Another afternoon in that peculiar setting of NHS waiting rooms and multiple consecutive appointments.
1.30: arrive at clinic. L sees the nurse, also her key worker, to have her dressings looked at and a substantial amount of fluid removed from under her arm, equivalent in volume to one-and-a-half cans of Coke. L felt much more comfortable after that!
Then, another wait. This is in the long corridor of treatment rooms and chairs, with various folks waiting. Most appointees have someone else with them, seemingly a partner or friend. One or two are alone, including a bloke whose name is called. Yes, men can get breast cancer too.
Next we see the surgeon who performed the operation. The tumour is described as “no special type” of cancer, but is grade 3, putting it as the most active of tumours. It was 19mm across, probably about the smallest a lump can be and be detectable. They also removed a margin of good tissue from around the lump which was clear. So, the malignancy has all been removed. They also took lymph nodes out from under her left arm. Twenty were removed: one was found to contain cancer cells. So, the cancer was set to spread around the body.
The next thing they need to determine is exactly what type of cancer it is. It has no hormone receptors, which affects the type of treatment they can use. We don’t as yet know whether Herceptin will be useful either – results of that test won’t be through for a week or two yet.
All this adds up to the treatment we expected: chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy. After that, L will be followed up for at least five years, with checkups every two years (about the length of time it takes a tumour to develop and show up via mammogram).
After this, another long wait – why doesn’t the WRVS do nice coffee any more? – and then an hour with the oncologist. He reviews the same information as above, with some added details.
The chemotherapy will be a standard treatment called Epi-CMF. Epirubicin is administered every three weeks for four doses, then a cocktail of three drugs, four lots four weeks apart. Their aim is to kill fast-growing cells, like cancer, but they also affect other cells like hair and nails, and can have a permanent effect on fertility. These drugs are poisonous, and can have some unpleasant side-effects. Quite how L will react to them remains to be seen.
The hospital is running a clinical trial at the moment whereby exactly the same drugs are used but over a shorter period of time, so that the overall chemotherapy treatment takes four-and-a-half months instead of seven. An extra drug is also administered to help bolster the immune system. It’s believed that this “kicks the cancer while it is down”. L has been offered the chance to take part in this trial, and seems minded to do it. If nothing else, it gets it all over with quicker! (Details of the trial here for the medically minded.)
We finally left the hospital at 5.45. It may have taken a while, but the fact is we had lots of time with specialists – some internationally known – and have a great deal of confidence in the level of care L is getting.
A day later, I confess to feeling low. I think it takes a long time for things to upset me, to burrow through the Yorkshire hide and sink in. Jesus is Lord, and I believe He is in control, no matter what Richard Dawkins thinks. Still doesn’t stop me feeling low though. Look at the psalms, after all. Wide variety of emotions expressed, but still showing faith in God – they are, after all, addressed to Him!
