A mammoth undertaking

I went to Worcester for my bag change today, and to decide whether or not I was going to go in to Cheltenham for the sixth cycle. There was a long delay because only the registrar was there and the consultant was dealing with a problem elsewhere. We waited for nearly an hour on one of the most uncomfortable chairs I have ever had the misfortune of sitting in, until my back had become really painful. At last the consultant reappeared, and it was my turn to go in to see him.

I had been feeling more and more peculiar over the preceding hour and a quarter, and reported that fact to the consultant. He was already of the opinion that my next chemotherapy cycle should be delayed by at least a week, which concerned us quite a lot as it would interfere with a holiday that we had booked earlier in the year. (We did book it for three weeks after we expected all six chemotherapy cycles to be completed, but there have been a number of delays which have eaten away all the buffer space.) After a short discussion the consultant decided that I wouldn’t receive the chemotherapy this week, not even the changed bag. The accumulated toxicity of the treatments has begun to hit me really hard, and there is a good chance that any extra time that the sixth treatment might have bought will be more than offset by the toxic effects of the drugs. There is now a real possibility that I will have no more chemo, which will be a huge relief.

In the first few cycles I was coping really quite well. Granted, I felt a little sick during the early part of the cycle, but once that had passed I could live an almost normal life, except for the purdah weeks. However, as you can tell, the last couple of cycles have treated me really quite roughly, and it is now time to decide whether any more treatment is justified. The best way to do that is to look at the results of a third CT scan, which has been requested, but not yet scheduled. I hope that it will have taken place before I see the consultant again in two weeks time. With luck, the tumour will be shrunk enough that there is no real benefit in adding any more treatment to it.