The morning was as usual. Painful.
Arlene left at mid day to head off to Paris to see her friend Helga who came over from London. She’ll be having dinner at a nice restaurant and staying at a nice hotel for the night. It’ll be good for her to get out of our depressingly medical household.
I grabbed a quick Greek sandwich (donner kebab) so as to get something quick, hot and filling before my treatment. The treatment was more of the same. This time they must have zapped me 7 times! This time first my right shoulder was clamped to the table, along with my face of course, and then they released the right shoulder and clamped the left shoulder to finish.
Afterwards was the meeting I had been dreading: my weekly consultation with Dr. Kanoui with the final decision as regards chemotherapy. He was very pleased to see me looking much better and was also pleased that instead of losing another kilo this week I actually gained 600 grams. He looked over my file and brought up the chemotherapy right away. He looked at the effects of the last two cycles of chemotherapy and asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I didn’t want to continue the chemotherapy and he said he understood and agreed immediately. He didn’t try to dissuade me nor even discuss the matter. He said it was very positive that we were able to complete two full cycles of chemo and he actually tried to reassure me that this would not put me in any extra danger or risk. He also explained that the goal is not for the chemo to wipe me out to such an extent that the radiation therapy can not do its job either. He asked where Desney was, as she had been present at just about every prior consultation with him, and I explained that she wasn’t here because she didn’t agree with me stopping the chemo. He actually told me to reassure her that everything would be fine and that it was a good and understandable decision. All of this obviously made me feel much better and was damn good news.
As next week is my final week started asking about the post-treatment. He corrected me. They had always said that the treatment would last 7 to 8 weeks. We, optimistically, had always leaned towards the 7 weeks. Unfortunately he said that the treatment will last the full 8 weeks which means that instead of another 5 sessions I have another 9 sessions over 2 weeks rather than just one. This was not so good news…
He renewed my prescriptions for the medicines that needed renewing and told me to keep up whatever I was doing to keep my weight up and make me look happy. Dr. Kanoui is unaware of my childhood acting experience {vbg}.
When I got home my throat really started burning more than usual and water just would not put out the fire. I tried to nap before dinner but just couldn’t. We had dinner, without Arlene for the first time in many days, and I was still in pain after the meal.
I spent the evening in front of the television as usual. But I finished my book.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment