The Monday Update





A Walk in the woods

Lovely afternoon sunshine for a walk in the local woods ahead of scheduled hospital appointment this afternoon.

Regrettably, the final results are not back yet - now expected on Wednesday - so we are not much further forward.  One piece of good news is that I can start to reduce my daily steroid intake, dropping 4mg per week over the next four weeks.  This, hopefully is good news and should start to reduce the fatigue in my legs and give me a better sleep pattern.  As to the results, they could go one of two ways.

Firstly, there is a roughly 10% chance that I have a variant of non-small cell lung cancer which can be treated with a group of medicines called "epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitors".  Basically these are tablets which stop the cancer cells from dividing and thus stop them from growing.  However, this is quite rare - unless you are Chinese and female - so the more likely regime is that I will be on is a three week cycle or more conventional  drugs in combination.

These are typically administered through a thin line inserted into a vein as an infusion over a 2-3 hour period as an out-patient.  There is likely to be a series of six 3 week cycles to complete the whole course of treatment.  The leaflets suggest there is a variety of possible side effects, but not everyone suffers them all, or indeed, any.  We will have to wait and see.
So, its back to the clinic next week and we will then find out for sure which regime I'll be on.

However, treatment will not start for at least another 4 weeks as they need to make sure I'm over the radiotherapy before they start and that I can complete a further barrage of blood and kidney function tests.

More next week - now plenty of walks, jobs in the garden and a photo business to develop.

Thanks once again everyone for your messages of support - much appreciated.