Running on Empty

Day 107

General status update

The Chemo Demons are all keeping well away from me because they don’t want to pick up this bug, except Chemo Brian, of course. who never catches anything anyway because viruses and bacteria stand no chance against the impenetrable fug of wacky baccy smoke that permanently surrounds him.

Anxiety level/insane euphoria: God, I’m missing the Dexys…

State of mind: guilty because I have been failing Cancer 101 again and displaying a Bad Attitude and making everyone worried about me, but also defiant because a person can only stand so much.

Hair: much like a small, dishevelled haystack, at the moment.

Well, that’ll teach me to throw the toys out of my pram in public: half an hour after I publish the little tantrum that was yesterday’s blog post R comes into the bedroom - whither I have retired with Paddy Leigh-Fermour in a state of high dudgeon - holds out the phone and says ‘It’s Becky’.

Ah.

F***! F***! How stupid was I to write that I’ve got an infection but I’m not going to go to the hospital, SO THERE?

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

They’re probably going to stage an intervention…

  

Matron Becky – aka the Mother Goddess and World Mum, in all her ineffable omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience –  has been alerted to the fact that I am behaving badly, of course she has: it seems she was in the middle of reading the previous day’s blog post when the new one suddenly popped up and informed her that I am down with another infection and Acting Out.

She is deeply unamused.

A difficult conversation ensues; it’s hard to hold your own when you’re severely under the weather, mentally and physically exhausted, and have got the Chemo Matron/World Mum/Mother Goddess exuding gentle disapproval at you from the other end of the phone because you are self-evidently not just being a non-compliant patient, but behaving like an idiot in such a way as to endanger yourself and cause a great deal of worry to your loved ones. Although R is not in the room during this conversation, I can sense him cheering from the side-lines, and not for me.

Matron Becky reminds me that I am in the vulnerable, highly immuno-suppressed week mid-way through my fifth dose of chemo, and that with five doses of FEC now inside me that is a considerable build-up of toxins inside my body, hence the all-pervading weakness even before the infection set in. Even with the Pegfilgastrim injection, at this point my immune system is on the floor, and with my temperature at 37.4 deg she thinks it would be advisable for me to go down to the hospital to get my bloods done, so they can see how my neutrophils are doing, and whether the doctors should give them some more ammo to fight off the infection. She offers to call ahead so they will be expecting me.

This suggestion fills me with horror.

I know everything she says is important and right, yet….

It is one of the coldest nights of the year and, although I’m feeling truly rotten, and so very, very tired, I’m very cosy and comfortable here with Chemo Brian and my knitted throw, a nest of cushions and a heap of books and magazines. R couldn’t come with me to the hospital, as his little boy is staying with us this week, so a trip to the hospital would involve several hours alone in the A & E: blood tests, then a long wait for the results, needles, insertion of cannulas - my PICC line being no more - and a lengthy infusion of IV antibiotics while waiting for the blood test results because they automatically do that as a precaution against neutropenic sepsis.

I’m sorry, but I can’t face all that again tonight, I just can’t.

Right now, I can’t endure any more invasive physical procedures unless my life literally depends on it – this is the point to which my growing aversion to hospitals and medical treatment, and my general psychological deterioration, has now brought me. I’m really not being deliberately difficult, but both body and mind have had enough. If I go and spend another unutterably bleak and unpleasant few hours in the hospital now, I may end up just breaking down completely, like I started to do at the radiotherapy planning meeting last week.

I’ve been through the A&E routine before, and I’m not going there again unless it is absolutely necessary – as evidenced by a serious fever, which I haven’t yet got. In the end I take my temperature again whilst still on the phone to Becky and am deeply relieved to see that it has gone down to 37.2 degrees.

For Becky, this is not the point, of course; my temperature could start going back up at any moment and I am a very weak immuno-suppressed chemo patient with an infection who would be much, much better off down at the hospital getting my neutrophils checked out and further prophylactic measures put in place.

And as far as my body is concerned she is right, but my soul is no longer able to go along with the programme.

In the end, no doubt picking up on the fact that I am right at the end of my psychological tether, Matron Becky agrees that I can stay at home for the time being, on condition that if my temperature rises above 37.5 deg, or if I start to feel physically worse, then I will go to the hospital straight away. Deeply relieved, I put the phone down and curl back up in my nest of cushions and throws.

Not going nowhere, no, not me.

