Richard had his first chemo session at The Royal Marsden this past Tuesday It went really well even though it was a very long day, from 8:30am to 7pm. A lovely nurse, Claire, expertly and tenderly took care of Richard the whole day and he was visited several times by Dr Mochlinski from Mr. Cunningham's team who explained the whole procedure. Alex, the pharmacist stopped by with the chemo pills which Richard will take morning and night for the rest of the 21 day cycle until the next hospital visit.
Friends dropped by through the day and the fact that phones were allowed set Richard free to text, email, take and make calls. That made the time go alot quicker. It also helped that the view from his chair was out a huge expanse of glass over the rooftops of a sun lit Chelsea. It felt a little like a day spa! Intraveiniously, he had a couple of hours of hydrating fluids followed by four hours of the chemo, followed by another hour or so of more hydrating fluids to flush out the kidneys. (Sorry, if this is more detail than most people want to hear!)
After dinner and a pretty good night's sleep at our flat in London, on Wednesday Richard rode his bike across town to a lunch engagement and then back to the Furniture Cave to do some business! Back at Whithurst we had dinner with two friends and then went to bed early.
Today Richard was a bit uncomfortable with tiredness overwhelming him as well as a fluctuating, mild nausea. He ate breakfast, lunch and dinner though, so is doing pretty well on the nutrition front.
Everyone's experience with chemo is different. We are of course hoping it only gets better!
Thanks for the all the amazingly lovely, supportive comments. They encourage Richard to keep with the program!
Thursday 21 October 2010
Thursday 14 October 2010
Bringing you up to speed...
So many people have inquired about Richard's welfare that when I stumbled across this blog template I realised it might make things alot simpler for everybody and just started writing.
A bit of history for those who want to know...for several months Richard has been having a bit of trouble with hiccups just as he started eating and then a few minutes of difficulty swallowing. It slowed his meals down but he usually resumed eating without any incident. We all thought it was a hiatus hernia but to rule out a possible cardiac cause he did a bunch of tests in London which found his heart to be just fine. As the swallowing difficulty persisted, on Tuesday, Sept 27, he had an endoscopy (camera down the throat) which immediately located the source of the problem as a tumour in his esophagus near where it connects to the stomach. A biopsy confirmed it was malignant.
It was a shocking moment for all of us. Of course the worst comes to mind and fear and disbelief set in. To determine whether it was operable Richard underwent three diagnostic procedures on the following Friday, Monday and Tuesday. These showed that it had not spread! What a great moment!
Last Thursday Richard and I met with Professor George Hanna, a renowned surgeon, who laid out the treatment plan hoping to result in a complete cure. Through the amazing help of Marcus Harbord, another eminent doctor and friend specialising in gastro-endocrinology and who discovered the tumour, Richard was able to see Professor David Cunningham at The Royal Marsden today about the chemo treatment and is now scheduled to start the first of three series of chemo (each lasting three weeks) on Tuesday, 19 October. It's a drip for one day at The Marsden, then pills twice a day for the remainder of each three week period. The lovely nurse assistant, Toni talked us both through what to expect and emphasized, if there is any problem with any of it we should call immediately as they can adjust and vary everything, tuning it to Richard's body.
A couple of weeks after the chemo the tumour should have dramatically shrunk and Prof. Hanna will
perform an 8 to 10 hour operation to remove all the affected tissue and refashion Richard's esophagus and stomach. He has a 99.5% success rate with the over 250 similar operations that he's performed and he assures Richard that he will be able to eat anything he wants, just in smaller quantities after the operation. Just smaller meals, more often.
The operation should be happening some time in February 2011, according to my calculations. After a few weeks of recovery Richard has to do another three courses of chemo which should eliminate any undetected problem cells. And that's it. Done and dusted!
Needless to say, there are some big challenges to face in the coming months and emotions seem to be a bit of a roller coaster ride, but Richard is processing it all amazingly. Crying, when he feels overwhelmed and fearful and allowing himself to feel those things. They then seem to flow away.
We are constantly talking about holding positive thoughts and allowing for wonderful possibilities to occur along the way. Friends focused prayers, meditations, chanting and kind words envelope Richard and he is grateful for all of it.
A bit of history for those who want to know...for several months Richard has been having a bit of trouble with hiccups just as he started eating and then a few minutes of difficulty swallowing. It slowed his meals down but he usually resumed eating without any incident. We all thought it was a hiatus hernia but to rule out a possible cardiac cause he did a bunch of tests in London which found his heart to be just fine. As the swallowing difficulty persisted, on Tuesday, Sept 27, he had an endoscopy (camera down the throat) which immediately located the source of the problem as a tumour in his esophagus near where it connects to the stomach. A biopsy confirmed it was malignant.
It was a shocking moment for all of us. Of course the worst comes to mind and fear and disbelief set in. To determine whether it was operable Richard underwent three diagnostic procedures on the following Friday, Monday and Tuesday. These showed that it had not spread! What a great moment!
Last Thursday Richard and I met with Professor George Hanna, a renowned surgeon, who laid out the treatment plan hoping to result in a complete cure. Through the amazing help of Marcus Harbord, another eminent doctor and friend specialising in gastro-endocrinology and who discovered the tumour, Richard was able to see Professor David Cunningham at The Royal Marsden today about the chemo treatment and is now scheduled to start the first of three series of chemo (each lasting three weeks) on Tuesday, 19 October. It's a drip for one day at The Marsden, then pills twice a day for the remainder of each three week period. The lovely nurse assistant, Toni talked us both through what to expect and emphasized, if there is any problem with any of it we should call immediately as they can adjust and vary everything, tuning it to Richard's body.
A couple of weeks after the chemo the tumour should have dramatically shrunk and Prof. Hanna will
perform an 8 to 10 hour operation to remove all the affected tissue and refashion Richard's esophagus and stomach. He has a 99.5% success rate with the over 250 similar operations that he's performed and he assures Richard that he will be able to eat anything he wants, just in smaller quantities after the operation. Just smaller meals, more often.
The operation should be happening some time in February 2011, according to my calculations. After a few weeks of recovery Richard has to do another three courses of chemo which should eliminate any undetected problem cells. And that's it. Done and dusted!
Needless to say, there are some big challenges to face in the coming months and emotions seem to be a bit of a roller coaster ride, but Richard is processing it all amazingly. Crying, when he feels overwhelmed and fearful and allowing himself to feel those things. They then seem to flow away.
We are constantly talking about holding positive thoughts and allowing for wonderful possibilities to occur along the way. Friends focused prayers, meditations, chanting and kind words envelope Richard and he is grateful for all of it.
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