A Brief Respite

My daughter and her eldest daughter, are  coming today to look after Harry for the weekend.  We’re off for a business/pleasure trip to Paris.

I feel rather guilty in a way.  But I have left him in competent hands.

Harry’s Grim Future

Harry saw the oncologist on Monday and the prognosis was worse than expected.  The hospital will try a mixture of chemotherapies but they said that doing nothing would also be a choice.

They were kind, they had the top Professor in the hospital there and they took it all slowly and deliberately, explaining every step, treatment and side-effect.  But it was all chilling and more or less an end.

He is not emotional like his sister and has hardly said much since we returned from the hospital.  What is going on in my mind, I have not a clue.

Would I behave differently?  I don’t know, but I suspect I’d want to talk and give my children and grandchildren all of the gory and funny details of my life.  I can be very talkative.  I suspect too, I’d be drinking a lot but does that matter.  Harry doesn’t.  But then smoking was probably the wrong choice.

Alternative Treatments

My fridge is now fairly full of alternative treatments for Harry’s pancreatic cancer.

Quite frankly, I think they are a waste of time and are only there because some con-artist has found a way to remove some hard-earned money from the desperate or the downright gullible.

My point is that if they were that good, then we’d all be using them.

But don’t believe me, read what is said in Patrick Swayze’s entry in Wikipedia.

When Barbara Walters asked him if he was using any holistic or alternative methods of treatment besides the chemotherapy, Swayze admitted to using some Chinese herbs, but not much. He then voiced his opposition to alternative therapy, as noted by ABC News journalist Joseph Brownstein:

Because of the grim prognosis, many patients turn to alternative therapies without scientific evidence behind them. Swayze did not.

“That’s one thing I’m not gonna do, is chase, is chase staying alive. I’m not, you know, you’ll spend so much time chasing staying alive you won’t live, you know? I wanna live. If anybody had that cure out there like so many people swear to me they do, you’d be two things: you’d be very rich, and you’d be very famous. Otherwise, shut up,” he told Barbara Walters in an interview that aired in January of this year.

Swayze’s feelings may be correct, according to a study released last month in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. That study — from Columbia University Medical Center — compared standard pancreatic cancer care, including the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine, with a popular alternative therapy known as the Gonzalez regimen. Researchers found that patients on the alternative regimen had a median survival time of a little over 4 months, while patients taking the standard of care regimen survived for a median of 14 months.

One of the troubles of chemotherapy is that it is generally very painful and you lose all your hair.  So if someone offers you a more palatable alternative, you go for it.

In Mary’s case, she wouldn’t have gone for the Tarceva. Even if it gave her a few more uncomfortable days of life.  Success is not just how many days you live past diagnosis, but the quality of that life as well.

But when illness gets serious, you bring out the big guns early!

1,000 Days To The Olympics

Today, it’s just a 1,000 days to the Olympics in London.

I was looking forward to going, but with Harry’s problems, I just wonder if I’ll make it.  Life is so fragile.

Can I Swim in a Chastity Belt?

This question was asked as we lay in bed this morning, after I said that I was going to get up to have a swim.

So you can all guess what happened. I got out of bed, went to my dressing room and got the Neosteel belt for wearing next to my skin out of its home. I presented it and asked him to try me!

Needless to say, I proved it was possible.  But then I’ve done it hundreds of times before.

He then asked me ever so politely if I’d like to wear the belt for the rest of the day.  I always try to accommodate requests, when they are asked nicely.  But as we’re going out to lunch at Peter and Anna’s, I countered by asking if he’d change the Neosteel for something over a leather corset before we leave.

His face was a picture!

Doctor’s Orders

Harry is now registered with my doctor.  It’s the same doctor, who featured in the old version of this blog. (Sometimes I think about restoring it, as I do have it stored on my archive.  But I don’t think I will!)

Whilst I was at the surgery taking Harry’s forms back, I bumped into the doctor, who despite being over retirement age can’t be kept away from the place.  As he’s very good, loves it, why shouldn’t he fill in?

