h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yes, fitness test today, followed by a PET scan next week and then an endoscopic ultrasound to be arranged. Then chemo for 9 weeks, radiotherapy and 6 weeks rest before surgery which will involve 2-3 weeks stay in hospital.

Sounds like a tough one. I wish you both every strength to get through it.

My best wishes go out to you and Ian as well Galaxy Babe!

So glad that went well, it's one less stress anyway. I'll be thinking of you both and hoping everything else goes just as well.

Deb

Good news about Ian, Does you mother have sunburn or chicken pox. There's a lot of both in Caistor

Excellent news about the fitness... The treatment sounds pretty gruling but if things can progress well, stuff like the length of chemo or amount of radiation then determiend necessary, can shrink... I was in for 6 months min of chemo, but only ended up needing four after a good PET scan fingers crossed for it all...

thanks 2legs

I don't think Mum has sunburn or chicken pox, thank goodness. I bathed her this morning then after drying I applied calamine lotion to all of the spots/sores/bites whatever they are. They are on her back, legs, knees, shoulder, feet and arms. On both sides of her body so I know from first-hand experience it's not shingles. Some of the spots have pus, others just look like a red rash. The calamine soothed and she enjoyed her lukewarm bath & shampoo & blow-wave. She calls it her pampering session... 2nd day of antibiotics & antihistamines so we'll see what Monday brings (next time I am there).

Ian cried off our date Friday night as he was so tired from all the exertion at Castle Hill and he seemed to think it was extra effort for me to feed him special liquid food, when I am eating normally. I didn't argue as yesterday was particularly strenuous for me too. I'm going to see him tomorrow but he's asked me to visit after his granddaughter and great-granddaughter have gone because Jemma has baked him a cake today (this is the one who could not accept me in her granddad's life and we never did make friends). I have not yet met her daughter who was born last year.

Some good news came today which I wasn't expecting, there's me making Mum's super-duper salad lunch when my daughter Laura turned up, while chatting she casually drops in the conversation that she has a new boyfriend and I'm "going to love him to bits" (if he's making her happy then I already do)

I think I need some of that lotion for my weird spots that keep coming up!- I'm guessing they're related to the steroids I'm on, or the testosterone injections perhaps...

sounds like your so busy... and then something like this comes along... - I guess its the same with all chemotherapy regeims, and radiotherapy, etc, they do tend to monitor all the way through, and alter dose, duration etc, accordingly; it wasn't until I finished chemo they made a descision on radiotherapy; they had 'threatened' it, from the start, with no indication of how much or for how long, and then only made a descision at th e end to do it (though I nearly refused radiotherapy)... but there are often differnt ways round... for my chemo sometimes its two cycles, then lots of radiation, or four to six cycles, with no, or little radiation, as they each have pros and cons... Mind, the radiotherapy was a breeze I felt, in comparason to the chemo just very tiring, for radiotherapy if its every day over a long period; all that travelling to and f from hospital,

At least you got to see some wonderful tennis.
Sorry if my responses are coming out a bit flippant; many thoughts of you and Ian (and your mum)are involved

Thanks 2legs, I recall the doctor said "three cycles of chemo" now you've mentioned that. Ian has a lovely head of hair which he's very proud of, and the main thing he is worried about (it seems to me) is losing it!

WS - I value everyone's input, and I would never think you are being flippant. As a local lass I appreciate your thoughts, and I didn't know that about the outbreak, so that's valuable knowledge. I think if it had been the 'pox though, I think the doctor would have recognised it.

I said in post 47: >>I'm going to see him tomorrow but he's asked me to visit after his granddaughter and great-granddaughter have gone because Jemma has baked him a cake today (this is the one who could not accept me in her granddad's life and we never did make friends). I have not yet met her daughter who was born last year.<<

Well that was the plan. As it was, I took him shopping to Asdas for some full-fat milk, yogurt, cream cheese and other stuff I have always zoomed right past before! We headed back to his for then I was gonna bugger off out the way so Jemma & co would be avoided. She rang when I was there and said I was welcome to meet Faith and have a slice of cake if I wanted to wait...

