Walking through fire

This is going to be a blog of two halves. The first half is what I was planning to write a couple of weeks ago. The second is about the last couple of weeks. **** Way back when I was first diagnosed in November 2020, among the many messages of sympathy and advice I recieved was one from a friend who had been through breast cancer herself.  'Don't forget', she said, 'Chemo is your friend.' That thought stuck in my head somehow and in the middle of all the shock and emotion and random advice which came my way at that point in time, it seemed like a helpful idea. But then through all that long first winter of chemo it felt very much like chemo was not my friend. Chemo was painful, debilitating, spiteful and just plain nasty. Despite the fact that I knew it was working, I couldn't wait for it to finish. But then when it finished, and the pain started creeping up again, I kind of wanted it back again. And that's how it's been for the last 18 months. When I...

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...

Another blog about my travels... but first a quick update. I finished my last lot of chemo at the end of January. The side effects took a while to clear but I am pretty much back to normal now. The skin on my hands, which was very thick and dry, is definitely better. It took a while for my sense of taste to come back but it has. And my hair is gradually thickening up again which is good. On the minus side, the pain is definitely beginning to tick up again and I've had to increase the amount of morphine I'm taking. But still a relatively low dose.  I'm due a scan at the end of the month and then I'll need to decide whether (and when) to have more chemo. It's a bit of a balancing act - when I'm having treatment, I can't wait for it to stop. When it stops, I start worrying about when I can start again. Emotionally, it's been a bit up and down. We had a lovely few days in Pembrokeshire during half term - staying in a cottage we've visited many many times...

It's just about three months since I started this last lot of chemo, and I realise that I've hardly written more than 100 words about the experience - compared to the regular updates I did when I started my first chemo last winter. On the face of it, it's been much easier. I haven't had any days when I couldn't get out for a walk or do basic things around the house. I've kept on working most of the time with one or two days off each week, if that. There have been a few nagging side effects. As with the last lot of chemo, some, but not all, of my hair fell out - not enough to be worth wearing the wig which I found so stressful to choose just over a year ago.  My sense of taste has gone, which is annoying (who knew water could taste so weird?). The skin on my fingers has dried out - which means my phone often doesn't recognise me any more :-( and I've had a few unpleasant mouth sores. The worst of these was this last week - just at the back of my tongue - ...

For some time now I've been wanting to write a blog about my experiences of 'the big wide world' - and more importantly the people I have met - and the more I think about it, the more things I want to write about. So I've decided it's going to be (at least) a two-parter. Here we go with part one - which is about India. Sorting out some things at my mother's house recently, I came across a bundle of letters which I had sent home on various occasions. It included some letters from my first trip to India in December 1988. Here's where we begin: 'We had a reasonable flight over. Arrived in Bombay about 5pm (by the time we left the airport) and got a taxi to the address we'd been given. The taxi ride was quite an experience. It was just about rush hour and there was so much to take in. Just the sheer numbers of people all out on the streets, some obviously living on the streets, some just going home etc. A young woman with a baby came up to us to beg whil...

November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness month. (Funnily enough, this passed me by last November.) As the month draws to a close I thought I would mark the occasion by providing you with a blog on some things you might not know about the pancreas (an underrated organ if ever there was one). Please note, apart from some basic biology dredged up from my memory, most of this is gleaned from Google search so - as they say - please don't rely on this for any medical or diagnostic purposes. If you need to, talk to a proper medical doctor. 1. We all have one (but can survive without one) Your pancreas is a leaf-shaped gland, about 15 cm long, which curls around the back of your stomach, just in front of your spine. It has a good blood supply and a duct or tube which empties into the small intestine just below the stomach.   It's a multipurpose organ. Firstly it produces different enzymes which, once they have gone down the pancreatic duct into the small intestine, help break down sugar...