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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment