more of the same

I am back in the chemo treatment room at the Norfolk & Norwich for my three weekly 'hit' of prescribed & potent poisons.

It's quite clear to me that with other illness the medicine makes you better, but with cancer the medicine just makes you worse, and in my case as sick as parrots, although I've never known why parrots particularly are meant to be sick.

I saw the oncologist yet again last week, and in view of all the sickness and weight loss he has reduced the dosage of irotenican by 25%, and has cancelled the two intervening weeks when they give me only fluororacil. So I come every third week now, when the dosage has been lowered.

He says there is still only a one in two chance that this treatment will work on my deep rooted tumours. Apparently the chemo drugs needs a good blood supply to reach the affected areas, but apparently this is not the case to the lining of the abdomen, which is one of the places where I have tumours, the others being the bowel (intestine) and lungs.

I will be having another scan in July, when they should be able to tell if the treatment is working or not. If not, then other than put me back on the fearsome oxaliplaten, which made me dangerously, ie life threateningly, ill in January, there is little else he can do for me.

Cancer research is making great strides forward, especially with regard to the new genetic drugs that neutralise the cancer cells rather than try to kill them off. So there are some exciting new treatments coming forward, but sadly it seems that these will not be available for several years yet to come. So it's unlikely that I will be able to benefit from these.

So, needs must, I have to do my best to cope with the adverse side effects, and all the unpleasantness, and so give this aggressive treatment a chance to work.