Okay, this is a long overdue blog and my excuse is that it has been a rather busy couple of weeks.

It started with an afternoon appointment with the radiation oncologist late on Monday 4th.  Followed by simulation for her treatment on Tuesday, which is also the day that we have the pleasure of Jax's company. We are lucky that Jax is fairly easy to entertain, I took him for an ice cream while Elaine was measured up.  Wednesday was a day off but Elaine is doing it tough with a lot of pain, so we are kept busy trying to keep that under control. Thursday and Friday I had pleasurable granddaughter duties while Elaine suffered at home. Then Monday was chemo, actually immunotherapy, Tuesday Jax again then we had Wednesday to recover. Wednesday was also a visit with our pain specialist, the clinic at Chatlies actually squeezed us in and we were able to fine tune the medication. Thursday and Friday we started radiation which consists of Elaine spending 1 whole hour under the machine. However she handled it well.

The pain is still there but the medication is helping a bit more so we just keep rolling along. Hopefully the combination on immunotherapy and radiotherapy will reduce the tumours and therefore the pain. Fingers crossed.

I spent last week following up on Dr Troons request that the radiotherapy be started urgently. Apparently urgently has a different meaning to that which I have been taught. On Saturday my GP friend said don't panic it will all happen and a few days here or there is not important. He is probably correct but I still want it all to proceed at a much faster pace and, after all, it is my wife at the business end of all this.

Anyway we finally got to see Dr Chee, the radiotherapy man, at 4 pm today and started the ball rolling, he agrees that speed is of the essence! Obviously I need medical school training to understand this 'speed' thing. He made up an instruction sheet for his girls, we went and saw them but they couldn't finish it off and give us our simulation appointment because he had not entered it to his computer yet. He did however waive his fee as we are already patients at Genesis. Once the simulation is done and the appropriate aiming marks are carved into Elaines body they will make up a mask for her head. This mask is to keep her head still while they bombard the back of her skull and this can take 7 days for the manufacture thereof.

So all being well we will start radiotherapy next week. In the meantime Elaine has considerable pain and the extensive medication being administered by yours truly is having a limited effect. Lucky she is a bit of of a toughie.