At last some good news

I am home waiting for a phone call from Joan to collect her at the Oncology ward at St John's Hospital in Subiaco. We had a meeting with a partner of her regular oncologist as The Man was overseas on a conference. Wish we could change over to this young doctor who was much more conversational and gave clear and detailed answers to our questions. The regular man should have my name on Joan's file, but every time we enter his office he greets Joan and ignores me. Not hard really....he could look to see what my name is or even say something general like 'Welcome folks'. I guess he may feel that the partner doesn't need as much attention as the patient.

Going in for the three weekly verdict is difficult. Has the CEA (blood tumour marker) continued to rise? etc etc. Today's visit was good in as much as the CEA had fallen from 4.400 to 3,500. Hooray! Getting back on Oxaliplatin did the job. It is difficult to describe the relief when getting good news.

I left Joan there for her 3 hour top-up of rat poison and will collect her around 3pm. The fill-in onco suggested that one of the drugs Joan started a week ago should kick in in about another week and it could help her appetite.

So it looks like Joan is back to a stable disease situation rather than one of a progressing disease. We hope that the next CT scan will show more tumour reductions.

We will celebrate with a nice bottle of Champagne.

PS. I collected Joan and we are now home. The infusion of Oxaliplatin really knocked her around this time. Swollen face, tingling mouth, throat and eyes and the Champagne will have to wait a couple of days until things settle down.

Back on the heavy stuff

This morning we had a 10am appointment with the oncologist. There were a few sad stories in the waiting room. One woman was in the last stages of whatever cancer was consuming her being. It was not good for Joan to observe.

When we got in he reviewed the last week and the blood tests showed that the Blood Tumour Marker, the CEA, had doubled. Oh shit!

He assured us that the disease was still termed a stable disease, but the CEA indicated that the current chemo regime is not doing its job. He decided to revert to a different combo of Avastin, Xeloda plus the nasty Oxaliplatin. We will just have to put up with the side effects if we are to see any improvement. The infusion was to take three hours and I decided to go away and wait for Joan's phone call to come and collect her.

On the way home I decided to buy some casserole steak and make a curry which we haven't had since Joan's diagnosis due to her lack of appetite. It will be ready when she gets back home, but I fear she will not be able to eat any of it.