Thursday 4 March 2010

Onwards and upwards

Mam had her third session of chemo just over a week ago. Normally she has chemo on a Wednesday, is fine on Thursday and Friday, but spends most of the Saturday and Sunday being violently ill. Mam mentioned it to her consultant who said she should try taking two of her anti sickness pills at a time, rather than just one - and it seems to have done the trick...she wasn't sick at all this time. Still physically exhausted, yes, but not sick - and she said she can cope with that. And on top of this, she's still eating well!

It's lovely to phone to talk to her and she still sounds relatively perky, rather than sounding completely done-for. She had a blood transfusion on the same day as her chemo this time - which sounds dramatic but apparently isn't - it's just because her routine blood tests showed she was slightly anaemic, which can happen when you have chemo.

And the day after 'chemo 3' she'd felt so well she'd gone for a walk with dad; not a hike or anything, just round to the local shops and back so no more than about 2/3 of a mile - but a massive step, considering she literally hadn't even been past the front gate since last October, unless it was to go to hospital. She'd enjoyed it and said she wanted to walk up to the community centre the following day, but the weather scuppered that.

So things feel relatively positive right now.

The next stage is a CT scan on Wednesday 10th March, to compare with the one they did before chemo started in January, to see if the chemo is killing off the cancer or not. So while we're all hoping for some positive news, I'm kind of preparing myself for bad news. Ever since this all started, it feels like good news has always been followed by bad, so it wouldn't be the first time. If the cancer HAS started to shrink, the next stage will be an op to remove as much of it as they can.

Fingers crossed.

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