once more unto....

After a four week break I am back on the chemotherapy train at the Norfolk and Norwich in the Weybourne Unit - so named after a village in North Norfolk. I am starting a new six month treatment.

In the meantime we have spent two wonderful weeks on the Scottish west coast islands. I'm hoping not, but should the treatment get tough going again, I will at least have some wonderful remote and beautiful places for my mind to escape to!

I am now on a drug cocktail of three, including AVASTIN, which is a genetic drug rather than a chemo drug. It is intended to attack the genetic structure of the cancerous cells, and hopefully 'cap' them off so they can no longer incessantly reproduce themselves, rather than to kill them off altogether, which is the purpose of the chemo drugs.

My main chemo drug this time is IRINOTECAN, and then finally there is 5FU which I was on before. Every three weeks I have all three of them and for the intervening two weeks I get only the 5FU which previously I have managed to assimilate without any seriously adverse side effects.

The irinotacen increases the production of saliva and mucous in various parts of my anatomy for a day or two. They have given me an injection that stung rather to counterbalance this effect. However my nose is now running as a result, and, worse, there have also been some fairly acute stomach cramps which double me up every twenty minutes or so. I hope they won't last long.

This extended procedure, which happily will be every three weeks only, has lasted about three hours. Whilst they drip the drugs into me, Lynne and I sit in a large room where the nurses are treating up to twelve or so patients at a time. We read the papers and do the crosswords. I listen to my Zune mp3 player, and then look away every time they come at me with another needle! I've never been very good with needles, but lately, since all this started, they have been sticking them into me so often, that I am getting better able to stifle the distress.

Lynne is being brilliant with all this. It's just the steady way she comes with me every time, and sits out all this unpleasantness without fail, and without any whisper of her being there under obligation. With her calm and cheerful presence she gives me a deal of reassurance. Because I need to stay strong myself, I won't say that I couldn't actually do it without her, but what a dear person she has been to me!

God knows I wouldn't wish any, let all alone all of this dire situation on our worst enemies. Lynne's loyalty and devotion in the face of such adversity has been a pure joy to me in what has become an imperfect existence. I surely couldn't ask for a better companion.

So, anyway the kindly nurses are all done with me. I've been given a veritable arsenal of immodium pills, sick pills, streroid pills and antibiotics to counter any more adverse side effects as they kick in. Fingers crossed I won't need them! But if I do then let's hope that I won't then need yet more pills to offset the side effects of the side effect pills....If you see what I mean!