A dose of reality for you today. As if that’s what you need.
There are no prizes for guessing which script the director chose – the budget version, of course.
Now Our Hero is away, it is time for a 'reality check' and, my goodness, hasn’t reality a habit of creeping up on us idle blog writers when we are on our own.
So, my dear readers, I will remind you why we are here. About nine months ago I mentioned to the oncologist that photodynamic therapy was a treatment recommended by NICE for advanced oesophageal cancer as an effective palliative treatment for the dysphagia caused by OC (not being able to swallow because there is a tumour in your gullet).
I was met with blankness, not to say some irritation.
We were understandably euphoric when, after a great deal of hard work, we found someone who would do this treatment. This is not some weird, alternative option – it is standard treatment for this condition in many parts of the world, and it makes me very angry indeed that this treatment is being denied to those people who have this terrible cancer.
All cancer is horrible, but oesophageal cancer is right up there, with one or two others, which they usually catch only when it is too late and therefore find very difficult to treat.
The bad news is that the numbers who are getting OC is rising steeply because of growing rates of obesity and changes in diet. (And I know that there is an expert who will be reading this who will correct me if I am wrong! You know who you are, Wise Old Cynic!)
The good news is that because it is on the rise, there will be a lot more money invested in it.
It used to be a disease that in the rich West was primarily associated with poor people who drank and smoked too much. Not much money in that then. But now it is the better off who will be getting this disease, there is a chance for the pharmaceuticals to make some money. Hooray! Just listen to the share prices ratchet up. To add a very relevant point about race, in America it was primarily the black population who used to get OC and now it is the whites. Hmm. (For nit-pickers it used to be squeamous cell carcinoma of the oesophageous that was the big killer, and now is adenocarcenoma.)
I won’t bore you with where the money for PDT is now going.
The reality for us? I just want the best possible treatment for my husband and the NHS was only offering something which could well have made his situation very much worse.
The outcome is that he, Our Hero, is not in the comfortable hotel which I imagined, but in the best I could find near to the Yorkshire Laser Centre in Goole. And it is very uncomfortable indeed. (Poor Hero. The bed! The soup!)
It is a very long way from the North of Scotland. And from me.
It has been a very long journey for us both and one that should have been much easier. At the end of it, we will be somewhat poorer.
All we have been asking for is a bit more of chance. It is not a cure but – I do so hope – it will give us more time.
Should it all have been so difficult?
One final point: I have noticed that ever since Our Hero’s diagnosis that the would-be healers, and magic-massage people, Bulgarian Reiki Masters, and others, have been out in force.
Real medicine has been much harder to find.
I ask that you send your genuine and very much valued vibes to Our Hero as he languishes in his flea-pit near Goole, and to his rather elderly, but clearly very brilliant, maverick surgeon.
Tomorrow is the day.
It happens to be our wedding anniversary too.
Don’t ask how many years.
