April has started, and the cherry blossoms are blooming here in Utsunomiya.
Although I haven’t updated my blog for a while, we are both doing fine.
As for Yuki’s situation, he has started his final course of chemotherapy. According to the schedule, he is supposed to receive it three times a month, with one week of rest. However, unfortunately, his white blood cell count has been too low, so he has had to skip two treatments in a row.
He has strong numbness, so he cannot walk long distances, but other than that, he doesn’t have any serious side effects. We are hoping the numbness will improve even a little. He has started getting foot reflexology once a week, but so far, it hasn’t shown much effect. At home, I regularly give him moxibustion treatments.
Since we don’t have any relatives or children here, we decided to use public long-term care services.
Yuki has already been approved. At the moment, he doesn’t need much support, except for bed rails. Using the long-term care insurance system, we are planning to install a few more handrails in our home.
With long-term care insurance, we can install or rent assistive equipment at a low cost.
In my case, it is not yet certain whether I will be approved. However, if I am, I am thinking of having a home nursing consultation once a month.
In any case, our nursing care manager visits us once a month, which is a good thing. It gives us a nice distraction.
At the end of March, we decided to take the plunge and went to Tokyo to visit Yuki’s mother’s grave. We no longer have any regrets, but it was very tiring for both of us. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that we will travel to Tokyo again.
After that, our children came to visit us in Utsunomiya. In a different way, it was also tiring, but we were happy to see them. There is a saying in Japanese, “It is good when they come, and it is good when they leave.” It really feels true.
