Clinical Trial

It is around 18 months since my wife Joan died. She was in a 'trial' to test the efficacy of combining chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The trial had two groups; one where radiotherapy was given at the beginning and chemo later and the other group where chemo was first. Unfortunately Joan drew the short straw and was placed in the latter cohort where chemotherapy was the main attack on the disease and radiotherapy as a last resort. Would the other group have saved my Joan?

I recently phoned the Oncologist's office to see if there were any published results that I could look at. They have been tardy getting back to me and I think I will have to actually go to his office ask ask them face to face. It may well be that the trial is still ongoing? I think it is worth pursuing.

Yesterday I collected a computer from an Aboriginal lady which I had given her some three years ago. She rang me suggesting that I take it back because she was not getting any use out of it and thought that I could pass it on to some other needy person. When I drove out to collect the machine she asked me to look at the ISP bill, which had suddenly gone from $14.00 to $86.00 in one month. I took her pile of bills to the Optus shop at a nearby shopping centre and a nice man rang up head office and found that loads of data over her allowance had caused the big bill. I know that she never did anything but email and play a couple of games loaded on the computer. I will talk with her this morning and most probably find that her niece who is staying with her has been looking at YouTube or similar.

On Monday my brother Graham had eye surgery in a day clinic. We went back to the hospital yesterday for a checkup and it seems to have been OK. He has three different eye drops to be administered four times a day for four weeks. He was warned that if he had a cold he would not be able to have the operation. As it happened he had a 'sniffle' when I drove him to the hospital, but he was confident that he could cover up the watery eyes and runny nose with 'death in the family' if the symptoms were noticed. It worked, but he modified the death in the family to 'just lost my girlfriend'......or that's his story.