I'm running on empty, now.

Postscript, 24 hours later: the virus is continuing to rampage through me, I’m aching, coughing horribly, and am so weak I can barely stand up, but my temperature has stayed below 37.5 deg, so as long as I rest for the next few days I should be just fine without further medical intervention (inshallah/touch wood/God willing). At this stage of the game, I truly believe that Chemo Brian is the best medicine…

It's all about the chemo

Day 66

General status update 

Fatigue/weakness: Severe. Walking from one end of the flat to the other is quite a challenge, today. I don’t like this AT ALL. 

 

Hair: Secondary consideration, really, now I can barely walk. 

Nausea demon: Making sympathetic noises, bringing me drinks: this is no fun for him, as he needs me to be strong enough for the chemo so he can start tormenting me again. 

Chemo Muse: Urging me on, but even she can see that I’m too weak to produce much today. 

Chemo Brian: He came and joined me on the bed this morning, until lunch-time – I didn’t have the energy to make the journey to the sofa..

Anxiety level (1-10): R has caught a cold, which he may or may not have caught from me. Now quite worried about re-catching the original cold (can you do that?), or acquiring the new one, if different. I am so weak, and so overwhelmingly tired, today that I’m scared I’m going down with it already, and that the increased weakness is resulting from the effect on my embattled neutrophils of trying to fight off yet another infection. I’m not sure they’re strong enough to be doing overtime.

State of mind: Wishing there was a neutrophil thermometer; my temperature is OK at the moment, but I’m so weak it feels as if my remaining neutrophils are starting to abandon ship - they’re sure as hell not showing any signs of regeneration.

 

Yesterday I was feeling very weak, but was still able to walk down the road to Marks & Spencer, a distance of maybe 400 yards, to buy a lemon drizzle cake because my friend Andrea was coming round in the afternoon (we never got round to eating it, what with all strawberry cupcakes Andrea brought – now I’m left with a whole lemon drizzle cake wailing for attention from the kitchen, dammit). 

This morning, in contrast, I didn’t feel able to get out of bed until lunch-time, and spent much of the morning asleep; when the need for a cup of coffee finally forced me to attempt the journey from the bedroom to the kitchen, I felt like Shackleton at the end of a very long day staggering through an Antarctic blizzard, dragging a sledge; every step was the most enormous effort. 

 

 

Sitting here at my computer keyboard, now, even my fingers feel weak. I’m typing so slowly I’m practically doing it one letter at a time. This level of weakness is frightening, to be honest. I doubt it’s the result of a couple of hours enjoying myself yesterday; it may be I’m going down with another infection. I do hope not. But I’m much weaker than I was on Monday, when I was able to walk down to the hospital, albeit only just. 

I just checked my temperature, however, and it’s fine, so this is probably just a continued post-viral malaise, exaggerated into something scarier by my hypochondria. Getting cancer in no way prevents you from continuing to be a world class hypochondriac; and, let us never forget, my current terrifying state of physical debility has absolutely nothing to do with the cancer – it’s all about the chemo. Three doses of chemo plus a respiratory infection have made me this ill, not the cancer; and now I've got to get strong again so that they can give me three more doses of poison.

I can’t write the blog post I wanted to do today because Chemo Brian is calling me from the sofa, and I need to get back there soon, before I just slump face down over the keyboard and wake up later with ‘qwertyuiop’ engraved on my face.

Got to go, as rest is now imperative  – I’ll try again tomorrow.

 

 

Les Fleurs du Mal

Day 64  

General status update 

Nausea demon, Chemo Muse, Chemo Brian: they just don’t know what to do with themselves – see below.

Fatigue/weakness: considerable 

Sleep, lack of: n/a 

Anxiety level (1-10): shape-shifting from dread of chemo to fear of neutropenia 

State of mind: resigned  

‘

'Only when we drink poison are we well'

              Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

I think this afternoon is probably the first time I have ever directly channelled the spirit of a rabid Arctic Wolf but, when it occurs, the sensation is really quite unmistakable. The trigger is a charming young doctor and PhD researcher, who greets me at the oncology clinic today with the following words: ‘You’re looking well.’ 

