I picked up my NHS wig today. Then with the two wigs, the NHS and the real hair one, I cycled to see a hair stylist recommended by Josie, called Gow Tanaka. He has worked a lot with the fashion photographer, John Rankin, and done some cool and marvellous ads and magazine shoots. And there I was, with my little wigs, and he was going to ‘sort me out’, for free!

First, he demonstrated how to wash the real hair wig. Basically, you wash it pretty much like you would wash delicate wool/silk items. Except with shampoo and conditioner. He said it was not necessary to use any special wig shampoo; any mild shampoo would do the job. You simply soak the wig in mild shampoo/water mix for about 5 minutes, rinse, soak again with conditioner/water mix, rinse, and pat dry with towel. Then let the hair dry naturally or blow dry it, after which you can brush/comb it, not when it is still wet.

Gow cut the fringe of the NHS wig. I have come to the conclusion, that the NHS wig is not too bad, but compared to the real one, it looks so fake, and you can easily see it is a wig. I think, the NHS wig will be OK, if I wear a hat!

Then we got to the business, Gow styled the real hair wig. The end result was amazing! He is a true genius. I am going to have gorgeous, blond, slightly curly, long, and thick hair! And, the wig looks so natural. All thanks to Josie, and Gow.

Suzie, Sarah, and I were invited for dinner at Ola’s (Suzie used to live with Ola and Sarah). Ola had been planning the special ‘Piia menu’ since two days ago, and had even taken a half a day off to prepare the food! The dinner was DELICIOUS. There were at least four different organic, veggie, lactose, wheat free starters, followed by yummy main course. To finish the meal, Ola made three different types of fruit smoothies! We were spoiled rotten. As I was not pampered enough, just as we were about to leave, Ola gave me a gorgeous sunflower in a pot as a present.

Cycling back home tonight, all I could think how many wonderful people I have around me, who have been so helpful, generous, and just generally amazing! I am a lucky girl!

My real hair wig styled by Gow!

Josie texted me her address this morning as I was going to go and try the wig out at hers.  I had to check the text a couple of times, as it baffled me…  32A Cricketfield Road?? But, that’s where Suzie lives!  She lives in 32B Cricketfield Road.  Josie is basically Suzie’s downstairs neighbour!  What a small world??

Josie gave me a brief history of the wig.  Her sister who works in advertising was involved in an advert featuring the world famous footballer, Ronaldinho.  In the advert, Ronaldinho wants to play footie with some hot girls on the beach, so decides to disguise himself by wearing a blond wig, my wig!  So, after the commercial, no one wanted the wig, so it ended up with Josie. Check out the YouTube video below, you can see my wig in action!

As Suzie was only upstairs, she joined the wig ‘fitting’, and met her neighbour Josie properly.  The wig had been in a box for a while, so it was in a need of a bit of TLC, however it was a glamorous, lovely blond coloured, long wig.  I’m going to find out how you clean these things, then clean it, and see if it needs some styling.  I think, I am quite getting into wigs! 

Josie is such an angel for giving me this wig, and I am so grateful.  It is going to be the best ever wig!

After the visit to Josie’s, Suzie told me some lovely news: her dad and her older brother are coming to visit us from Perth Australia in December!  They are going to spend the Christmas with us, and they are here for Suzie’s 30^th birthday.  We will give them the best Christmas ever!  I am already planning, we should have Finnish/Dutch themed Christmas eve, and then a proper English Christmas roast on the Christmas day.

Suzie and I cycled to the London fields for a small picnic.  Emma and Jon, a couple we met at the Homegame festival, joined us.  We had such a lovely afternoon with them, and I learned that Emma is a trained make-up artist, and that she has worked for MAC (make-up brand), and knows all about fake eye lashes.  She is going to come to the MAC shop off Carnaby Street tomorrow, and guide me what to get.  She might even be able to get me a discount, as she knows the people who work there!  I have got some amazing people around me.

Suzie helped me with the Menopur injection again.  It was going so well, until I momentarily lost my concentration, I managed to spill a little.  Hopefully, that does not matter too much.  I will give Carol a call tomorrow.

Suzie in London Fields.

You can see the bike basket that I have been talking about. And, the Dutchies in the background!

Our picnic goodies.

The lovely Jon and Emma.

This is us leaving the park. What a happy day!

