No pain, no gain.

Nick loves food. She is an amazing, creative cook whether it's risotto with wild mushrooms picked on the moor, a greek feast, Goan fish curry, fabulous chilli or her simple favourite -a delicious burger, it is made with love and attention to detail which makes every meal a real treat. In the last couple of days she has eaten a few spoonfuls of clear chicken broth and a spoonful of yogurt along with a little chocolate milkshake and I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to see her tentatively lift that spoon to her dry lips. Every sip comes with anxiety that it will hurt her unbelievably tender mouth or make her sick or just taste unbearably disgusting but at least her body is telling her that it craves nutrition again after being shut down for a few days.

The storm began to hit shortly after Nick wrote her last blog; she was very unwell overnight and had to return to hospital first thing the next morning with horrible gastric symptoms, terrible stomach pain and a high temperature due to infection. I felt utterly helpless as I'd had to return home to help our friend Andy build the deck around Nick's cabin but Di and Jon brought her back to the hospital where the team got her started on  IV fluids and antibiotics. When I eventually got back that evening I found a very different Nick to the one I'd left less than 24hrs earlier.
I don't think any of us had expected the onslaught of these side effects from the chemo to be so soon, so sudden or so severe even though we had been warned that this would be the toughest of times. I think a little piece of all of us thought, yes it might get rough but this is Nick who has done press ups every day for 281 consecutive days and has not given in to cancer or the effects of treatment so everyone else's 'rough' may just have met its match. Not so. Last Friday was the first day of the storm and the first day since December 1st that Nick could not manage any press ups. It took us all by surprise including her. Thankfully none of us knew how bad it would have to get before she turned a minuscule corner yesterday.

I had to leave her just when I most wanted to stay because the gods of chance decided to coincide the onset of Hurricane Chemo with The Great North Run. Why wouldn't they?
Di and I had to make a decision about driving 6hrs north to complete our run for Lymphoma at the very point when Nick was getting so sick. Thankfully one of Nick's oldest friends, Tosh who has been a great support throughout all of this, arrived to spend the weekend with Nick while I was away. Nick was adamant that we should go and do the run and who were we to argue. I'd have run to the end of the earth for her if it would make her feel better.

So after a warm-up doing Killerton parkrun on Saturday morning (where a bunch of people did press ups with us and handed us a postcard for Nick) I popped in to spend a couple of hours at the hospital before we set off on our long drive in heavy rain, glaring sunshine and of course rainbows. At our first pitstop (the fabulous Gloucester services, a destination in its own right!) we were amazed to see a video from Tosh of Nick doing a few press ups!!! The whole trip was a somewhat hysterical affair, I guess because our emotions were running high, we were nervous and excited but the less said about us painting our nails in the colours of the Lymphoma Association the better!!! And I'm sure that the great Mo Farah prepared for the event with a pizza and a bottle of wine too right? (I didn't see his fingernails so I can't comment on that part of his Saturday night!)

What can I say about the Great North Run? Almost 60,000 people coming together to run 13.1 miles is something that has to be seen to be believed. Elite athletes, wheelchair athletes, fun-runners in fancy dress (I saw at least three Elvis's!) and, most inspirational of all, thousands of people raising money for every charity you could imagine and plenty you've never heard of. I spent the whole day reading their charity vests and the dedications on their backs which all start with "I'm running for..." and then you fill in your name(s) of choice. Of course we both had NICK written on our backs with a few extra words ("What Would Nick Do?") but it was very powerful to read a little of every stranger's story as we ran. Some were very poignant, some funny, my favourite simply said HOURS!! 

I was a little nervous as I'd never run more than 10.5 miles in my life and that had been a real struggle but we agreed to take it steady, walk a bit whenever we felt like it and just enjoy the occasion. Given that we nearly hadn't made it to the start this seemed a reasonable approach and took the pressure off us as we waited to get going. It was a long wait - 43mins after the race was started and Mo Farah sprinted off we crossed the start line activating the electronic timing chip hidden behind our race numbers, by which time Sir Mo only had about 3 miles to go! The whole route was lined with spectators cheering and clapping, handing out jelly-babies and encouraging words, shouting our names as they read them from our race numbers. People had told me that this atmosphere would make it possible to run further than I'd ever run but I hadn't really believed them. In the first few miles I realised that this was actually the first road race I'd ever done, all my other events had been trail runs. I tried to smile the whole time because I felt genuinely happy, we had planned for this for so long, raised more money than we could've imagined, trained as best we could despite injuries and more than our fair share of distractions to put it mildly. The day had finally arrived, Nick was sick in her hospital bed which made us acutely aware of why we were there and I felt I could maybe run all day. Passing the halfway point was a great milestone but it did bring home to us just how far we still had to go. Neither of us mentioned the fact that we hadn't yet paused to walk so we just kept running. From the moment we'd arrived at the heaving train station that morning everyone we met was happy and friendly, ready to help, to keep the crowds moving and to encourage each other. I'd heard this about the event but it has to be experienced to be believed; it is just a joyful mobile festival with live music along the way, where you are never more than an arm's length from another person, a runner sharing your air, your footsteps resonating with their's, all shouting together as you run through an underpass to make echoes that reverberate through your heaving chest like the drums at a rock concert. Nothing had prepared me for this and it meant that we just kept running. I heard later that the elite runners were sharing bottles of water, passing them amongst themselves as they pelted along more than twice as fast as us. I saw a man in front of me pick up a jelly-baby from the road and eat it. I thought of Nick the whole time especially when any part of my body complained a bit at being taken beyond its point of comfort. There was no way I was going to stop. As our legs got heavier and we began to feel tired the crowds lining the route got bigger, louder and more excited and this wave of support propelled us towards the finish, the first glimpse of the North Sea, down the famous steep hill which turns your legs to jelly and then along the seafront at South Shields to cross the line and collapse on the grass sobbing in each other's arms. We had done it. We ran the whole way. We ran to the end of the earth for Nick and I couldn't be happier. 



