Sunday 27 April 2014

An update on last week

I had my regular three weekly appointment with my oncologist on Thursday. We agreed that I'd keep on taking the pazopanib before having a scan in around five weeks time. This is what I expected as I'm not having any side effects that would require me to stop taking the drug.
 
My cancer symptoms are continuing to develop and that has made this last week a somewhat difficult one. The main problem I've been having is with pain. I've not been experiencing this the whole time but each day I have one or two quite lengthy spells when it is present. Most of the problems are in my torso below my chest which is where I have my largest tumours. The pain killers that I'm taking generally fix most of the pain. However, I can only take them once every four hours which, as I found out earlier today, can make for an unpleasant wait if the pain returns before the four hours are up.
 
I continue to get very good support from my local hospice, they are extremely knowledgeable about managing pain. However, I'm beginning to understand that managing cancer symptoms is difficult as any particular symptom may have multiple causes.
 
Katie and I had plans to meet up with friends on three separate occasions this past week. Through some very good luck these all coincided with times when I was feeling fine so we were able to go ahead with all of these. I find that seeing people helps how I'm feeling. We even managed to go to the theatre on Friday night, I wasn't sure that I'd be able to put up with sitting in the same position for the duration of the play but in the end this was ok. We saw a comedy, Alan Ayckbourn's "Things we do for love", which confirmed my view that a good laugh never goes amiss.
 
I haven't been able to do any photography but I think this post is in need to some colour. Here's a Indian Roller that I photographed near Satpura National Park on the 2011 Indian holiday that Katie and I took. There are several species of Roller which are all very colourful. They often like to show off by perching out in the open like this one.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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