

Michelle is lovely and I feel so happy to have someone focused on next steps for me. We had an hour with her, ending with her managing to book a CT for this afternoon.

Now of course this afternoon the plan was to pick up a kitten but we couldn’t turn this down so at 12 we were driving into the carpark of a clinic for a 1pm appointment, only to find we were in the wrong place and had to reorient. Good thing we were early!

We got the scan done, fought our way through slow Auckland traffic, and made it to the Thames SPCA five minutes before closing… and then encountered a new problem. The kitten the SPCA were holding aside was the wrong one.

The smokey grey kitten had a lovely nature but was not the black and white kitten we’d chosen. Turned out the wrong photo was attached to the file. But then there was new problem because the black and white one was a girl and we’d been told we were getting two boys.

There’s no boy black and white at the SPCA, and all hree kittens from that litter were still there so we can only conclude that she is who we met, she’s not a boy, and her name wasn’t Zac.

So after a lot of paperwork (because we had paid for Zac on the Saturday and had to ‘return’ him) we brought her home.

So here we introduce Daisy Days.

Daisy is a couple of weeks older than Leroy and is decidedly more mature, but she’s also stil recovering from her spaying, with stitches still to remove, and Leroy wants to ply rough. He’s overjoyed to have a friend again, and expresses that by attacking her every time her back is turned. There’s no malice in it, nor claws or teeth, but it’s tiresome for her so we’ve had to intervene a bit. That said, they’re not enemies.  Here they are both having a drink from the same bowl.

So there we haveit. We got home about 5 and have been playing mediator for the last two hours but we’ve finally settled down a bit at the end of a long day.

Good night 🙂