Have you been holding your collective breaths? Luckily, we have some spare oxygen at Cold Comfort Cottage if you feel in need of a blast.
There have been, you will be delighted to hear, no recent medical dramas to report and we have been tentatively trying out the idea of ‘living-life-because-this-is-as-normal-as-it-gets.’
The dreaded cluster headaches are on the wane and Our Hero seems better than he has for months. As you would expect from such a one, he is now becoming a statistical wonder and his treatment regime should be of great interest to the medical fraternity and, indeed, fellow oesophageal cancer patients. Needless to say, there has been a deafening silence on the oncology front – I suspect that they think that Our Hero is now well beyond their reach, or will be before the next scheduled appointment.
Hah! We will see about that!
My goodness, what squabblings there have been amongst our honourable members about possible cuts in cancer care. I would so very much like to know exactly what ‘care’ they think they are talking about. For those with oesophageal cancer who are considered ‘beyond’ the point of surgery, there doesn’t seem to be much ‘care’ at all, unless you are prepared to go out and look for and, indeed, pay for it yourself.
Is that my ‘high horse’ I hear galloping towards me? If it doesn’t fall and break its neck at Beecher’s Brook, I will be tempted to jump on and give the Mac site an earful about the parlous state of the treatment, or lack of it, for some types of cancer.
I will, however, just quickly trot the old nag over one or two critical points, points which you might want to take out for an airing if you are lucky (or unlucky) enough to be canvassed over the next few weeks.
Let's start with this one: survival rates for some cancers in the UK are still far behind that of many other countries. Unfortunately, oesophageal cancer is one of those cancers. In Scotland, where we have a particularly high incidence of this cancer, survival rates are the worst in Europe.
If our nag is really to get into its stride, we might mention something about NICE blocking treatments, or NICE insisting on re-trialling treatments that have already been approved in other European countries. Or that NICE approved treatments are not being given to patients because there are very few people trained to administer them.
We might also mention the way in which developments in some treatments are being held up by the drugs companies because they do not see much profit in it for them …
…and so on, and so on ...
Alternatively, you might feel that you would rather get out into that spring sunshine. Even at Cold Comfort Cottage we have had a glimmer or two of that and, I don't know about you, but I find it very difficult to keep hope reined in when there is so much life around. It is already hard to remember that we had a surprise fall of a foot of snow only two weeks ago. The climate seems to be providing excellent metaphors for the way in which I am being constantly plunged from hope to despair and then back again.
Sadly, the soup is still having to bubble, and Christmas lunch is not an option.
Keep the vibes coming …
