Mysteries at the Mars Bar

Firstly thank you to everyone who send best wishes or thought about me today. I was called in early, and sat pen poised over big sheet of paper, ready for a good long list of all the mets that have developed over the course of my treatment-free 15 months. Dr Ann M knocks on door (how polite), and has just a sheet of paper. My original mets were to the supra clavicular fossa and the para-aortic lymph nodes. These were treated with Cisplatin and with radiotherapy. They still show up as tumours - the largest the shoulder one, now 2" x 1", and apparently, as it is above the diaphragm, of more significance. Unfortunately the Marsden have not been able to compare the new scan images with the old ones as - quelle surprise! - my old hospital at Nottingham have thus far failed to stir their stumps and forward my scans on disc - as I know they were requested to, weeks ago. The mystery is that the old hospital, when they pronounced that that was It, I would die in 3-4 months (ie at latest last September), cited spread elsewhere in the chest - later writing to me that this was in the mediastinal lymph nodes. The new scan reveals absolutely no evidence of cancer here. Either something miraculous has happened or more likely, the old hospital got everything a trifle confused. I got a copy of the report (never had stuff like that at Nottm) but still no look at the pictures (Q.- do they only do that as a treat for young people?). I have to go back down in six weeks so that they can do the comparison - I shall be telephoning my old hospital to politely remind them that certain information is being waited for. My partner thinks they will have lost my file, in a strop at me having defected and thus exposing their incompetence. Anyway today Dr M was professional but positive - reminds me that the stage IV still stands but asks if I am "a fighter". She also gave me a bit of a Biol Lesson as I had never even heard of the Pouch of Douglas - mine has some fluid in it. We were out again in ten minutes. "Are you going shopping now?" she smiles. "No," I explain, "We're going to look at the exhibition of skellybobs at the Wellcome Institute". She laughs, "Oh, yes. I want to see that too!" The exh is fascinating. Twenty Londoners, from Romans to Victorians, selected from Museum of London's collection of skeletons disinterred because of building work in London. They are all sad because each one was a person once, like you or I - but I found the most poignant the young woman with the 22 week foetus still inside: its bones were as fragile as a bird's. Then I went off and did some art-work - part of my own strange agenda - before finally we called at the National Gallery to see "Love". Gaze for long time at Vermeer's "Young Lady at the Virginals", Holman Hunt's "Isabella and the Pot of Basil" and Chagal's picture of him and his wife just after her death - touching. There was also a unusually polite piece by Grayson Perry, for whom I've always had a soft spot since the Museum I used to work for bought a copy of his coming out dress with phalli embroidered all over it. Home and rang our respective families. My Mum disappointed as she is still hoping for a miracle cure. Not yet, Mum. I did actually walk three times round Arbor Low stone circle yesterday - not in a mystical new-age crystal-healing sort of way, but because that was the length of time it took me to feel secure in the knowledge that I am merely an infinitessimal part of 4,000 years worth of people, and there is nothing wrong with joining them - especially if it is not quite yet.... Lots of love to everyone. Keep fighting. Keep off the booze and fags (there! I've lost most of my audience LOL!) and keep eating your fruit and veg and your green tea and your shiitake mushrooms and wholegrains because it seems to be the finger in the dam for me. xxxx Penny