It is a truth universally acknowledged by chemo patients – at least all the ones I hang out with on the BCC UK forums – that the single most annoying comment of all the many thrown at them by family, friends, enemies, complete strangers and medics is this: ‘You’re looking well’. I reveal this in the spirit of a public service announcement so that you, Gentle Reader, will never end up on the receiving end of a chemo patient’s steroid-fuelled homicidal rage in response to making what you thought was an innocuous and helpful comment. 

Whatever we might look like, WE FEEL LIKE HELL, OK? 

The steroids might make what remains of our hair glossy, and our skin smooth and glowing, the poison might perhaps be giving us some kind of strange toxic bloom, but all of this is entirely illusory: we are being systematically poisoned, with hideous side effects; we may or may not be going to die sooner rather than later; we no longer have any control over our lives, and are trapped in a chemical prison at the mercy of the medical profession; we are frequently on the verge of losing it entirely, and then some fool smiles at us cheerfully and says ‘ You’re looking well’.

Dr S is conducting a research study with chemo patients, to see if any connection can be found between the composition of a patient’s blood, and the level of severity of chemo side effects they suffer. It is a useful study which may help cancer patients in future, I am happy to be participating in it, and Dr S is highly likeable, empathetic and kind, but today she is completely nonplussed, because I’ve had a hell of a week and, most discourteously, I respond to the poor girl’s polite queries by giving her the unvarnished truth. 

I haven’t seen Dr S since I signed up for the study, just before my chemo started. Now she wants a little chat, and to make arrangements for more blood tests after FEC 4. 

‘So, how’s it been going?’ she asks, brightly. 

‘It’s HORRIBLE.’ I am in no mood to mince words. 

‘It’s unspeakably horrible.’ Then, just in case she hasn’t got the message: ‘It’s just VILE.’

‘Oh dear’ she says ‘I’m sorry to hear it hasn’t been going well for you, Caroline.’ 

‘WELL?’ I snarl, ‘It’s CHEMO. I’m being systematically poisoned – in what way can this be expected to go WELL?’ 

By this time Dr S is looking slightly panic-stricken, as well she might when faced with a rabid Artic wolf, thinly disguised as a chemo patient, eyeing up her throat in the manner of one who might be planning to tear it out in the very near future. 

‘But you’ve still got your hair', she squeaks, desperate to remedy the situation 'and it looks lovely.’

‘Yes’ I say slowly, my fury suddenly dissipating as swiftly as it arrived, ‘at least I still have my hair – well, most of it, anyway.’

Later, I have my pre-chemo oncology appointment with a new registrar, Dr V, who has just rotated in; holding my file, he asks me how many cycles of FEC I have had so far, and if I have been suffering from any side effects.

Oh, bloody hell, I think, here we go again – don’t doctors EVER leave any even vaguely representative notes in the files? What do they write in there – their shopping lists? 

I recite my nausea history, I recite all the drugs I need pre-chemo and after chemo, I tell him about the stomach toxicity and that I also need Omeprazole to deal with that, and soon Dr V is au fait with the entire panoply of pharmaceuticals that my body requires to deal with the side effects of being poisoned. I wonder, in passing, if I could leave this Homeric oral history recitation in the form of an MP3 file, in order to avoid having to repeat it all at every meeting. I also tell him about my recent A&E visit, and the viral infection from which I am now recovering. 

Fine – now he just has to do the prescriptions, and then I can get out of here.

Then he looks at his computer screen and says ‘Hmmm.’

What do you mean, hmmmm, I don’t like hmmm, WHAT’S THE MATTER?

He turns back to look at me, and sighs. ‘I’m afraid your neutrophils are right down.’ 

I had the usual blood test before I came in here, and the results are already on the system: neutrophils are a specific kind of white blood cell that help prevent and fight infections, and the normal level of neutrophils in the blood is between 2.5 – 6.0.

or, to be more accurate, normal ANC (Absolute Neutrophil Count) values range from 2,500 to 6,000 neutrophils per cubic millimetre of blood.In order to be strong enough for chemo, your white blood cells must be at a certain level – 1.5. Mine were at 1.5 when I was in A&E last week, but now they have dropped to 1.1.  That makes me mildly neutropenic, and unfit for chemo. A neutrophil level of 0.5 or less would put me in serious danger, and the chemo will destroy more neutrophils, so I can’t have any more chemo until I have created a lot more neutrophils for the chemo to kill.

This is the simple but deadly arithmetic of chemotherapy, and there’s no arguing with it. 

