Friday 13 November 2009

Update on cancer

10-00: After the misery of last week - a change to feeling rather better than I have for some time. It looks as if the combination of vinorelbine and carboplatin - the 'killer-chemicals' (so called by me because they are supposed to kill the cancer cells before they kill other useful cells) has had a beneficial effect. There are still cancerous cells around - but there are fewer of them - blurry and imprecise on the xray. The next stage is to have just vinorelbine every other week to see if that alone stops the cancer from growing - with fewer side effects.

I do not know what this means in terms of what I can do and how long I have to do it. The survival figures I have found on-line are bleak. (25% survival at the end of a year after diagnosis and 7% at five years - but these were for people diagnosed in 2001. I think care and understanding has improved slightly since then - but the NICE guidelines seem to imply that an awful lot more reseach is needed before there are major changes.)

Anyway - I am off the chemical-hook for a week and determined to go out into the fresh air although it is raining hard. Scrubbing the deck of a boat in pouring rain - probably not!

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