Nothing like starting to write with a hoary old cliche. Except that in this case the cliche fits pretty well.
Clare and I came home last Thursday with great news. We had a little fizz to celebrate. Then on Friday the arrival of our grandkids and their parents led to more celebration, quite a lot more in fact.
What exactly we were celebrating is open to question. My good news; possibly, but we do tend to celebrate quite effectively every time they come down from their northern neuk. Let's call it the drunkenness of things being various. (No, you are right not my phrase but one long loved and stolen from a great writer, look it up, the poem is worth reading)
After a slight lull on Saturday with the best behaved grandchildren imaginable the parents returned and there was a wee celebrate on Sunday night. Then somehow on Monday night a bottle of wine evaporated while in the care of Clare and I.
Not exceptional by our standards but in retrospect not the ideal preparation for my blood test on Tuesday morning.
Anyway, to Ninewells this afternoon clutching some dubious liver function numbers from the aforementioned blood test. I knew when I arrived that the figures were not good, an impression confirmed when another blood sample was taken and we were sent away while it was tested.
The results of the second sample were better than the first, but not good enough for the doctor in charge to allow me to carry on with my magic pills.
So I am home with no Afatinib and the prospect of no alcohol till my liver feels a little better.
Another appointment and blood test on Friday next week will hopefully see my Afatinib restored. Alcohol, genuinely in moderation will be resumed sometime after that.
Strangely it is easier to give up the bevvy when the choice boils down to drinking or living!
Short one tonight. Today's news has left me grumpy, but not down hearted. I still follow a strict policy of avoiding euphoria when I get good news and despondency after bad. The tumours are still a lot smaller than they were 2 months ago. And only a week off.
And still time for Scotland to finish the 6 nations with 3 wins!
Thursday 18 February 2016
Thursday 11 February 2016
Good time to say thank you
This episode has been written in 2 instalments. The first was written shortly after I was CT scanned for the second time. I have been on my present drug regime since christmas day. This second scan was to check whether Afatinib was having any effect on my consignment of tumours. It was a tense week, bowel problems may not have been just a side effect of the drug.
I will start bang up to date. With the news, the good news, in fact with the fucking magically good news.
On Tuesday evening Clare and I were back at Ninewells for another meeting with Dr Lord, my oncologist. It was late in the afternoon, perhaps her last appointment of the day. Just as last time she had the pictures on her computer screen. This time there were 2 sets of slides for comparison purposes; November and February.
My hopes, well apart from the vain hope that i had flung myself into the fireplace and been instantaneously transported via the flue network to Madame Pomfrey at Hogwarts. In this particular dream she taps me gently on head, chest (and although I haven't yet mentioned the hole in the bone in my upper arm) and shoulder. She mutters the ancient incantation carcinoma fucoffita; I confess the profanity surprised me too. In this tale all trace of non-small cell carcinoma has vanished.
Back to my real life hopes. All I really hoped for was that the tumours would have stopped growing, that Dr Lord would take this small effect, and my blooming good health as a good enough reason to carry on with the drug for another couple of months to give it more chance to take effect.
Well the truth is so much better than that. Not quite Hogwarts, but all the tumours have shrunk, many by 50% some by more, even my arm bone (yes, the one connected to my shoulder bone) now looks as if it is actively healing.
What does this mean, I hear you call?
Buggered if I know. This is a brand new drug. Had I developed this cancer 5 years ago I might have been well one my way to a spot of pushing up of daisies.
In trials its effects have been variable. Occasionally it has failed to work, then on other patients it has started promisingly then the effect has petered out.
None of that matters. What is important is that the initial effects have been spectacular. I am feeling very fit, my side effects are negligible and my optimism undimmed.
National Cancer day was on 4th February and is particularly important to me this year.
I was assaulted by a cancer that sneaked in without symptoms and was found by accident as my head was CT scanned looking for evidence of a mini stroke. This is unusual. Most cancers arrive with changes or symptoms. If you find those early chances of recovery or remission are much higher. There is a lot you can do.
Feel your bollocks, your breasts (it may be more fun examining each others but remember in this case you are looking for lumps or other changes).
There are several screening services. One in particular that I have been ignoring for several years are these little cards the NHS sends so we can smear them with shit which can be tested for bowel cancer. Don't do as I have done, SMEAR AND SEND BACK, this test could save our lives.
As well as our vigilance money is key to fighting cancer.
All of us can look for ways to help to fund cancer research bit by bit scientists are learning the secrets which will help to cure the many cancers which attack us.
MacMillan cancer support does wonderful work in helping those who are losing the fight against these horrible diseases. My mum and dad had their last months eased by the care and love given by Macmillan nurses. These wonderful people give up their time for far too little money to help those fighting cancer. Our money is always needed here and will never being wasted.
But if, like me, you find yourself sitting in an anonymous doctor's office on some random Thursday afternoon and the clocks stop as you hear a young doctor utter the woeful word
'tumour' perhaps qualified with the strange adjective 'metastasising' then you don't need research, nor are you quite ready for palliative care.
