Going to the Next Level

Kitten, the kids and I all went for a walk yesterday and the effects of the chemo are noticeable.  We have also been shopping today and a couple of hours was all that it took to wipe me out; though I imagine that most fellas would claim to be in my camp on that one.

Let's just say that I am glad that I am not a self-employed manual worker.  If you had to work through this in a manual job then I don't think it would help the chemotherapy to do its job.  You have to be able to let it ransack your energy, do what it needs to do and keep yourself pumped full of food.  I realise that it is different for everyone, but that is how it seems to be for me.

There is no doubt that with my team at the Royal Marsden I am receiving the best care that money can buy or indeed not buy (given that I am receiving this care courtesy of the NHS).  So far they have done everything according to plan and I have done everything that has been asked of me.

The treatment is formulaic and procedural.  There are obvious limitations to what medical science knows about cancer and how to treat it.  An example of what I am talking about can be seen from the research that the Marsden are helping to pioneer i.e. genetically tailored treatment.  Rather than having a proscribed treatment path patients will, sometime in the future, have treatments tailored to their genetic makeup and predispositions.

For now, I have the ST03 clinical trial http://thebookofsilence.blogspot.com/2010/03/down-to-business.html, including the might of the surgeon's knife.

Since diagnosis I have been living a healthy lifestyle and have made lots of changes that will do the healing process no harm.  Also, remember that in the months leading up to Christmas I made concerted effort to reduce my weight and get fit, which meant that I was eating healthily, taking plenty of exercise and hardly drinking.

This year my total alcoholic intake is 3 glasses of wine and half a bottle of beer, despite not being diagnosed until the second week of February.

Other changes that have since been actioned include

• Cutting out all bad lifestyle habits
• Making sure I get plenty of sleep
• Creating a clear and uncluttered living, working and recovery area (courtesy of many helpers)
• Cutting out heavy exercise whilst keeping exercise levels up all through the winter
• Obviating the rigours of the daily commute (courtesy of my colleagues)

All of these things have contributed to keeping a "healthy" attitude towards illness and recovery.

Of course, going forward, there are some major unknowns, although I should state that I am perfectly relaxed and optimistic about them

• How aggressive is the cancer?
• Will it respond well to the course of chemotherapy?
• Will the operation be successful?
• Will the subsequent cycles of chemotherapy remove any remaining traces of the cancer?
• Will the underlying problem that caused the cancer be dealt with by the treatment?

The last point raises philosophical questions because some doctor's might say that if the cancer has been removed then the underlying problem has been dealt with.  Of course, that would not explain why cancers then "pop up" in other areas of the body.  Some, including me, would argue that ending up where I have is symptomatic of one or many factors, perhaps not all of them being physical, and that I have the power to address some of them.  With that philosophy I can at least go forward feeling, if I do come through this in one piece,  I have done the best to ensure that I do not end up in this position again.

Illness in my late 20's took me on a journey of introspection in my early 30's and I feel that it is time for me to make use of the things that I feel I learned during that period.  Whether they will do me any good is difficult to measure because there isn't a control group.  The same can be said of the medical treatment because let's say that the standard medical treatment did not achieve any shrinkage of the tumour before operation,  would that indicate that the treatment had not worked or would it indicate that it had halted the growth of an aggressive tumour?  These questions seem to be beyond even the best of our medical staff as the truth is that they don't know exactly

• What has caused the tumour
• How long it has been present
• The rate at which it is growing
• The rate at which it is spreading

I feel that by exerting a level of control over the healing process I will be helping my state of mind and not doing anything that would be detrimental to the treatment that I am the grateful recipient of.

I feel perfectly relaxed about the whole process because I will not know what the pre-operation situation is until I am assessed again after chemotherapy.  The most important thing between now and then is to stay happy, relaxed and otherwise healthy.