Walking through fire

On Wednesday I went for chemo number 3.1.1...  That first trip to the Rainbow Unit for chemo 1.1 back in December 2020 seems like a gazillion years ago. Then I said I felt like the new kid at school. Now it feels like that horrible first day back at the start of a new term - you kind of know the ropes, but will it be the same? Will it be better? Will it be worse? And really I just want the holidays to go on for ever and ever... Then, things were just taking off with the Delta variant and we didn't have much in the way of Covid testing. (Remember when sticking a piece of plastic up your nose on a regular basis wasn't part of normal life?) The rules on Covid testing for the chemo ward have swung this way and that but at the moment you're supposed to have either a lab test or a home test done before you're allowed in. I say this because the first thing that happened when I got to the ward and was waiting for my observations to be done, was that a smartly dressed middle ag...

Just a quick blog to save me having to write this out lots of times... This morning we saw my oncologist to get the results of my scan last Friday. It's not great news - the primary tumour has grown quite a bit since my last scan in January and there are at least a couple of new secondaries in my liver. I'm not too surprised - the pain had been gradually ticking up but seems to have been accelerating the last couple of weeks. Thank the Lord for slow release morphine. I'd already pretty much decided that I would have another go at some chemo, so that's now a definite. We're going away for a few days next week so it will be after that - and probably more of the GemCap I had last time. The oncologist has suggested that I think about having a different drug just to ring the changes a bit. (If you are interested, GemCap = Gemcitabine + Capecitabine, and he's suggesting Gemcitabine + Abraxane.) To be honest there is no way of knowing what will be effective at this sta...