Lump Day +27 (11 March)
The oncologist is so confident the CT scan will be clear that we had a long phone call appointment to order to brief us for the treatment. After 90 mins on the phone my head was scrambled with a whole new language.
Basically I need a cocktail of drugs called TCHP, which is a mix of chemo drugs and hormone drugs. I get these once every 3 weeks for 6 cycles and then only the hormone drugs for another 12 cycles. It was difficult to take in all the various stages of treatment and there was something about the hormone drugs possibly changing after surgery and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember despite frantically writing it all down, but I figured I do not need to know all that now anyway. She talked through the chemo side effects and honestly we came off that call feeling much more worried about being poisoned by chemo than the cancer itself!
I spent the following days as a project manager, co-ordinating echocardiogram appointment, chasing CT results, setting up a Covid test, chasing a Covid vaccination, arranging blood tests, a pre chemo call with the nurse. There's a lot to organise and I couldn't help but think that for an elderly person living alone, this would be incredibly difficult.
I wrote last time about not telling people precisely when you have an appointment. As the CT scan was so quick, I hadn't let people know and I felt so much better at being able to share the results (no spread, phew!) at my leisure rather than have my very caring friends and family asking.