All my aggression gone, I feel like a sad failure. I haven’t made the grade; it reminds me of when I failed my cycling proficiency test. ‘You could come in and have another blood test on Wednesday morning to see if it’s improved’ says Dr V ‘but I’d be happier if you just postponed the chemo until next week. Your body needs more time to recover from the last dose of chemo, and from the viral infection.' 

‘The only thing worse than having chemo is not having chemo’ I say, sadly, but I know he is right. I was startled, earlier, by how weak my legs were when I was walking down the Fulham Palace Road towards the hospital.

My strong, swimmer’s legs. 

‘It won’t make any difference to the overall outcome’, says Dr V. ‘People often have to postpone their chemo until they get a bit stronger.’ 

‘It’s fine’ I say, ‘Really. I could do with the rest. Is there anything I can do that might help the neutrophils recover? Eat spinach?’ 

Dr V laughs ‘I’m afraid the Popeye model isn’t applicable here. No, there’s nothing you can do – you should be fine by next week if you just go home, and rest.’.

I thank him, we shake hands, and then I trudge back up the Fulham Palace Road to go and do exactly that.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

Day 47  

General status update:

Hair: Now confined in today's fashion statement - a cutting edge Smurf hat, headband and snood combo, in which I now look less nativity play extra, more Suleiman the Magnificent. Or so I like to think. So very glad none of you can see it.

Nausea demon: almost as crushed by yesterday’s annihilating defeat at the hands of the Chemo Muse as was Roger Federer today, after losing in the Aussie Open semi-final to Andy Murray. He doesn’t have to wait for the next Grand Slam to get his revenge, though – just to bide his time until the inevitable post-steroid crash comes tomorrow.

Chemo Muse: Happy for once, after extracting 3, 676 words out of me yesterday, my longest ever blog post. She even let me go shopping this afternoon.

 Chemo Brian: Delighted at the arrival of his new familiar - a hand-knitted Chemo Brian taking the form of a small rodent, and thus uniting two of the main themes of this blog. Chemo Rat Brian (see below) is now established alongside his namesake on the sofa.

Fatigue/weakness: Cancelled by steroids until tomorrow; the supply of Dexamethasone has now ended, and hard times are likely for next the few days.

Sleep, lack of: steroid–fuelled sleeplessness last night until 3am. Yawn.

Anxiety level (1-10): The next week is likely to be very unpleasant indeed, but it’s not so much anxiety any more as resigned dread based on the experience of the first two chemo cycles.

State of mind: Into the chemo groove, man. Not lovin’ it. Not lovin’ it one tiny little bit.

 

Chemo Rat Brian, now in situ on the sofa - courtesy of @fionalaird

 

 

Chemotherapy treatment is administered in ‘cycles’, which vary in length according to your particular condition and the type of chemo regimen you are on. My own chemo regimen, FEC, is running for 6 cycles of 21 days, as shown in the diagram below:

Example 1: a six-cycle course of chemotherapy

	Day 1	Days 2–21
Cycle 1	Chemotherapy	Rest period
Cycle 2	Chemotherapy	Rest period
Cycle 3	Chemotherapy	Rest period
Cycle 4	Chemotherapy	Rest period
Cycle 5	Chemotherapy	Rest period
Cycle 6	Chemotherapy	Rest period
Total	18 weeks

 

You only receive chemotherapy on one day out of the 21; days 2-21 are what is euphemistically called the ‘rest period’.

That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

One day receiving chemotherapy – in my case, for this cycle, Wednesday 23^rd of January, a date which will live in infamy in my memory, at least, and then a 20 day rest period – how hard can it be?

Well….according to the Royal Marsden Hospital’s guide to chemo, ‘the rest periods allow your body to recover from any unwanted effects of the drug/s’

That’s one way of putting it.

Another might be to say that the ‘rest period’ is when the drugs wreak their havoc on the rest of the body, as well as mopping up any stray cancer cells circulating in your bloodstream, looking for a new home to go to (chemo is sometimes used to shrink large tumours before surgery, which is called neo-adjuvant therapy; in my case it is being used as insurance, to destroy any cancer cells that might still be rampaging around my system after the tumour has been removed; this is called adjuvant therapy).

The ‘rest period’ might more accurately designated as days 2 and 3 of the cycle, during which the body is protected from the worst ravages of the poison by the steroid drug Dexamethasone, which causes hyperactivity and sleeplessness, but also prevents the most unpleasant effects of the chemo toxins from making themselves felt.  

