Chemo 5 of 6 in !

After a couple of grumpy days with bone pain following the normal injections chemo 6 was completed yesterday. Actually I was the only one of the three of us who turned up who was allowed to proceed with chemo as the other two had caught infections which had to be treated first. Just goes to show that the low contact high cleanliness routine I have been following has actually paid off. Generally the timing of the chemo injections has been optimised to do the most damage to the cancer that your body can stand so you really want to try to stay on schedule, so far I have only drifted two days which is quite good.

As usual I had a pretty jolly time at the hospital and chatted to the folks around me, all of whom were doing quite well so that started an encouraging trend. Then I found out that the critical PET and CT scans to see how the treatment is progressing will actually be done in early May rather than late may as I had thought (8th PET in Aberdeen and 11th CAT in Edinburgh just before chemo 6 on the 12th). That may mean I have some indication of the prognosis by around the 16th of May or so (three choices seem to exist with different probabilities - still growing 2%, second half of treatment needed 70%, or thats fine you can go 20-30%) so that will be a big milestone for me. I am trying to get my head in the zone that more treatment will be needed so that I do not get my hopes up too much, whatever happens I will need a month or so before my immune system is up to normal interactions once treatment is completed and a bit longer before I can be far away from fast medical support due to immune suppression.

Today I used my steroid boost of energy to move about half a ton of books back into the house from the garage, attempts to bribe Poppy and Holly to help me failed as they found my per hour rate insufficient to drag them away from building a snail garden with some visiting friends, Lee helped out when she did not have to look after our ones and the variable number of others who seemed to come and go all day. Actually Poppy is getting to the age now where she can run round to friends houses and they then stroll back here as we all live within about 500m of each other, so its quite common to turn up and find four of them playing in the garden. Hollys visits still need parental coordination but she is getting pretty good at phoning up organising everything and then telling us the other parent is on the line!

So things are going well, no major reactions to the chemo other than me being grumpy and having some mood swings - specially when I had to take two different flat pack bookshelves back today as one had two left sides and you guessed it the replacement had two right sides. An hours waste of time and both I and the shop ended up with a full set. The good weather today has given me a bit of a blotchy chemo sun tan, hopefully it will fade tomorrow as it is pretty weired looking (more than usual)

Cheers for now

Gerry