The month of September is now drawing to a close and the news is not getting any better. It seems that with this damn disease the news is rarely good. Elaine continues to get new spots and our radiation oncologist described it a rampant. We are however still moderately positive and are taking it all day by day doing every thing that we can to try to defeat it. Late last week our medical oncologist offered chemo and made sure that we were aware of the rather unpleasant side effects. So we have had discussions with our  GP who in turn had a long chat with the medical oncologist. The net result is that we are still undecided although it appears that chemo will not extend her survival by a long enough period to justify the discomfort that it will cause,,....bummer. But we will soldier on and try to enjoy what time we have got and to see as much as possible of our children and grandchildren.

It is Saturday after a fairly traumatic week, primarily due the spreading cancer. We know that this is the nature of the disease but it does take one by surprise when it actually happens.

Elaine started radiotherapy treatment again on Thursday to the groin area, so we are hopeful that this  tumour will continue to shrink. But, due to the spread, we now have to consider the option of chemotherapy which is on offer by our medical oncologist. I had a long conversation with him yesterday and came away from that with the impression that there is not a lot to gain from this. He did however recommend that talk to our GP (Dr Geoff Gild) and give the matter some thought before phoning him on Wednesday with our decision. So we did that and Geoff being the friend that he is phoned the oncologist (Dr S. Troon) and after a long conversation came away with the confirmation that chemo will not extend Elaine's survival time by an appreciable amount of time. The trade off with chemo is rather extensive including fatigue, nausea, mouth ulcers, costipation or diarrhoea and hairloss. The decision is of course Elaines but it does seem that we will stay with radiotherapy and we will have a discussion with Dr Chee after this round of treatment completes on Thursday.

Well it is 3 days since my last literary effort and a bit has happened since then.

We had a visit with our radiation oncologist, Dr Chee, on Tuesday to review the results of Monday's scan. Firstly they were good and showed that the original tumours had shrunk, not lots but any shrunk is good. They also showed that the right sort of activity was still happening. But then the bad news that he had found 3 new tumours, the first a small one behind the kidneys. Then one, just a spot, below the belly button and another spot also just under the skin and nearby, but I did not take note of exactly where. They are probably too small at this stage to treat but that decision will be left to our medical oncologist who is running the show. We had an appointment to see him late in October but have rung his rooms to see about bringing that appointment forward.

I guess that this is the nature of the disease and we will have to used to it. But it doesn't make it any easier and it would be nice to have a way of stopping it in it's tracks!

This is, as someone else said, an insidious disease that we are dealing with!

There definitely has been an reduction in Elaine's pain level since we started treatment at Genesis. However the pain, which had gone down dramatically immediately after the radiation, treatment has increased over the last couple of weeks, which is not good. There are a couple of factors to be considered, firstly the large quantities of medication which would help to reduce the pain and which we eased up a little over the last 10 days. Secondly the side effect of lots of pain medication is constipation, which of course is then countered with more pills, which could in this case exacerbate the pain in the groin (which is the main tumour). So this is all very confusing but we will learn more tomorrow when we go to get the results of the scans that Elaine had last Wednesday.

After a lovely morning with Lyla at 'school', or kindy depending on your age and point of view, we headed back to Genesis. Our first observation was how little time it took to travel from Wembley to Joondalup. Admittedly at 11am but it only took 20 minutes and, having allowed a lot more time than that we were early. Never mind the plan was for Elaine to drink lots of liquid, get rid of it and drink some more, which sounds like some sort of witchcraft ritual but has apparently serious reasoning behind the procedure. This was a preliminary to measuring the lady's appropriate parts for the next round of radiotherapy.

However after making a start, Elaine was part way through the first glass of water when it was decided that this was unnecessary and the ritual was discontinued. Yesterday when the booking was made we, the receptionist and I, confirmed that this would be required and timing plans were made accordingly. So I don't know what happened but obviously someone reread the detail sheet today and made an alternative decision. Then we had to wait some time for our slot on the measuring machine and by the time we headed home we had been visiting in Joondalup for nearly 2 and a half hours, some of which we would rather have spent in Wembley. No matter it is not a big deal and it all got done in the end.

So after deluxng ourselves at Hungry Jacks establishment we arrived home and madame went to sleep while I made loud noises at the back of the house.

Another visit to Genisis today but more later.

Elaine has had a bad couple of days, make that a few days with high pain levels. In fact very high on a couple of those days requiring more breakthrough medication than has been required for some time.
That might have been partly due to the side effects of the pain medication, hopefully so and it will go away of its own accord.

Dr Chee at Genesis today has sent Elaine off for another CT scan and will have his staff book her in for more radiotherapy aimed at the groin lump. Other than that he didn't add much to our knowledge base. He did however show us the X-rays so that we could see the size and location of the lump, not very nice stuff and obviously a little upsetting.

Later we had a visit from a lovely Silver Chain lady, not our usual lady who is on holidays, but like every one that we have met from this organisation a very nice person. She discussed the medications and agreed that the reduction has, at this stage, not been successful. So between us we modified the routine a little and even though Elaine required breakthrough later in the night we may be on the right track.

I am continuing this on Wednesday, having started on Tuesday and been interrupted. I mean..........how dare anyone interrupt a genius at work!

This morning Elaine had the CT scan as ordered and we look forward to hearing about the results when we next visit Genesis. As it turns out we will be there tomorrow to get measured up for the next treatment which will start next week. Lyla has invited us to a grandparents morning tomorrow which we will attend but will have to leave early to get out to Genesis.

Not a lot to report since my last blog.

 Elaine is making steady progress, but I have to say that there is a fair bit of up and down. We have had a chat with our GP and he has added a couple of things to help compensate for the side effects of all these pain killers. I did a count the other day and Elaine is taking 30 pills every day plus a couple of liquid drafts...wow! I did the count as part of an attempt to rationalise and avoid having to get new scripts every week for one or other of the pills, sometimes 2 or 3 scripts but I am sure that you understand where I am coming from. This is difficult because a number of the medications require individual authorisation from the government due to them being restricted for obvious reasons (addicts choices). This week we saw our pain specialist and he started a program to reduce the medication as a result of Elaine's lessened pain level. This first reduction is one of the restricted ones and that will now last to line up with the rest of them.

Elaine's improvement shows in all sorts of things such as greater awareness and less confusion, a little bit of gardening and importantly more and better interaction with the kids, grandkids and friends. Today we went to Poppy's sports day for an hour or so, which was great. She still sleeps most of the time, but hopefully that will change as we lower the overall medication dosage.