A Week In The Hole
On Thursday I get my first cold in two years, my first since being diagnosed with cancer. My throat packs up and I can barely speak until Sunday afternoon. I managed to keep the head and nose clear. I must be getting better right?
On Monday I turned 39. Another year alive, and normally a cause for celebration. I had a good day, surrounded by family and a couple of friends. Very low key, very quiet, although I did break my strict diet rules and ate some lamb roast, a slice of lemon and yoghurt cake and had a mouthful of the four bottles of red wine from the cellar-that-really-is-half-a-wardrobe. And it wouldn't have been much more than a mouthful I tasted from each bottle, but oh!
I didn't feel like celebrating however, because of today. And today being the next D-Day in a line of D-Days, a future based on blood. Today I met with my oncologist to discuss the three blood tests I'd had done recently, blood tests that may tell me whether I'm in remission or the bastard disease is growing elsewhere. It was a day of nerves, of anxiety and fear, of adrenalin coursing through the body in quiet waiting rooms. Horrible fucking days, where you turn up on the beach expecting to get shelled.
The 2nd bloodtest showed the CEA levels had doubled, now at 30, which was not good news, but again, not necessarily indicative that cancer is running amok or whether inflammation is still hitting the body. The 3rd bloodtest, done last Thursday, had not had the cancer marker test performed. Great. Nothing conclusive can be told. One would have hoped my oncologist had had the time to see this before we came in and rectified things, but no. This left me deflated, my wife angry. I guess if you're not bleeding to death on the floor, then you're okay to some degree, and in my case this is true. I haven't felt this physically well since before I was diagnosed almost two years ago.
The outcome? I call back on Thursday for the final CEA results, hoping that they have managed to perform it, pick up my insurance claim that keeps me from going too far backwards financially (and I'm only going backwards, folks, what I had thought was a net benefit payment is only a gross benefit payment, which leaves me in the long-term destitute - but that long term is a long way off), and book in a PET Scan. The PET Scan is mainly for peace of mind. It might show a spread of the disease to other parts of the body, it might show who the hell knows what. It might show nothing.
I'm quite prepared for the cancer to return to the liver - I know there are things we can do to fight it there. But if it has spread elsewhere? To the lungs or brain? Fuck, you know, you just don't need these thoughts rattling around in the brain. I've built walls of steel around my psyche to combat this shit, but sometimes those walls feel a little wobbly.
In the meantime, the cold is playing havoc with my chemo-damaged extremeties. Though this havoc is more 'annoying' than what it used to be where I couldn't hold a pen, use a keyboard, do up buttons etc. This havoc is simply an increasing with the cold reminder that all has not been well in Haines land. My sleep is still fractured, my meditation still in ribbons. I'm seeing an acupuncturist weekly (who incidentally also saw us during IVF) who refuses to let me pay for my treatments, which makes me love her more for what she is doing but also makes me feel uncomfortable because I think I should be paying. We're hoping the acupuncture can restore or balance my energy levels, perhaps break through the fatigue barrier or help me sleep better at night. Neither of us are too hopeful about acupuncture to combat the frazzled nerves in the feet.
Nice things are still happening to me.
On Monday I turned 39. Another year alive, and normally a cause for celebration. I had a good day, surrounded by family and a couple of friends. Very low key, very quiet, although I did break my strict diet rules and ate some lamb roast, a slice of lemon and yoghurt cake and had a mouthful of the four bottles of red wine from the cellar-that-really-is-half-a-wardrobe. And it wouldn't have been much more than a mouthful I tasted from each bottle, but oh!
I didn't feel like celebrating however, because of today. And today being the next D-Day in a line of D-Days, a future based on blood. Today I met with my oncologist to discuss the three blood tests I'd had done recently, blood tests that may tell me whether I'm in remission or the bastard disease is growing elsewhere. It was a day of nerves, of anxiety and fear, of adrenalin coursing through the body in quiet waiting rooms. Horrible fucking days, where you turn up on the beach expecting to get shelled.
The 2nd bloodtest showed the CEA levels had doubled, now at 30, which was not good news, but again, not necessarily indicative that cancer is running amok or whether inflammation is still hitting the body. The 3rd bloodtest, done last Thursday, had not had the cancer marker test performed. Great. Nothing conclusive can be told. One would have hoped my oncologist had had the time to see this before we came in and rectified things, but no. This left me deflated, my wife angry. I guess if you're not bleeding to death on the floor, then you're okay to some degree, and in my case this is true. I haven't felt this physically well since before I was diagnosed almost two years ago.
The outcome? I call back on Thursday for the final CEA results, hoping that they have managed to perform it, pick up my insurance claim that keeps me from going too far backwards financially (and I'm only going backwards, folks, what I had thought was a net benefit payment is only a gross benefit payment, which leaves me in the long-term destitute - but that long term is a long way off), and book in a PET Scan. The PET Scan is mainly for peace of mind. It might show a spread of the disease to other parts of the body, it might show who the hell knows what. It might show nothing.
I'm quite prepared for the cancer to return to the liver - I know there are things we can do to fight it there. But if it has spread elsewhere? To the lungs or brain? Fuck, you know, you just don't need these thoughts rattling around in the brain. I've built walls of steel around my psyche to combat this shit, but sometimes those walls feel a little wobbly.
In the meantime, the cold is playing havoc with my chemo-damaged extremeties. Though this havoc is more 'annoying' than what it used to be where I couldn't hold a pen, use a keyboard, do up buttons etc. This havoc is simply an increasing with the cold reminder that all has not been well in Haines land. My sleep is still fractured, my meditation still in ribbons. I'm seeing an acupuncturist weekly (who incidentally also saw us during IVF) who refuses to let me pay for my treatments, which makes me love her more for what she is doing but also makes me feel uncomfortable because I think I should be paying. We're hoping the acupuncture can restore or balance my energy levels, perhaps break through the fatigue barrier or help me sleep better at night. Neither of us are too hopeful about acupuncture to combat the frazzled nerves in the feet.
Nice things are still happening to me.