He asked about Harry, who he knows from before he left home, and me.  He was just the person I needed to see.

But I also asked him about Harry, his smoking and his pot.  He said not to bother, as if Harry only had a few weeks, what the heck and if he lasted longer, then we could sort it out later. 

But as to the pot, if it helps his pain, why not?

Cancer Statistics

I have found this very simple summary of cancer statistics in the UK.

Read it and some interesting facts about cancer are shown :-

1. About 294,000 people are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK and there are about 155,000 deaths every year from the disease.
2. Approximately fifty percent of those diagnosed with cancer live for five years or more.  My late wife didn’t do this with her breast cancer, but she was killed by an unrelated cancer of a different type.
3. With most cancers have you have a much better chance of survival than you did in the 1970s.  You don’t see this increase with pancreatic cancer.  It’s still about three percent and has been for about forty years.
4. Look at the ratio of research spend against deaths and you find that cancers like breast and leukaemia, get much higher research spending compares to lung and pancreatic. 

To me the last point is the most interesting.  Is it because breast and leukaemia are to of the most emotive cancers as they affect mostly women and children, that they get more spending?  After all the PC brigade will have you believe that if you get lung cancer, it’s your fault for smoking.  So is that why it’s underfunded?  After all, not everybody who gets lung cancer has smoked!

Pancreatic cancer is down at the bottom.  This could be because, it is such a difficult cancer to detect early, that if you get it, the health system gives up on you.  This doesn’t seem to be the case with Harry, incidentally.

So can I just ask anybody who reads this to do a little bit to redress this research balance, by putting your next pound, dollar, euro or Ruritanian groat into a serious pancreatic cancer charity.

After all, one of the tenets of a good investment is to put your money where no-one else does.  And pancreatic cancer research is rather thin on the ground.

You might well be too late for today’s sufferers, but you might finance something that will help one of your children in twenty years time.

The Worst Fears

They have been realised.

It’s pancreatic cancer and they’ll assess what to do in a couple of days.

You strive so hard and then this happens.  Perhaps, Harry’l win and perhaps he’ll lose.  But I think after seeing him in hospital tonight, I think he’ll fight.

It’s the only way!

The Evil Of Tobacco

I went to see Harry in hospital last night.  He wasn’t on the ward, but outside as he had to have his smoke. Smoking may not have caused, what he has got, but it has certainly played a part. Smokers in my family die approximately thirty years before those that don’t.

What am I to do?

He says that he won’t stop until he gets the diagnosis.  But then I suspect, if it’s a serious cancer then he’ll say that he needs the cancer to get through his ultimate death and if it’s not, then he’ll say that as he hasn’t got cancer, then he won’t stop.

Such is the evil of tobacco.

A lot of people with more knowledge than me will say that tobacco is more addictive than some illegal drugs. 

And what is one of the lead stories on the BBC today?  It’s about drug dealers selling cheap and illegal cigarettes from so-called tab-houses. A lot are being sold to children.  You obviously must catch your punters young, as then you have a market for their shortened life.

We should get real on tobacco.

If you smuggle in say a Transit van with £50,000 of cigarettes, then you’ll lose the van and the contents if you are caught.  But you’ll just get a fine.  On the other hand smuggling the same value of say cocaine will get you locked up in jail.  You should also be jailed for large amounts of tobacco.

It may not stop the trade, but if it can stop one family going through what I am, then it will be worth it.

No Results

Harry is back in hospital, but he didn’t get the results yesterday.  They need to be sure and it will probably be Wednesday or possibly Thursday.

Waiting is awful.

But at least he seemed better when I left him last night, as they’d put him on a drip and they have done something for his pain.

I was alone in the house last night, as my man has gone back to his house in the Midlands.  After all he has a business to run.  He’ll be back Friday. 

I can’t wait, but then I’ll definitely know the results on Harry.  I wish for one thing to happen and fear for the other.