Pain, sticks and Immunotherapy

3 minute read time.

Hello blogees (is that even a word?  I might have made it up )

Just thought I'd take five minutes to update you all on the latest happenings concerning the Bastard.  Seems a perfect moment to do it as the children are all still asleep and Mr H is occupied on the PlayStation.

The last fortnight has been hard.   I won't lie.  Things are starting to go wrong with my body.  Nasty urinary tract infection, bowel issues and pain.  The pain just keeps on getting worse.  Those people out there who suffer with chronic pain, you are amazing, you get up each day, though you don't want to, you do.  You take the tablets in the hope that you might be able to function to some level of normality, but knowing that realistically you can't.  If your anything like me you long to just sink into bed and fall asleep with an ordinary tiredness and not the dog tired, bone drilling tiredness of chronic pain mixed with a cocktail of various opiates amongst others.

Uni has just started and I  am already struggling.  My latest assignments were passes but not fantastic (coherent thinking and opiates are incompatible bedfellows) I am not disappointed though just being realistic about my abilities.  My main worry is that I might have to give it up, I really don't want to but cant see it getting any easier.  The biggest loss will be the loss to my brain.  It will have more thinking time and we definitely don't want that....

My right leg seems to have got worse, I have a nasty shooting pain that is constant in it unless the tablets are working.  The cancer is obviously strangling the nerve more, I cannot stand upright for any length of time and when I do the pain is hard. This is making it difficult for me to look after the house and the children which makes me sad.  I think much as I have been avoiding it I am going to have to start walking with a stick.  My vanity has to give way or I simply cannot walk for any length of time.  I just need to think of it as a temporary thing.....because I will get better.  The cancer will leave my body.

I just want to be me again.  Even for just a short while.

But anyway I'm dithering....you all really want to know if I got on the trial yes?

Well, I DID, I GOT ON THE TRIAL!!!  I want to shout it from the rooftops, if it works this could mean my life being extended and that you cannot put a price on.  Just knowing that you have a chance, it's amazing the effect it can have on you.  I once again have something to believe in.

Once the news had sunk in and I'd talked to Mr H I started telling others and my body began to shake and I began to cry.  I was happy though, so happy!  I musn't have realised exactly how much of myself I had invested into this immunotherapy trial.  Took me a couple of hours to dry my eyes.

I have my first infusion next week at St Bartholomews in London, so a bit of travelling but hey it's worth it.  Up until now I hadn't considered that it might make me ill but I feel that the risk I might is a small price to pay for the chance that it will give me more time. 

Even more excitingly I've read how some people with metastatic cancer walk away cancer free.  I know the numbers are very small and that mostly what it does is offer more time but the fact remains that people are surviving this disease with the help of this amazing new drug.

I am normally a very rational person but I believe in this treatment and I think before long it will be the standard of treatment for cancer.  Who knows what this could do for the survival figures?  All I know for now is that it's going to bash the Bastard.  Here's hoping that it won't know what's hit it.

I'll let you know how we get on ;)

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