Or more exhausted!! Thighs like rocks and what felt like more rocks churning in my stomach. The next few hours were not pleasant but we made it to the bosom of my family where Esther had made fabulous curries and Dawn had cold beer in the fridge and my mum and her friends had knitted an amazing blanket for Nick's cabin.






 Meanwhile Nick's body was succumbing to the poison that had been pumped into it for the last week. She quickly developed severe mucositis which is ulceration and inflammation of the mucus membranes in the mouth and entire digestive tract, causing agonising pain and a leaky gut. This was almost certainly the source of Nick's infection which led to high temperatures, sickness and diarrhoea and meant that the next few days after we returned from the north were when Nick hit rock bottom. She required several platelet transfusions as her blood clotting was impaired leading to nose bleeds and bleeding in her throat. She was barely able to speak as she felt so unwell and her mouth was so sore that she couldn't even swallow her own saliva. This also meant that it was hard for her to verbalise how she felt which led to a delay in getting the nausea and pain under control. Nick had never felt so ill and said she didn't think it was possible to feel worse. Until the next day when she did feel worse. Tuesday and Wednesday marked the real low point when Nick only managed to get out of bed to get to the bathroom (a lot!) but did nothing else, not even having the energy to listen to the radio. There were certainly no press ups on those two days but so many people were doing them on her behalf which she loved! She was very drowsy partly due to sheer exhaustion and partly due to the drugs and she reported having weird hallucinogenic dreams which were vivid and emotional. Thankfully the daily delivery of postcards was enough to raise a smile, I read them to her and she peered at the pictures as she couldn't even face putting on her glasses. This was such a physical and mental test and sure enough it was the toughest of times but we were continually assured that this was all to be expected at this point in the treatment although the medical team did admit afterwards that Nick had had a particularly bad time of it. Never one to do things by halves! 

Since then there has been a slow improvement, Nick has been able to start sipping drinks and having a few small spoonfuls of soup and yoghurt, her mouth is much better and her blood results are improving every day. This is a sign that her wonderful stem cells that she put into storage almost three months ago are starting to mature and do their best to help the healing process. She is still utterly exhausted after the smallest movements. She did sit in a chair yesterday but only because her hair was falling out for the third time this year so her friend from work Pete, kindly came to visit and agreed to shave her head, despite being a bit nervous in case she accidentally got cut. Of course he did a brilliant job though and cheered Nick up loads.

Gradually there are fewer tubes attached to Nick's body, her temperature is normalising, she is taking a little food and trying to force down energy drinks to get her strength back and make inroads into the weight she has lost after not eating for a week. She is able to take some medications orally as long as the tablets aren't too big and these are all small steps towards getting her home. The idea of getting Nick home is exciting and terrifying in equal measure. On the one hand it will be so good for her to be able to have some fresh air, be with the dogs and be surrounded by nature, eating whatever and whenever she likes but on the other hand she is still very weak and still has a lot of healing and resting to do so to take her away from the safety net of the medical team is a very daunting prospect for us both. 

So Nick has had her body and her emotions taken pretty close to their limits and it is hard at times to remember that there is a reason for this, a method in the madness of going into hospital to be made more sick than ever before, an end goal after all this is over. The disease didn't stop Nick in her tracks but the treatment had a damned good go at it and it hasn't been easy to watch. My body hasn't been taken anywhere even close to its limit but I have felt the emotion and physical effort of having a long-term goal. All those long lonely runs trying to increase the miles without doing my legs any damage, not wanting to go out after work or spend my day off running again when I'd rather be hanging out with Nick; they all paled into insignificance when we ran across that finish line and now the worst is over for Nick and she's heading for that line too.