Oesophageal Cancer Stage IV - A Good Day!

Oesophageal Cancer Stage IV - A Good Day!

Off with my list (and my husband) to the (new) GP yesterday morning.  I run through what, to me, seems the particularly terrible sequence of events.   The list is something like the following, with a few addiions on the way as the blood pressure was rising:

• My husband first understands what is going on when he reads the charts which are bouncing on his chest as he is wheeled about the hospital after CT scan/endoscopy, or whatever.  The chart reads:  'malign tumour, malign tumour... etc.'  Not exactly incomprehensible to the reasonably literate.   
• We then outline his first converstion with oncologist. (When was this? Last December sometime - I can't remember and, of course, I was working so I was not there - perhaps a good thing.) "How long?"  my husband asks.    Oncologist:  "Oh, a few months.  Double figures if I can manage it."  
• The NHS are swift at getting my husband into chemotherapy  (I learn later about 'targets' with regard to cancer),  so swift that there is no time to talk to him about what he is letting himself in for: they just print out the advice about the chemotherapy from the Macmillan website and hand him that.  Of course, we had already done that, and more. 
• Chemotherapy - and anyone who has experience of this, directly or indirectly, will agree - is hell.  Most of us are, rightly, scared stiff of this treatment.  The first 'cycle' is particularly hellish.  For a start, there are all these very ill people around you.   And then there are all the protocols surrounding the foul brews:  such care, such bleepings and security, and readings of dates and labels  ...  But is there an oncologist in sight?  Anyone to reassure you?  Is there even a dietician?  There are some exacting questions about 'life-style' from someone.  And then on you go, for about eight hours.  If you are lucky, you might be offered a cheese sandwich for lunch.  For someone with advanced oesophageal cancer?  Hell.  In our case, there is also the hour-and-half drive home.   
• Oh yes - back to the script and today.  No, my husband is not well.  He can't eat, he can't sleep, he doesn't want stents, he is still working ....And what about PDT?  Yes, I am a little tense ...

Magically, this is a very understanding GP who thinks it sometimes is a 'good thing' to be a 'little cross' because it gets things done.  And, he adds, that if I can find a surgeon who will do photodynamic treatment and take referrals from a GP, he is happy to refer my husband. It is probably just a case of 'let's-keep-the-poor-little-woman-happy-she-clearly-is-emotional.'

I leave when they get to the 'stools' questions.  GP gives my husband a thorough prod (painful, apparently - and should he be doing this?) but he doesn't find any 'mass' which, even if the prodding is sending cancer cells rushing round the body, is surely a very good thing indeed. 

Best of all, he gives him prescription for some Gaviscon.   Yes - Gaviscon.   But it is helping and my husband has had twenty-four hours of really good eating.   Only those of you who are, or have been, close to someone with a disease like this can know the pleasure there is to be had in watching that person demolish (slowly) three (small) courses of food.

Oh yes - and I have made great progress with the PDT.  I have found the surgeon.  It is all clutching at straws, perhaps, but I feel now that I at least have a straw to clutch at.   Pathetic, really.