I woke up with difficulty breathing this morning.  The mass, and the pain in my chest sometimes prevent me to take deep breaths in to my left side of my lungs, particularly to the lower lobe that side.  Minna helped me with some yoga breathing techniques, and we discovered a good position in which I can fairly comfortably breath deeply into the left side of my lung.   Minna will become a yoga expert for cancer patients by the end of this, I am sure! 

I am really gutted; I’ve run out of Tramadol, my main pain relief, for the weekend.  I have to cope with Co-Codamol.  Hopefully, the pain will not get too bad.

The steroids and the hormones have made me HUNGRY!  My appetite has never been this high, and I am eating like a horse.  MInna gave me some Green & Black dark chocolate with cherries, and I have never eaten chocolate as passionately, quickly, and with purpose!  I am still not ‘fat’, the opposite, so I am taking this opportunity to pile some kilos.  Oh, and I had some delicious blue cheese with Finn Crisp (hapankorppu) at lunch time.  It was heaven!  It will not be long until I cannot have blue cheese anymore… 

I cycled pretty much the whole journey home from Camden along the canal.  It is amazing how you can commute such a long way from Camden to south of Hackney by simply pedalling along the waterside, with no traffic, or hardly any people either.  Towards the end the journey, my chest started to hurt, I felt run down, and the breathing became difficult again.  I was happy to be drinking a cup of hot fresh lemon and honey back at home 

It was my second day of injecting the Menopur hormones.  Suzie had promised to come over for help and moral support.  This time it went pretty smoothly, and I think Suzie was impressed I was able to inject myself with such ease.  She has seen what I can be like with needles!  It was so lovely of her to make a journey to see me and help me with the injection, I couldn’t have done it without her. 

Tomorrow, I should be meeting Josie, Helena’s work mate/friend, who has got a spare real hair wig I can try on.  If it suits me, I can have it!  I’ll let you know how I get on with that tomorrow.

I spoke to the lovely Carol at the Barts hospital, fertility clinic, and they said I should start injecting the first hormone, Menopur tonight.  I have come to stay at Minna’s and she is going to help me with the injection.  I have a massive bag of syringes, needles and drugs, all ready to go.  

It was all very fiddly.  There were six little tiny bottles of the drug, two little glass capsules of saline (water), one 2ml syringe, and two different size needles, one big to mix all the drug and saline together, and one small needle for injecting the drug.  It took us half an hour to mix the drug and the saline, and get all of it into the syringe.  I was almost getting stressed out, but we found a good system of getting all the drug/liquid out of the tiny drug bottles in the end.  I will be using this method with Suzie tomorrow.

We were preparing the drug on Minna’s kitchen table, which is by the window facing to the street.  I wonder what people passing by would have thought of us playing with needles, drugs and syringes on a Friday night in Camden Town if they saw us.  It could have looked pretty dodgy to them!

Minna had booked me to see a financial advisor at a place called the Maggie Centre at 2pm.  That is all I knew.  When I arrived there, I was a bit confused where I was.  The place, the architecture was amazing, very Noridic with wood and light elements, and to increase the Nordic effect, they had quite a bit of Finnish design floating about, such as Iittala glasses, and Moomin mug! 

I was greeted by some lovely ladies, who encouraged me to go and make myself a drink from their vast collection of various teas they had in their kitchen.  The place had this harmonious, calming effect on me immediately. 

I met Jay who went through a small interview to find more about my financial situation.  He was being very helpful.  I left the Maggie Centre thinking, I must go back there very soon.

Minna called today and asked if I wanted to go and see Blur in Hyde Park with her tonight!  All day I had been thinking how great it would have been to see them play live again.  The last time I saw them play was in a summer festival in Sweden, 1994.  I knew Suzie had a ticket, but was planning to sell it, and had even found a buyer for it.  I thought, I cannot go and see them play without her.  She had been wanting to see them play ever since the tickets went on sale, and one of the reasons she was selling her ticket was because I was not going.  So, I explained the situation to Minna, and said I will love to go as long as Suzie can go too.  I called Suzie, and she still had the ticket, and was over the moon that we were all going to see Blur!

We all managed to have VIP tickets in the end, and got to hang out in the backstage VIP area.  The sun was shining, and Blur gave it all.  Occasionally, it got a bit emotional, and I have to admit, I shed few tears, happy tears.  I just felt so lucky to have such beautiful friends around me, like Suzie and Minna, and I felt very loved.

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