Update 6 - 7th February 2008

Evening All

It has been a busy couple of days.

After completing a week on a low fibre diet (the complete opposite of what we normally eat!), and a day with virtually nothing apart from an egg and some consommé, Liz finally had the colonoscopy yesterday (Wednesday) morning.

Technically it went very smoothly and only took around 15 minutes. It was not as unpleasant as Liz had feared.

It was also successful in as much as it confirmed that she had bowel cancer. Under the circumstances it was the best result, as the oncologist now knows exactly what he is dealing with, and the success rate will be higher than if they had not found bowel cancer, as it would have been classified as an ‘unknown’ cancer and the treatment not so accurate.

The downfall in the procedure was that they also confirmed that the tumour is in danger of causing a blockage of the colon, until the chemotherapy kicks in. As a consequence she has to eat little and often, plenty of fluids and keep to a relatively fibre free diet for the time being.

Liz has not felt very well today as the low fibre diet and the colonoscopy unwind themselves. Hopefully she will feel better on Friday.

Today we had a meeting programmed with the Oncologist for 4.00pm (originally). This was brought forward until 3.40pm and subsequently to 3.15pm. We arrived at just after 3.00pm but due to emergency appointments being slotted in were not seen until gone 4.30pm. Not a very pleasant way to spend an hour and a half on your wedding anniversary, waiting to be told about the chemotherapy programme and what might or might not happen during and after the treatment.

The Oncologist outlined the programme which will initially be made up of 4 x 3 week sessions. The chemo infusion will take place on the first day of each session and will take about 3-4 hours in total. This will be complimented with tablets for the first two weeks of the session, to counteract some of the side effects, which should not be a major problem. To Liz’s relief it is unlikely that she will lose her hair!

She has to have another CT scan next Tuesday in order to create a benchmark against which future scans can be compared to see how successful the treatment is. She will also be having regular blood tests to check on various things including anaemia. If she does become anaemic she will have to have further blood transfusions (please make sure that if you are not already a blood donor you become one as soon as possible…..Liz may need YOUR blood!).

The aim of the chemotherapy is to shrink or kill off as many cancer cells as possible and get Liz into remission without delay. However, the Oncologist pointed out that he could not give any guarantees.

So we now have dates for the commencement of the first three cycles, (Feb14th, March 6th and March 27th) following which they will review progress and adjust the treatment accordingly. In the meantime he said she should do whatever she would normally do, and providing we are reasonably close to a hospital it was okay to go away for short breaks either in the UK or abroad, between the 3 weekly chemo sessions.

We have therefore decided, that as long as Liz feels well enough in the morning we are going away tomorrow for a long weekend at our favourite little hotel in South Devon. It fits well, as it’s the end of the diagnostic phase (two months) and the beginning of the treatment, and it’s also our 38th Wedding Anniversary (Doesn’t time fly when you are busy and enjoying yourself!).

This will probably be the last update for a while until we get well into the chemo programme.

As ever thanks for your own updates and words of support, they are greatly appreciated by both of us.

Bye for now

Dick & Liz