Uh oh ! It was obviously going too well. And then my train pulled into the sidings. Oncologist has decided I need to have a CT scan to ‘check if the chemo is working’. Ahem. That is a concept I don’t want to process.
How can a person endure this amount of chemo-toxicity I’ve had and still potentially have a monster growing, unless one would suppose it relishes the diet of nasty chemical delights. Unlike me who approaches chemo-day with the feined enthusiasm of a practiced march to the scaffold, many people attending will be quiet, reserved and possibly slightly in denial. One new customer started to feel very anxious watching me deal with awful pain and visible side effects.
I pointed out his chemo was different, but he fought back saying, is also chemo. (ie that all chemo is the same). I explained that his chemotherapy (dexomethasone and prednisilone) was totally different from the beast that is folfirinox. Less – if any – side effects.. Lucky chap.
I think back to the first pointer at trouble on my ominous CT where they picked out firstly a bile duct stricture, which is often associated with ‘distressing symptoms and excessive morbidity.’
My own research at the time showed malignant causes of such bile duct strictures included the following: Pancreatic cancer (adenocarcinoma of the pancreas being the most common); Gallbladder carcinoma; Cholangiocarcinoma; hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer), It is also known that patients with malignant biliary obstruction frequent present at a late stage and have a dismal prognosis. So here we are.
Now if only there were proper screening measures in place, the 95% of people (who will die) may not be affected by these cancers. But enough of my mental wanderings.
I end up leaving the chemo-unit again in a shaky state with visible tremors worthy of Parkinsons.
This week I had a disconcerting foray into chemo-amnesia, which has been labelled by some humorists as Craft Syndrome. [Thank you Karen!]
Won’t elaborate here, but definitely sums up the mental torment which leaves your brain by the roadside whilst your body drives off. (Maybe HRH Prince Philip suffers from this affliction too).
So I have just had a crack of dawn triple CT, to ascertain if chemo is firing on all cylinders. Takes 10 minutes to run the contrast procedure, but you have to fall out of bed at an unearthly hour to make the 30 minute car ride in. (Thanks again to Mr McHaggis aka personal uber).
Now only a week to be given the results, which were uploaded instantly to the hospital server.
No time like the present, hey!
Jacqueline x
...When all is said and done 