Martin had his stitches out on Monday & went back to see the nurse this morning for a check up & she said it was looking good. We went to see our GP this afternoon to update him. He was very sorry that it has now been diagnosed as inoperable, he has been with us through this journey. Our daughters have grown up together as we live in the same village, but because he is our doctor we have always kept a respectable distance.
He told us he hasn't rec'd all the info from the hospital as yet, but he will chase it up & is going to contact the Oncology dept at Northampton to nudge them for us. He told us not to build up our hopes of any further operations, but honestly I don't think Martin & I were thinking that would be the case anyway. He has been through so many operations already bless him. He told Martin he needs to get eating, little & often, needs to build himself up ready for chemo. He hasn't been eating much but I cooked him steak & chips tonight & was happy that he nearly cleared his plate, obviously taking note of what the doctor said.
Still looking pale, very quiet & thoughtful. He has this happy voice that he puts on when his mates ring up to see how he is. He's informed tonight that his mates are coming round to take him for a drink tomorrow night, Thursday nights have always been Boys Night Out, Im happy that he is doing it, I want us to get back into a bit of normality. I absolutely hate & resent the times we have to go through when our whole life seems to completely revolve around cancer, every phone call wanting an update, friends suddenly stop phoning or coming round because they dont know what to say, sympathy looks from work mates, hospital appointments, the waiting......it's so not fair!!!!
FormerMember
Just to say my partner who is 43 also has bowel cancer with secondary liver. He had a colectomy 5 years ago after the removal of a cancerous polyp and had been reasonably well until xmas when he started to feel unwell with weight loss.
The follow up he received from the Horton Grange hospital in Banbury was nothing short of shoddy! Only 2 follow ups in 5 years and even those we had to chase-so much for keeping a check on things! Then his own gp diagnosed him with prostatitis and was treating him for that for 3 months, eventually he was referred back to hospital and we had the sad news that both tumours are inoperable, so i feel he has been let down badly by the system.
He is undergoing palliative chemo at the moment, just completed cycle 3 and he is doing ok, not too much in the way of side effects apart from tiredness. We are hoping if he has a good response to chemo we will ask for a 2nd opinion re any surgery, they have said unlikely but then again they said it was unlikely his cancer had returned so i dont have much faith in them.
I hope all goes well for Martin, please keep us posted and feel free to pm me anytime,
SOooooo understand how you feel re cancer taking over your lives at times and its effect on the responses of those around you. In fact, I sent out an email to all those we love today asking them to try and talk/banter/take the pi*s out of him/laugh with David normally when they call (I said it in a nicer way than that sounded) cos some of our friends and family ring up and talk to him completely differently since we told them of his cancer - he feels they already have him dead and buried!!!! He also puts on the 'voice' with people (but its a bit easier for him to cover as his 'voice' nerve was damaged during the op he now has a new voice).
Hope Martin enjoys his night out with the boys tommorrow and they dutifully ply him with alcohol (within reason of course)- trust you are gonna 'fill up' too, (wine and chocolate comes to mind??!!!). David, has had an oesophagectomy so I also understand the difficulties around no appetite for food. Good on Martin for his 'doctor renewed' interest in steak and chips though - you'll be serving it up every day now - David is getting really sick of my smoothies but I make them so calorific I am DETERMINED he will put on weight before the chemo (I call him Gollom at the moment... lovingly of course) so if you want BIG FAT smoothie tips - I'm your woman Mandy!. David now has secondary tumours (10 of the buggers) in his lungs - looks like its chemo only for us now too but we all fight on to live another day eh?
Thinking of you both - hang in there - we are all hanging with you. Lotsa love Juliexxx
Thank you for your reply - I am so sorry to hear that you are going through exactly the same as me, be it you are a little further down the line of what we've got to come.
I know that there are different types of chemo, but I hope that whatever course they put Martin on will have the minimum side effects. Im presuming your partner hasn't lost his hair with his treatment as you only mentioned tiredness.
Like you, I feel we've been badly let down by the system. Martin had a follow-up scan in December, after having tumour 2 removed from his liver last August. He got results at the end of Jan stating he had 2 tumours on his lungs & they sent him for a pet scan. We had to chase up for the results, which we got at the end of Feb whereby we were told not only did he have 2 on his lungs but also 1 on his liver. Then after constant chasing up on our part, we were eventually told in April that both the lung consultant & the liver consultant were under the opinion that they were operable so they would go ahead. Martin had the lung tumours removed in May & then had this op on his liver 2 wks ago,
You can't help but wonder if he'd have had the operations sooner would it have been operable? Every week they leave you not knowing feels like a month, constantly torturing yourself - thinking the worst. It has been a horrible year but we've had to try & make the best of it, but I can't help but feel cheated, we should have been able to enjoy the last 8 months whilst he has been feeling ok - he's had no symptoms at all thankfully, but we spent so much time worrying & chasing the hospital. What made it worse was the fact that he is under 3 different hospitals: Northampton was for his bowel & chemo, Leicester General for his liver & Leicester Glenfield for his lungs.
Im going to go now, got to go to bed to be up for 5am, work for 7am. I would like to keep in touch with you. With love & a big cuddle Mandy xxx
Thank you for your reply, it's so sad that there are so many of us in this position isn't it. Until I got on to this site just last week, I felt so alone. Sometimes I just want to talk to someone but I feel guilty, think they've probably got enough of their own problems, or think that I don't want to bother them with it all.
I don't know if you have experienced this yourself but sometimes people will ask you how your husband is & then when you start to reply, unless you just say ok not too bad, their eyes wander off, they start to fidget & look uncomfortable!
I always turned to my mum for absolutely everything but unfortunately she passed away 3 years ago with emphasyma and then on top of that Martin got diagnosed with bowel cancer 1 mth later. Our daughters turned 18 this year, they've been busy doing their A levels this year. We don't like to cause them any un-necessary worrying.
I've added you as a buddy, as I said I am very new to this site & finding it difficult to get around & checking what updates I've received, I'd like to stay in contact so we can help each other through this,
Got to go to bed now, Martin has just walked in. I've got to get up at 5am for work at 7am.
Yep, do find people's awkwardness bit tough sometimes - it almost feels like I have told them David has grown another head, instead of he has cancer. In fact, sometimes I am cruel and just tell it unexpectedly to people I don't know well that piss me off ! God, I sooo hope I now know how not to react to others in the same situation. ME TOO re A levels, how did yours get on? Am soooo proud of Thorne, she got the results she wanted/needed to go to Uni next year - she hopes to go to Oxford to study Arabic and German (god only knows, the intelligence didn't come from me!!!!).
You can private message me any time Mandy, always happy to talk to those who understand, I promise you that I understand too. All of the things you have talked about in your blogs so far, I associate with. One thing though, please don't stop talking to people cos you don't want to bother them or think they aren't interested. Thats what I did and I became a bit of a recluse for a while... not a good place to be. You can ALWAYS turn to us on this site if you want to talk!!!
