Life is just a bowl of All-Bran…

We had a long appointment with a cancer nurse this morning to discuss Lucy’s tumour, and we’re a little clearer about how treatment will progress from here.

There are three types of cancer, classified according to how quickly they grow and how cancerous they look. L’s is type III, the fastest. They now reckon the tumour is about 30mm across, slightly bigger than they thought initially. Not the largest possible, but not the smallest either.

She will have a wide local excision on January 3rd. This is when the tumour is cut out along with a reasonable margin of healthy tissue around it. It will then be examined thoroughly to find out what it is doing and exactly what treatment should take place. At the same time they will remove some of the lymph nodes from under her arm, to see whether it has spread there too.

She will be out of hospital a few days later, and won’t be allowed to drive for four weeks. Meanwhile, the results from the tumour will be available about three weeks after the op. They will discuss them with L, and very soon afterwards start chemotherapy. This is likely to last six to seven months, although they are currently running a clinical trial in which a full course of treatment lasts only four-and-a-half months.

Interesting that the nurse mentioned the drug Herceptin herself, presumably due to the publicity it has received. She made it clear that L may well benefit from it, depending on what the op reveals. The hospital prescribes it, and indeed has patients who have been taking it for some years, despite its high cost. Reassuring to know that we will be getting such good care.

Thereafter, she will have a course of radiotherapy for two to three weeks, and then it will be a matter of taking stock and finding out how the treatment has gone.

It’s going to be a long year, especially for L. The nurse was a great encouragement though. Knows her stuff, is thorough, prepared to take the time, and puts you at your ease. Other people we know have had excellent treatment at the hospital, and we are hopeful of the same.

When Lucy mentioned a couple of weeks ago that she had found a lump in her breast, I didn’t think a great deal about it. I tried not to accuse her of over-reacting when she said she was going to go to the doc, and I thought the GP was being over-cautious when she referred her to the breast clinic.

The appointment was the same time as my first MCSE exam (of which more later), so I postponed it a week. So I went with her to the clinic. The usual long waits for a name to be called out, shifting from one waiting area to the other – all the signs that the NHS was, in its own inimitable way, grinding slowly on. After initial scans, we were taken into a room where a consultant, a nurse and another chap saw us. I guess we should have suspected something when the consultant said, “We need to find out what this lump is so that we can work out how to treat it.”

Samples were taken with a needle and a gadget that sounded remarkably like a staple gun. Then, an hour’s wait for an initial result. Off to the WRVS for a cuppa, a place we have got to know so very well after L’s operations for fertility and the like.

We had a walk/limp round the grounds, then back in.

L’s lump, we were told, was cancerous. About 20mm across, so not too enormous. As we understand it at the moment, this will be the timetable:

Dec 30th: L goes in for preclerking (preparing for the op)
Jan 2nd: L goes into hospital
Jan 3rd: L has the op. It will involve removing the tumour, along with a margin of healthy tissue, and the lymph nodes from under her arm.
Jan 5th(ish): L comes home.

We then await how the op has gone and what they have discovered from the lymph nodes.

Late Jan: begin radiotherapy

Sometime in the spring: begin chemotherapy.

The consultant and the cancer nurse we spoke to at the time told us it would probably be a good nine months to a year of treatment. During much of that time L is likely to be at least restricted in how much she can work, and possibly won’t be able to work at all for some time.

We will find out more on Thursday this week as to what kind of cancer we are dealing with and how it might be treated.

We’re making arrangements for 2006. We have looked very carefully at our commitments and are seeing how we can manage our lives. Eleanor moves to a nursery nearer home in the New Year, which is just as well as I think I shall be doing the bulk of dropping her off & picking her up.

Since then we have been telling family and friends. I think we have both got to the stage of being heartily sick of telling people about it. I suppose we just want to get on with life as best we can between now and then.

The builders have finished five weeks of hard work renovating our kitchen and bathroom, and so we can reassemble the house. At least that’s done. It looks fantastic.

Feelings? Well, a certain black humour helps. One friend has offered L to go wig shopping! That made us laugh a lot. Otherwise, pretty variable. The thought of the treatment tends to cast a pall over everything.

So far, we haven’t asked “why?”. I’m not sure it’s a helpful question. When Jesus was asked why the man born blind was so afflicted, He said, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” So that’s what we pray for. Whatever the outcome of all this, may Jesus get all the glory.

Of course, we have been upset and angry, tetchy and miserable. After all, we are human beings. But we await what God will do with us in it all. A speaker last night mentioned the pencil sharpener experiences we receive. They’re painful, but they make us useful, and give us a sharp point with which we can write a little more of God’s story through our own lives.

Fine words! Here’s hoping we live up to them.