Post 497: And the oncologist says… wait and see.
As cancer care reviews go, this was a pretty good one. There were no tears, but there were no happy endings either.
It started with handshakes and ended with cuddles, but throughout it was calm and relaxed at the oncologist’s clinic today.
But did we get the answers we wanted?
The bone scan was briefly mentioned, but nothing much happened to upset my apple cart. In fact, there’s not much to say about the cancer at all. Basically, I have to wait for a big pain to point the big cancer gun at, otherwise it’s wait and see.
Just tell me when there’s a pain and I’ll arrange to have it zapped.
The breathing problem
The other thing we talked about was my breathing, which still isn’t getting any better.
The oncologist is going to write again to the cardiologist and ask them to look at things from their side, to see whether there is anything they can do to make things easier for me.
It’s not quite as simple as asking and getting an answer, but we will ask again — not that it hasn’t been asked before.
My heart’s mitral valve is the problem, or at least part of it, and this is where things become a little frustrating.
The answer from the cardio mob seems to be that because I have cancer, an operation on the valve isn’t something they want to do.
Fair enough, if that is genuinely the medical decision.
But I’d like to know why.
Is the operation too risky? Is the cancer the reason they won’t operate? Is there another treatment? Is it because the benefits wouldn’t outweigh the risks?
I don’t know.
And that’s the boring bit — not the medicine itself, but being left without a proper explanation of what the options actually are.
I’m not expecting them to wave a magic wand and fix everything. I’d just like a proper answer that we can understand.
If the answer really is, “No, you can’t have the operation because you’ve got cancer,” then tell me that properly.
Give me the big boys’ answer, with the big words and all that jazz, and then explain what those big words actually mean.
At least then my Darling and I will know where we stand.
Hopefully the oncologist writing again will get somebody to look at it and give us a clearer answer.
And then there was the bin…
Actually, one of the more important parts of the day was when my Darling washed the waste bin — the one for the kitchen waste — and got it scrubbed up and had a number four stuck on it, courtesy of my lovely sister.
This will make the route-around for our bin after the bin men have gone a little easier.
My Darling picked up a bin that had supposedly been “emptied” the other week, only to find it was full of maggots.
She wasn’t best pleased, as you can imagine, and we needed to identify our bin clearly.
Ha ha. We shall see if this golden number 4 fits the bill and ends the problem.
The Oramorph bit
I’m still taking my Oramorph, four, five or six times a day, depending on when I wake up and what the day brings.
It does make my hands shake and my mind whirr a bit, and sometimes there are some pretty strange thoughts rattling around in my skull.
I keep thinking that if I could harness all that activity, I might become incredibly creative.
Sadly, it doesn’t quite work like that.
My legs bob up and down and my fingers twitch along with them, which is why we’ve got into the habit of double-cooking everything.
You never quite know where the food is going to end up otherwise.
It’s an unkind world we live in, but it always seems to add something to the flavour.
Tomorrow is weigh day
It’s weigh day tomorrow for me.
I lost at the beginning of the week, but then pulled it back.
So, we shall see what tomorrow brings.
Take care.
Good night.
