AMANDA, JUST LET ME DO IT!

So after a very tempestuous week of high lows, tears and joy.... mainly tears, we've reached the end of the week. I am sitting on the organic grocery stall, the sunshine peeping through the dense cloud cover that over the past couple of days has provided our organic veg garden with much needed water. Things could be a lot worse. Neighbours kids charge up
 to the stall reeling off their plans for the day, whilst their parents plan a couple of days of relaxation after the working week.

Gerson had no respect for the weekend, or should I say cancer has no respect for the weekend, it's so God damn selfish. This morning we still had to rise at 6.30am for 'coffee' then juice and breakfast. Amanda's mood has been much better the past couple of days, she blames her recent bout of emotional instability on PMS.... I blame it on her just being a woman, and having the right to fly off the handle about absolutely nothing.... then returning to normal within a few minutes.... It's scary!

To try and make things more efficient in the kitchen I purchased a mandolin Super fast veg preparation with swift left to right sweeps with your chosen veg victim over a razor sharp adjustable blade. I'd always fancied having a mandolin, and now I felt we actually needed one, it wouldn't just sit in the cupboard.

As I slipped it out of the box I was very pleased at the fine selection of blades and grating attachments there to help me prepare my veg in all sorts of shapes, thickness’s and designs. Brilliant.

Amanda, now doing a two or three hours cutting at the salon twice a week was going to miss out on the mandolins maiden voyage, but I couldn't wait, I had veg to slice!

Glancing over the instructions, ensuring everything was in place and secure (you don't mess with mandolins, they are deadly sharp pieces of kit) I selected a chunk of fennel, aiming to knock a fennel and apple salad with raisins and a chickpea dressing together. Amanda will love it, she made it for the Street Party, and it went down a storm, everyone loved it!

I adjusted the blade to give lovely thin slices, shifted a plastic thing with three spikes on off to the side, grabbed my fennel bulb and got to work. Awesome!

10 seconds later I was looking at a small chunk of thumb sitting on the bread board with 4 slices of fennel.... that shouldn't be there. I little slip of the fennel had lead to disaster. I jumped to the sink kitchen sink as the blood began to drip, ooze then poor from the beautifully clean sliced 'wedge'. Bugger! I grabbed my thumb tight and charged upstairs so as not to drip anywhere, I grabbed a loo roll and began wrapping the thumb, round and round and round. I held it tightly, holding it aloft to try and stem the flow. I wandered by downstairs. I opened the kitchen draw reaching for the selotape to hold my rather childish looking dressing in place, but as I did it, the piece of thumb caught my eye. I gently unwrapped my damaged thumb, picked up the divot (I was always told to replace my divots whilst playing golf, why should kitchen injuries be any different?), and gently placed it in the quickly forming pool of blood. I re wrapped the loo roll as quickly as I could, then applied sellotape - generously. A quick phone call to my Mum on the Isle of Man suggested that the hospital would do very little, which was what I'd thought anyway. I drove up the salon (hand raised above my head) and Susie provided me with some proper dressing materials from the first aid kit. At home I managed to knock together a fairly professional looking dressing, all carried out with my left hand, very impressive.

Almost a week later, the pain as I tap the space-bar sends a constant reminder of the piece of thumb being torn back out of it's divot in 5 aside on Monday night, blood everywhere, and my piece of thumb lay lifeless on the dusty gymnasium floor. I let it bleed until it clogged up, much to the disgust of the rest of the 5 aside lads, slipping around on the large drops of blood (which showed how much running I was doing, as they were everywhere!) for the next 10 minutes.

Anyway, the moral of the story is don't through the plastic spiky thing (the hand guard) to the side before using a mandolin! Or better still don't use a mandolin at all.

Much arguing and upset through the week, along with confusion and frustration, raised voices, slamming doors lead to me telling Amanda to just let me do all the juices, the breakfast, dinner and evening meal. I told her I could do it, even with work. She thought it was too much, and felt it was unfair. Everything was getting on top of her, she felt she had so much to do. Emailing doctors, practitioners, filling forms, contacting the ladies from the Penny Brohn Centre, 'coffees', working at the salon, sorting out Robyn's life (lost her phone, again... sorry, her phone was stolen) even though she is in Ibiza partying the Summer away, and then she was trying to help out with the juices and food preparation..... She was on the verge of snapping.

She finally agreed to let me take the helm.

On Wednesday I prepared breakfast, the Hippo-crates soup, made fresh organic meals for 1pm and 6pm and boshed out 12 juices.... and worked! Christ it was hard going. But I did it, and I enjoyed it, as I knew it was helping Amanda, taking the pressure off, allowing her to get all the tasks she had on her 'to do' list shifted, whilst fitting in the coffees' and meditations.

The next day Amanda's blood test analysis came back from the Gerson Practitioner, he was pleased to see her white blood cell count had increased (only minimally, but it had increased!!! Woo hoo!! Take that stupid cancer cells!), and on this basis reduced her therapy slightly. This brought the juices down to 8 a day, along with a slight reduction in supplement intake. I think we will be at this sort of level for the next 12 months, but who knows?

Amanda was very pleased, both that her white blood cell count was up, and that a bit more time was being freed up during the day. She didn't want me to be doing so much, she feels guilty, which in my mind is totally ludicrous, she'd do the same for me.... She is so concerned, considerate and wonderful..... but....'BACK OFF!!! LET ME DO IT!' Ha ha!

Thanks again to anyone who supported us this weekend through purchasing their organic fruit and veg from the stall, a big thanks to Jo Cannaway who is spreading the word too x.

We are equalling Tesco's Organic price range, and were cheaper on many soft fruits and delectable cherry vine tomatoes last week, so do come and give us a try!

Love to you all x