Then the Dexys stop and the post-steroid crash comes: all bets are off and the chemo drugs can unleash their Dogs of War. Day 5 is usually the worst, and the days following are horrible; by about day 10 or 11 you start to feel vaguely human again.  

There’s the thing: after a couple of times you begin to recognise the rhythm of the cycle, the steps of the dance leading you along to the Bad Times. It is one of the few occasions in life when you are able to predict, with a fair degree of certainty, that you are going to be feeling Very Bad Indeed for a certain period of time. You don’t just wake up one morning feeling lousy – you can put in your diary that from 26^th January to 6^th February 2013 you will be troubled by nagging pains in your stomach, nausea constantly struggling to break through the barrage of anti-emetic drugs you are throwing at it, overwhelming weakness and fatigue, and a strong feeling of general internal toxicity.  

That’s the basic set of side effects, anyway – in my case. Others experience it differently, with variations on the theme. 

Oh, and not forgetting that in the second week of the cycle you will have no immune system to speak of, because the chemo destroys the good cells reproducing in your bloodstream as well as the bad ones, so any infection you pick up will be at best dangerous, at worst lethal, and is likely to result in re-hospitalisation.

But this I know, now I am familiar with the rhythm of the chemo cycle: as the effect of the Dexamethasone begins to wear off tomorrow, horrible things are going to start happening, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it, except sedate myself with Lorazepam if it gets too much to bear. 

The second cycle was much worse than the first, and I’m told the third cycle is as bad as it gets, and that is probably why I was weeping on Wednesday morning when we were walking down the Fulham Palace Road to the hospital – I knew then, as I know now, that a hard rain is going to fall.

There's a (happy) place in the sun....

Day 21 

General status update

Hair: The suspense is killing both me and Hair. Am tempted just to shave it all off, so I can stop waiting for it to start falling like autumn leaves. Hair, unsurprisingly, not overly impressed by this idea and determined to fend off the ravages of FEC 2 in the spirit of the Siege of Leningrad. Have nasty feeling that particular event ended up with everyone eating rats. And worse. Still, I could get Big Sis Fo to send some down from north Yorkshire, where there are plenty going spare.

Nausea demon: Pumped. There’s no other word for it. B*ST*RD.

Chemo Muse: Off out having her hair highlighted so she can look her best for Chemo Cycle 2. Of course her hair isn’t going to be falling out, is it? B*TCH.

Sleep, lack of: Pill last night, so no pill tonight. Oh Morpheus, gentle deity, please take me in your arms  tonight - PLEASE.

Anxiety level (1-10): The rapid, high-pitched whine of anxiety in my head has broken through the sound barrier, exited the Earth’s atmosphere, and is now heading towards Mars.

State of mind: No longer incubating escape plans, as I still was 3 weeks ago before FEC 1. Now resigned to being totally FECKED, in 6 instalments.

News from North Yorkshire: Hank keeps backing up into corners whenever the MC approaches. That is now one very nervous dog.

 

The second cycle of chemo - when the next dose of powerful toxins will be pumped into my bloodstream and, perhaps, bring about the rapid loss of my hair - will begin on Wednesday, and I seem to be becoming more than a little tense. Tomorrow morning I will be off to the hospital to see my oncologist again, to discuss how the first cycle went, decide whether the various meds to deal with the side effects need to be adjusted and, most importantly, go through the pre-chemo blood test, carried out to check that your now-compromised immune system has recovered sufficiently after the last dose of chemo for you to survive the next one.  

If the platelet count in your blood is too low, then they won’t let you have any more chemo until it has recovered sufficiently – otherwise the next dose might result in you becoming very seriously ill, or even dying. In order for the chemo drugs to be strong enough to kill off the reproducing cancer cells (chemo kills cells which are reproducing, mostly), they also have to be strong enough to kill the healthily reproducing blood cells which keep the immune system working. If too many are killed, the patient is at very high risk from any infection, however small, especially during days 7-10 of each chemo cycle, when the chemo has had time to do its work, and your immune system is at weakest, and has yet to start fighting back.  

