This blog is being composed while sitting next to Elaine at Hollywood hospital. She is receiving the day 8 chemo of the second stage of her treatment. Today has been a bit messy.........we arrived here at 1.15pm to keep our appointment only to find out that our doctors rooms had forgotten to book us in. Bad.....but it eventually got sorted and we started about 2.5 hours late. At this stage we still expect to visit his rooms when the chemo is finished.

Other than that we have had a good day with Elaine doing lots of bits and pieces indicating that she is improving. She is still sleeping lots and still has pain in her shoulder and her left foot is numb, but in every other respect she is showing marked improvement. Hopefully it will continue this way.

Today has been another good day with Elaine getting about and doing little bits of jobs. Mind you last night was not so brilliant, she could not sleep and kept taking midnight snacks to pass the time. Guess what that did to her stomach in the early hours!

Anyway today after lunch Elaine donated some more blood to Clinipath which will be assessed by our oncologist, Dr Troon. The obligatory afternoon nap is now happening and I would guess that her shoulder will be hurting when evening is upon us. Otherwise all is good, may it continue to be so.

Well I have been silent for a week, my apologies, but I will now bring you up to date.

We have had a good week, nothing out of the normal has happened. The pain in Elaine's shoulder remains a major issue that we are dealing with by some serious medication. But we have been using less of the 'breakthrough' medication which would indicate an improvement. The visible tumours have definitely shrunk which is good news and which we hope continues. At the same time Elaine is almost back to her normal self, so we are sweating a bit on the chemo having continued success.

Last week we had chemo, the so called day one large dose and, once again, Elaine handled it well. It was followed by a visit to Dr Chan, our pain specialist, who did not change any medication. However he is going to put some sort of nerve block in her shoulder to relieve that pain and it will we done before Christmas. We will also be seeing him again in 2 weeks time. Another thing that he indicated is that we can expect more blood transfusions and that we need to be particularly vigilant with possible infections due to the affects on her immune system.

So we are looking forward to a good week.

Alright 2 days is better than 3 or more.

The last couple of days have been good, pain has been minimal and Elaine is in good spirits. Today she even started the exercises that the hospital Physio gave her, good stuff.

Section 2 chemo starts again on Wednesday so we shall see what we shall see.

Sometimes the days run away with me, I'm not sure why but that is my excuse for 3 days of silence. Just to explain, the day starts at 7am with Elaine's first meds then I go back to bed for a bit. It is an elastic bit, but I then go for a walk followed by breakfast and chores. While Elaine was in hospital I visited about midday but normally I wake her about then. She usually has an afternoon lie down I relax a bit until time to start dinner. After dinner tidy up etc then bed. So I should be able to fit the blog into that routine and I will endeavour to keep it current in future. Hopefully that will work better than political promises.

Back to the lady in question. By the time I got back to Hollyeood on Wednesday Elaine was festooned with drips. There was a blood transfusion plus antibiotic and she was still a bit, read a lot, woosy. After the drips finished she was sent off for X-rays but they couldn't complete then as she was not feeling well. Thursday however was a different story, there was still the antibiotic drip and they were able to complete the X-rays. There was also a visit from Dr Troon, our oncologist, who explained what was happening and noted that the chemo appeared to have made some gains. We also learned that the fever was a result of severely lowered immune system due to a lack of neutrophils. These neutro watsies are the bloods infection fighters and the chemo had attacked them which is one of the expected side effects. Anyway Hollywood did a good job of looking after Elaine and along with the  cheering up from visitors she was ready to come home on Friday.  Which is how it unfolded, after an ultra sound on her bad shoulder that didn't find anything of note and after we were given some more antibiotics to be consumed at home.

Yesterday was a good day, the shoulder pain even stayed dormant until the night. I prepared next weeks meds and we had the pleasure of a couple of visitors.

Wow, what do they about overconfidence or pride going before a fall or counting unhatched chickens!!!!!!

We just got hit with all of them at once. Elaine has been fantastic from walking better to being her usual chirpy self although still with pain attendant. Then early this morning I was awakened by Elaine calling out in distress and rushed up to her bedroom. Her temperature was way up so after a few phone calls to Silver Chain and Hollywood Hospital I drove her in to Hollywood. They then cheerfully admitted her at 2am no drama except that she was quite distressed but the nursing staff got it all under control and didn't complain once.

Yesterday Dr Troons rooms advised that Elaine's nutrafills (I don't know the correct spelling) which are the infection fighters were very low and that is what happened, she got an infection. so today Elaine has had a blood transfusion, blood tests, X-ray and an antibiotic drip. Hopefully she will feel better tomorrow. Her doctor says 2-3 days in hospital is typical for this problem.

Then we will start the next part of the chemo!

Cor, I don't believe it, no posts for 13 days. If I didn't know better I would say that the poster person had gone to sleep, certainly he has become very slack. I shall admonish him severely for this lapse in doing his job.

Anyway back to the nitty gritty. We had the Day 8 part of stage 1 of Elaine's treatment on Wednesday  the 2nd followed by a visit with our pain specialist. The treatment went well with madame handling it okay as it is really just sitting in super comfortable chairs while they drip stuff into your veins. Actually they start off putting the canula in, which in this case did not go smoothly, but it did get sorted and I imagine that the whole thing is not really comfortable. I had planned to take off for a bit, but by the time it was all go they said that it would all be over very soon so I stayed put. Then Dr Chan, the pain guy (actually the pain relief guy), and he didn't change much, just confirming what I had been doing and increasing the size of Elaine's patches to the maximum available.

We had been scheduled to see the oncologist on the same day, but that was a bit difficult time wise so we saw him on the Friday. He was rather friendly this visit, more so than usual which was good. After looking and talking he did some rough measurements and decided that progress was being made in the form of some (very small amount) of shrinkage to the visible tumours.

This last week was what is referred to as a lay week in the sailing community, in others words nothing happened as far as the chemo is concerned. I took advantage of this and had a check up when I went to get some scripts for Elaine's meds. the week was hilighted by 2 visits from a Queensland couple that we met and befreinded 2 years ago and who are travelling through WA at this time.

All in all Elaine had a good week. She appears to be in less pain although her arms, mainly the left one, are still giving her heaps. She is still sleeping most of the day, but this is an expected side effect of the chemo. So far the side effects are minimal so we hope that it stays that way. Elaine is also back, or almost back, to her usual chirpy self which is proved by her comments on my cooking and housekeeping!

Here we are again!

We are both managing to remain reasonably positive, for Elaine that is a bit tough because she is in pain most of the time. Varying degrees of course but it is a constant reminder of the issues at hand. I on the other hand have life fairly easy just doing the housework, pity that I didn't do domestic science at school, and doing my best to keep her pain at a manageable level. But through it all Elaine manages to keep functioning and doing things and enjoying her visitors.

Today we do part 2 of  the first cycle and so far no really bad side effects, hopefully it will stay that way.