Hello! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I thought an update was in order as I’ve been off the grid for a bit, so here we go.
I had my Whipple surgery on 7th November. It was eight hours long. It would have been six hours but they had to spend the first two just dealing with adhesions from previous surgery. Then I was in the HDU (high-dependency unit, a bit like ICU) for three days – I don’t remember much about that time. And then I was on a regular ward for eight more days.
My poem “First, Decide” has been published in Visual Verse! This online magazine provides a piece of artwork every month and invites writers to send in work based on that art. It’s a cool way to see how differently people interpret something and get creative with it. You can see my poem here: https://visualverse.org/submissions/first-decide/
You may have seen “Dew” before on my blog, but “The Merging is new and shiny. Both of them are a departure from my usual style – “Dew” because of the tone, while I had a lot of fun playing with space and formatting with “The Merging”. Enjoy!
It’s release day for this year’s anthology! I’m happy to present to you the Peeking Cat Anthology 2018 – over 100 pages of poetry, prose and photography from 58 artists.
Thank you very much to all of our contributors, readers and patient supporters. It has been a slow year for Peeking Cat while the magazine has been on hiatus, but I’m very happy that we have managed to get the anthology out – and in good time to make a great Christmas gift for any literary lovers in your life!
The anthology will also be available on Amazon within the next few weeks. However you decide to read it, please leave us a review wherever you can, and tell your friends! We look forward to accepting submissions for the next anthology, and hopefully the magazine, too, in the new year.
Have another life update blog post, because that seems to be all I’m good for at the moment. Having said that, I have written one or two poems, but while I previously posted a lot of them on my blog and didn’t leave many for submitting, I now seem to be swinging completely the other way. I promise I will post some new poetry on here soon.
Anyway, I’m updating today because I had an appointment with the surgeon who will be doing my whipple procedure. I’m one month post-hysterectomy, and I’ve been passed over from gynae, who have said no further action is required from their side of things. My stomach is still a bit sore especially if I’ve been particularly active, but I’m going to try driving tomorrow, and I’ve come a long way.
Hello world! (because apparently all my tweets and posts now have to sound like the start of a Visual Basic programming lesson.) I had my hysterectomy on Wednesday 12th September and came home on the Saturday, so I’ve been back for just over a week. I’m feeling really good today. The beginning of this week, the first few days of being at home, were horrendous. It hasn’t even been pain related to the wound, but sickness, wind and lack of appetite due to all the moving around of the bowel (or pouch, in my case) that they have to do. So the first few days were really hard and dark, and it felt to me like I wasn’t going to get better and everything was horrible. But things improve quicker than you realise they are, and last night I slept through the night in my bed without getting up to go to the toilet just to relieve myself of horrible wind pain. My appetite is coming back, I’m eating more, and here I am sat in my usual chair tapping away on my laptop.
Throwing on Disenchanted by My Chemical Romance and getting all these words out here super quick just for the sake of keeping this thing and you people, whoever and however many you may be, updated.
I’m having a hysterectomy (and ovaries removed) on 12th September. We can’t collect and freeze eggs first because that process might cause the lining of the womb to grow. So I won’t be having any biological children. I’m sure I’ll deal with that later.