A couple of my on-line friends have been re-hospitalised with infections already, and so I am being insanely vigilant about staying away from crowded places and public transport, washing my hands constantly, and insisting that anyone who enters the flat washes theirs before doing anything else - which can come across as quite rude, unfortunately. It’s hard to get across politely to a dear friend that you don’t want to hug them until they’ve washed their hands, but we live on the fourth floor, and visitors must touch the brass door handles to open and close the (old-fashioned, manual) lift doors, handles that are touched by hundreds of people each day; at the moment some of those hands may well be infected with the highly contagious Norovirus, currently laying waste to the London population, which can live for six months on hard surfaces… and the Norovirus would, at best , put me in an isolation ward for a couple of weeks. At best.  

I seem to have got through the first cycle of FEC relatively unscathed, apart from the constant nausea, sleeplessness and hyperactivity, the dry and sore skin and greatly magnified sense of smell; unlike some of my virtual chemo buddies, I have not yet  experienced any hair loss, mouth ulcers, thrush, cystitis, constipation, diarrhoea, indigestion, sore eyes, black nails, major fatigue or life-threatening infections.

It’s early days yet, of course, and not every patient gets ALL of these side effects. I know it will get worse, but it’s not clear yet if the side effects I already have will get worse, or if additional ones will start appearing – maybe it could be both. I’m most anxious about my hair – it’s been so good this cycle, after having the cold cap, just sitting there quietly on my head, and not falling out. Over the next few weeks, however, after FEC 2, it will almost certainly begin to fall out – if I’m lucky, and the cold cap continues to work, it will just start gradually becoming thinner; if I’m unlucky, the whole lot will go, quite fast.

Fingers crossed eh?

In the mean-time, am working on reducing the anxiety in 2 ways: first, obvs, through the use of weapons-grade pharmaceuticals and second, by doing a runner to my Happy Place in my head, even if I can’t do it in reality. I don’t know why I kept threatening to run away to Goa, in the early stages of denial, anger and rebellion after my diagnosis, because the Camel Barn and its environs, not Goa, is my Happy Place, and evoking and concentrating on images of Ayvalik can always calm me down and make me forget, at least for a little while, the many unpleasant things that are happening to me.

A couple of years ago I kept an on-line photographic diary for a while, on which I put  photos from my long walks in the hills around Ayvalik. I'm not much of a photographer, as will be evident, but I spent nearly 4 years pointing and clicking with my mobile phone at every beautiful view, and it is a place that abounds in beautiful views, both natural and architectural.

 

Below are three entries from that diary, about Ayvalik sunsets; the accompanying images are some of those I use to absent myself, temporarily, to my Happy Place in the sun when the unrelenting barrage of nastiness from this cancer and chemo business is just All Too F***ing Much…

 

  

Friday 23 April 2010: Another Ayvalik sunset...

 

 

'Coming back home again after 3 weeks travelling in south-eastern Turkey has made me look at both Ayvalik, and my house, with renewed appreciation. 

I took my dog up the hill early yesterday evening for his walk in the pine woods, and was welcomed back by a truly spectacular sunset over the Aegean. It reminded me how very lucky I am to have such extraordinary natural beauty there to enjoy freely every day, only a few minutes’ walk up the hill from my house in the town.'

 

Friday 30 April 2010: Why I can't leave Ayvalik...

 

The view, the light, the sense of calm that fills me every day when I walk up into the pine woods and look out over the Aegean. Even though I've photographed it a hundred times before, and posted it on here several times already, I can never get enough of this view.

 Wednesday 26 May 2010: Reaching new heights

 

‘Over the last few weeks I have been going on longer and longer walks every evening with my dog Freddie, gradually exploring and mentally mapping all the different tracks (they're fire roads, I think) that run through the pine woods on the hills behind & beyond Ayvalik. This is a labour of love: these woods, and these walks, are quite beautiful and I want to get to know them thoroughly both for my own benefit, & so I can show them to visitors. Very few people, other than beekeepers, ever go there - as a nation, Turks are not keen on recreational walking - so usually Freddie & I have miles of woods entirely to ourselves. 

Today was the longest and most beautiful walk yet. We were out for nearly 4 hours, and climbed to the highest point in the hills, from where there is a quite breath-taking view over the Ayvalik archipelago & across the Aegean to Lesbos. Freddie & I were very tired when we got to the top of the hill, so we sat in the grass to rest, & breathed in the scent of the pines & wild lavender as we watched the sun start to set over the Aegean..’

 

When times are bad, and I’m feeling sad, Ayvalik is my (happy) place in the sun.

Take it away, Stevie!