Getting up to date

A resume to start. My partner and I met 25 years ago and have been together for 22. We have had a wonderful, brilliant time together, we worked in the same office and have spent nearly all of our time together. The occasional cross word but never any serious arguments. 10 years ago we moved to rural mid-Wales and as a result have left most of our friends behind. Still in touch with some of them, but sporadically. We had each other and that honestly was enough.

The nightmare began just after Pete's 60th birthday in July 2014, when he noticed some blood coming out of his bottom while we were on holiday in France. Luckily the bowel cancer screening test kit dropped through our letterbox at home some weeks later. Within weeks we had the dreaded diagnosis, cancer in the sigmoid colon. An operation to remove it followed swiftly, he was extremely lucky and had a good surgeon and didn't need a colostomy. It was classed as a Duke's C/D tumour, because there were a couple of suspicious spots detected in his lungs. He had 4 cycles of oxaliplatin/Capecitabine adjuvant chemotherapy, then a break while the largest of the spots was removed. He then finished 4 more cycles of chemotherapy, during which time we were told that the spot was not cancerous, so the assumption was that the other one wasn't either. A final scan was taken and we started to plan a holiday and finish off renovation work on our house.

 4 weeks later, in August 2015, a phone call. The remaining spot was unchanged, but there were two new lesions, one in each lung. World collapsed, worse than the original diagnosis. The largest one was removed in October and proved to be cancerous, but with a twist. They could not (and still can't) tell exactly what it is. Most likely a mutation of the original tumour with a neuro endocrine element, but possibly a new lung cancer. 

In December Pete had a couple of falls. One we blamed on the dog. He then had a funny turn while driving, having missed one of the pedals he slapped himself on the head and then thought he was having a stroke - numbness, tingling and so on. GP wasn't concerned, but we went to meet the lung surgeon to book in for removal of the second lesion. He took one look at Pete and sent him off for an emergency MRI of his head. 2 brain metastases diagnosed on 17th December. Terrible meeting with oncologist between Christmas and New Year, prognosis dire. Had to push and push for aggressive treatment. Physical surgery ruled out, but managed to get Cyberknife treatment in February, delayed twice due to machine breaking down. In the meanwhile a new scan showed further lung mets plus a large one in the spleen.

So that's the story so far. Until December he was really pretty well, but since then it has been a gradual downhill slope. At least part no doubt due to the steroids, but I think some due to disease progression. First he had to stop driving, then he couldn't cope with walking the dogs with me or with going out anywhere,  now he is struggling to get up stairs or do even tiny tasks like mixing the dog food. The last few days he has been exhausted, just totally slammed. Yesterday he ate a little bit more than usual and had a terrible night with pains in his left side and shoulder, and feeling bloated. I think this may be due to the enlarged spleen. He looks awful too, waxy and pale grey, with muscle wastage in his arms and legs but swollen feet and ankles. So just generally an anxious time, our world has contracted to our home and the only time I leave it is to walk the dogs or buy food. We are due to start Irinotecan/Capecitabine chemo in a few days, please God this will shrink the damn things. The onc is also arranging cetuximabfunding, his colleague shocked me with the (throwaway) comment that this only prolongs life by 6 weeks! So how damn long have we got? We were told 6-12 months but probably longer if the brain mets can be controlled, but if they are scrabbling around for extra weeks that sounds worse.

That's enough for the first post, Fran. Fill in more details later. Need to go and calm down, very sad going through all the memories of the course things have taken and realising that he is significantly worse than 2 months ago.