So I've met a 9-month-old little charmer, had a slice of homemade and got an invitation to the Christening in November!

That is a good thing Sometimes adversity brings out the best in us.

Keeping you both in our thoughts and prayers

F S

I was told "Two things for certain", before I began my chemotherapy, by the head hematologist/oncologist here, which was;
"you will lose all your hair, and you will lose weight".

I put on three stone and never lost all my hair so loosing ones hair is never even a cert with chemo, and one of the drugs in my cocktail, is a virtual guarentee of loossing all your hair, yet I didn't... (nurses and Drs were really shocked by this...).

inmd I was quite good at shocking my nurses in general; turning up for chemo, having eaten fish and chips from the shop near the hospital, about half an hour before I was hooked up... - seemingly I escaped the nausea too

I think that somewhere along the way, you must have mutated into a different lifeform, 2Legs.

Maybe your right! ... just wish I could convince some of my endocrine Drs that.... drugs that should make me hyperglycemic make me hypo... actually most of the drugs I react in reverse/opposite too... except, luckily, it seems the chemo drugs that did their work really very quickly

How wonderful, GB, that'll make everyone's life easier not having to avoid each other - especially Ian's, I would imagine. It may only be tiny, but it's a silver lining none the less.

Deb

Ian was at Castle Hill yesterday, for most of the day. He can't remember the name of the procedure he had done but they injected him with dye then made him wait while it coursed around his system. I suggested a few names but it didn't ring any bells. He even forgot to write it down for me and as he took the appointment over the phone directly from them as there wasn't enough time to post it, I am no wiser. (I am trying to keep a record of the procedures and treatments.)

I have a busy week, we usually go to the cinema on a Tuesday morning and he has said he wants to go - which is a good sign as he's been ducking out of our normal routine recently (since we came back from holiday, now I think about it). We have good friends there, so it could be a tearful morning

Thursday I am reorganising Mum's bathday from Friday morning as this Friday morning we're having visitors, Mum's nephew & my cousin, Roger, he is the son of her elder brother, long gone now. My Mum is the only Aunt left in all his family and they are attending a wedding over on the North Bank at the weekend so they will stay overnight at a local hotel on Thursday then come to Mum's house on Friday morning. I've not seen him since I was knee-high, but we have been in communication via email and talked on the phone for years. I'm getting a and the kettle will be on, along with primed camera for my sister who is attending our niece's wedding in Nottingham (the second of my older brother's daughters to be married this month) and is gutted she will miss cousin Roger. Photos are the next-best-thing.

maybe a radioactive 'die'; followed by a PET scan... err. they have a specific hame which I can't recall; radioactive die, is a radioactive ion, attached to a sugar (fructose normally); measures uptake into tissues; cancerous cells, have a higher metabolic rate over normal cells, and take it up quicker, then they do a weird mathmatical comparason between the liver uptake 'level' and the areas in other parts of the body, to give it a 'score' that helps indicate anywhere where cancerous cells might be.... (I've had a couple of these so kinda annoyed I can't recall the right name of the scan now.... its a 'something' PET', I think... just can't recall the 'something'....) - well just an idea I guess they use simular scan teachniques etc, for differnt cancer types....

PET scan is on the list of upcoming procedures so that must have been it, thanks 2legs

We had a lovely morning & great film. It involved tears too, from two of our friends, although I have started off a new prayer ring.

Then we popped to Tesco for my alternate-liquid lunch, and bumped into his niece Sarah (she is Caroline's best friend) and two of her brood, who found it very difficult to keep her upper lip stiff,

Glad I got it right!; positron emition technology-CT scan; basically I think its a CT scanner with an extra bit, so it can 'photo' the emition of the low level radiation, from the Fructose, and then they super-impose the 'ordinary' CT scan over the PET immage, and the areas that 'light up', is where there was high uptake of the sugar, which releavels the over-active metabolising cells/tissues, and one assumes they're likely to be where cancerous cells are to be found.... - I seem to reclal I may have had to fast before I had that done but it was a long while back now in January last year, and then again in Febuary or March I think to assess progress of the chemo at the point part way trhough treatment