Latest treament update

I received my fifth Trabectedin treatment last week. It certainly feels better going into hospital on the back of my  positive scan result, it makes a lot of difference to know that the cancer has been responding.

 

In discussion with my oncologist we've decided to switch from a three week to a four week treatment cycle as my blood counts are consistently too low to enable me to receive the treatment three weekly. On the downside this means that my tumours are being exposed to the Trabectedin less often than is recommended but there are a couple of significant positives too, the first is that being on a four week schedule gives me a whole additional week to get over each cycle, something that could be very useful if I am on the drug long term and secondly the four week schedule should allow Katie and I to make plans much more reliably than we've been able to whilst I've been on the ever slipping three week schedule. The positive results shown by my scan were achieved when I was having the drug once every 25 or 26 days so extending to a 28 day cycle will hopefully not reduce the effectiveness of the treatment.

 

The patient in the next bed to me in the ward on Friday was a sixty four year old man with terminal lung cancer. He's a smoker and was in no doubt that that is what has caused his illness. Despite this he's still smoking - though he did say he had cut down a bit. As he said the damage has been done and there is not much point in him trying to give up now. I don't want to preach but if you are a smoker you really should stop, it's just about the most important step you can take to reduce your risk of cancer.

 

The rugby season has started and Katie and I are hoping to take in a few matches over the coming months. We went along to a pre-season game between Bath and London Welsh, I took my camera - here's the Bath wing Tom Biggs having a bad hair moment as he offloads the ball in a tackle.