A better day!

Now four days after the op., and all seems AOK!  My internals have now settled down (both the reconstructed bits and otherwise), and the keyhole(!!) is itching nicely.

Which tells you we are still on "plan A" - the ideal path as Diana and I call it.  A few more days yet to be sure all is holding strong, but the "signs" are good for a recovery to "normal processes". Let us hope and pray things continue on this path.

And another hoped for positive is emerging - a return of taste!  Ten day break from chemo and food is a pleasure again - even hospital food. Cheese! Bread!  Meat!  Wine... no, only joking, no idea yet on that...!  Yes, OK it'll go again when we restart the full cocktail of chemo, but let's enjoy these few weeks of surgical recovery, and regain a little weight...

A good day

Sitting on my hospital bed, having had a good day, maybe the best day in weeks... Just in time for the operation tomorrow!  But Diana's done a brilliant job, food and otherwise: gained over 3 kilos since I came home, and systems firing on more cylinders than not. And just as importantly, I feel good.

Have had a great chat with my surgeon, who explained all in clear detail, giving me tremendous confidence and hope for the future - I'll spare you the details, at least for now

All I crave now is a good night's sleep, and a smooth ride tomorrow.

Two moments

I've been meaning to write this post since I came home 8 days ago: two notable things from the recent "event"...

1) " calcified foreign body... within (Sean the) stent"

While it seems the blockage is indeed the tumour waking up, the crisis was actually precipitated by what we now think to have been a paracetamol pill!!!

Somehow (and neither the radiologist nor surgeon know how) a bog-standard paracetamol got all the way around my innards and lodged in my stent!  But in the long run this was a good thing (although I'd have argued otherwise at the time!!!!), because it alerted all of us to the problem, precipitating the whole dialogue about surgery.  Without it, the probability of spotting a blockage was innimment was low and therefore the chance of delay was high...  

But how did it get so far?   I have my theories, based on how my insides were working at the time, but the bottom line from now on is  "dispersible only" - definitely not the cheap and cheerful supermarket "bomb" like tablets!!!

 2) The 7up! Angel

 About 3 o'clock in the morning of my last night in hospital I "suffered" a massive craving... For an ice cold fizzy drink of all things!!  By chance a nurse was passing on her rounds, and I caught her...  "Is there any chance... At this hour... Your busy... But..."

 And the most remarkable thing happened... She found a can of 7up! !! The closest to nectar I've ever enjoyed!  At 3am!  Where it was from I will never know, but she was a true angel...

Date for operation...

...is 24th September - 9 months to the day since Sean the stent went in and changed my life.  He's done his job brilliantly, in no small measure due to the expertise of the surgeon who put him there.

I'll actually be admitted on the 23rd, so I've 8 days to (a) keep things moving while (b) gathering my strength.  There was talk of operating this coming Thursday, but my body would still have chemo in it - far better to wait a week and give it the maximum chance of healing.

Home at last

Phew. Home again, yesterday (Sunday) lunchtime.  Still very weak, and lost a lot of weight, which is why rest and diet here at home is by far the best option; while my hospital is excellent, life on a ward is not conducive to recovery!

So now we're focused on getting my insides working again, and gaining a little weight ahead of the operation.  To that end, I do detect slight improvements, in that I can again face proper food (but thank heavens for Fortisip!) - if only it would "stick"!  (I never expected to enjoy porridge again, and as for corned beef...!)

So, the only way is forward, and onto the next hurdle. To switch from the track to fell walking... Such a rocky path, but we're over the scree in one piece!

Complications, but a "good" outcome?

I've had a blockage, and currently in hospital feeling pretty grotty.  Not as grotty as two/three days ago, so we're on our way back. Bottom line is it's sortable, and with an outcome we'd hoped for anyway - the news I hinted at in previous posts is I'm to have an operation to remove the primary.

It seems the cause of my regime change was indeed the primary "waking up", and appearing to grow around the end of the stent, slightly blocking the bowel.  Two things we don't want, and therefore we must consider removing the primary.  Added to which is the concern that the stent may increase the likelihood of a serious Avastin side effect, hence the desire to remove the stent, which can only be done via surgically removing the tumour.

So three birds with one stone!  Tumour, blockage, and stent in one go.

Subsequently, after the op (no date yet, but 10 days or so), we hope to be on a full regime (Avastin andFilofox) within the month... because the GOOD NEWS is the treatment seems to be reducing the liver Mets!!!

So bottom line is - in 6 weeks we'll have no more primary and a reducing secondary... Wow!

Round 15

Yep, that's 30 continuous weeks of chemo, and I'm still standing... At 11 o'clock at night!!! OK, you guessed it - it's the steroids!  None the less I'm delighted to say this is the best start to a cycle in weeks:  all because of a blood transfusion...

We've known my red cells had been "down" for a few weeks (contributing to my constant fatigue), but had agreed to try and tackle it via diet and "full nutrition" supplements. This worked, but only partially (I've put on 2 kilos!), so we decided to take Plan A and had a transfusion, which was last Tuesday (2 days ago)  And it quite obviously has done the trick.  But for a couple of days its working was masked by an ongoing bad bout of tummy trouble - which cleared this morning!

So by a matter of only a few hours I was fitter ahead of treatment than I have been for some while, which means I am now enjoying the rewards of being wide awake at 23:30!  But also I'm immediately aware of the cumulative effect of the "cold sensitivity" side effect of Oxyplatin - bare feet on a cool bedroom carpet tingle like mad.

We know this better-than-average start presages the all but certain dip, as my steroid supply runs out, but for the moment we're enjoying feeling well.

In other news... Scan confirmed for "one day next week" - in time for my next consultation with my oncologist; at which we will, I hope make some next step decisions about taking Avastin, and plans for interviews with other specialists.

Oh, and our son's camping holiday in the New Forest is going fantastically well!