Feeling Fruity

It’s always nice to get an unexpected parcel through the door, especially as these days most of my parcels seem to contain colostomy bags and the associated items that are sent along with them (poop bags, wipes, anti-adhesive spray).  So when the jolly postman produces a package for me it’s not always the most exciting of moments.  Therefore it was very nice to receive a more unusual package last week, from some very nice people at Maple Leaf Pharmacy in Twickenham.  They had heard, via my father, about my current treatment and sent me across a couple of items that are supposed to help recovery during chemotherapy.

Now as my close family will tell you, I am not usually the sort of person who goes for ‘hocum pocum’ or alternative remedies, I have never had a massage, don’t want to bathe in the juice of the mango and you’ll never get your hands on my chakras for re-alignment.  So I adopted my usual cautious approach to the two bottles of voodoo elixir and scrutinised them very carefully before attempting to break the seals.

The big bottle is a liquid that closely resembles the sort of mixture that people who do yoga drink for their breakfast along with their cracked wheat rye bread.  The bottle states that it has a ‘delicious tropical fruit flavour’ and it will give me a ‘guaranteed burst of energy’.  Whilst the taste is not unpleasant, I challenge the manufacturers on their assertion of tropicalness! Lilt has a Totally Tropical Taste, Source of Life Gold Liquid tastes of strange pineapples.  The smaller bottle contains tablets the size of your little finger that promise to supply ‘more total ORAC activity than 18 servings of whole foods’.  I don’t know what ORAC activity is, but as I haven’t been getting much action for the past four months, any ORAC activity is good activity in my books.

I have taken both each day and can report the following reactions.

1. Following chemo treatment number 5, I haven’t felt as tired as before.  I drove to see child number 2 at university at the weekend and only fell asleep at the wheel a couple of times.
2. My wee comes out bright green, like Apple Tango, shortly after taking the supplements.  So even with the light off in the dark, I can see where I have piddled on the bathroom floor.

On balance, the lovely package from Maple Leaf Pharmacy, Twickenham has been a positive and brought a little bit of excitement in to the humdrum routine of chemo.  So my thanks to them (yes I have sent a thank you card) for their very kind gesture.

Now I was going to include a small reference to another little package I have received in the past few days, but Mrs W has said I am not to mention blue pills on my blog.