What you need is the help of the cleverest, most dedicated doctors, nurses, porters and radiographers, all the skills that go to make up a modern health service.
The men and women who will comfort your confusion and grief at this horrifically abnormal diagnosis and in their skill and dedication try to find you a way through.
The other thing you don't want to be told is that there is an eyewateringly expensive drug which might just save your life but then having to go to your insurance company and ask them to fund it. Be assured they will go through their policy and your history looking for loopholes; for your pre-existing conditions, at the fine print in your policy anything that will allow them to step aside and send you to the least cost possibly palliative option.
If you need me to tell you how important the NHS is then you are probably in the wrong blog.
So my thanks are due not only to those of you who have read this blog and offered personal support. I also thank the NHS staff, both those I have met and those who labour behind the scenes to keep our medical services going. Lastly and perhaps most of all I thank all who have helped to pay for my eyewateringly expensive drug. That includes pretty much everyone in the British tax system. Some better off than me, many more much worse off. My wish is that I live long enough so that my taxes contribute to your treatment.
I will start bang up to date. With the news, the good news, in fact with the fucking magically good news.
On Tuesday evening Clare and I were back at Ninewells for another meeting with Dr Lord, my oncologist. It was late in the afternoon, perhaps her last appointment of the day. Just as last time she had the pictures on her computer screen. This time there were 2 sets of slides for comparison purposes; November and February.
My hopes, well apart from the vain hope that i had flung myself into the fireplace and been instantaneously transported via the flue network to Madame Pomfrey at Hogwarts. In this particular dream she taps me gently on head, chest (and although I haven't yet mentioned the hole in the bone in my upper arm) and shoulder. She mutters the ancient incantation carcinoma fucoffita; I confess the profanity surprised me too. In this tale all trace of non-small cell carcinoma has vanished.
Back to my real life hopes. All I really hoped for was that the tumours would have stopped growing, that Dr Lord would take this small effect, and my blooming good health as a good enough reason to carry on with the drug for another couple of months to give it more chance to take effect.
Well the truth is so much better than that. Not quite Hogwarts, but all the tumours have shrunk, many by 50% some by more, even my arm bone (yes, the one connected to my shoulder bone) now looks as if it is actively healing.
What does this mean, I hear you call?
Buggered if I know. This is a brand new drug. Had I developed this cancer 5 years ago I might have been well one my way to a spot of pushing up of daisies.
In trials its effects have been variable. Occasionally it has failed to work, then on other patients it has started promisingly then the effect has petered out.
None of that matters. What is important is that the initial effects have been spectacular. I am feeling very fit, my side effects are negligible and my optimism undimmed.
National Cancer day was on 4th February and is particularly important to me this year.
I was assaulted by a cancer that sneaked in without symptoms and was found by accident as my head was CT scanned looking for evidence of a mini stroke. This is unusual. Most cancers arrive with changes or symptoms. If you find those early chances of recovery or remission are much higher. There is a lot you can do.
Feel your bollocks, your breasts (it may be more fun examining each others but remember in this case you are looking for lumps or other changes).
There are several screening services. One in particular that I have been ignoring for several years are these little cards the NHS sends so we can smear them with shit which can be tested for bowel cancer. Don't do as I have done, SMEAR AND SEND BACK, this test could save our lives.
As well as our vigilance money is key to fighting cancer.
All of us can look for ways to help to fund cancer research bit by bit scientists are learning the secrets which will help to cure the many cancers which attack us.
MacMillan cancer support does wonderful work in helping those who are losing the fight against these horrible diseases. My mum and dad had their last months eased by the care and love given by Macmillan nurses. These wonderful people give up their time for far too little money to help those fighting cancer. Our money is always needed here and will never being wasted.
But if, like me, you find yourself sitting in an anonymous doctor's office on some random Thursday afternoon and the clocks stop as you hear a young doctor utter the woeful word
'tumour' perhaps qualified with the strange adjective 'metastasising' then you don't need research, nor are you quite ready for palliative care.
What you need is the help of the cleverest, most dedicated doctors, nurses, porters and radiographers, all the skills that go to make up a modern health service.
The men and women who will comfort your confusion and grief at this horrifically abnormal diagnosis and in their skill and dedication try to find you a way through.
The other thing you don't want to be told is that there is an eyewateringly expensive drug which might just save your life but then having to go to your insurance company and ask them to fund it. Be assured they will go through their policy and your history looking for loopholes; for your pre-existing conditions, at the fine print in your policy anything that will allow them to step aside and send you to the least cost possibly palliative option.
If you need me to tell you how important the NHS is then you are probably in the wrong blog.
So my thanks are due not only to those of you who have read this blog and offered personal support. I also thank the NHS staff, both those I have met and those who labour behind the scenes to keep our medical services going. Lastly and perhaps most of all I thank all who have helped to pay for my eyewateringly expensive drug. That includes pretty much everyone in the British tax system. Some better off than me, many more much worse off. My wish is that I live long enough so that my taxes contribute to your treatment.
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