This week has been very very busy.
Marsden on Monday
Bought a new car on Tuesday as we need a younger car to keep travelling to the Royal Marsden as my scan is showing growth and a new drug on the horizon for treatment we know we have to keep driving.
There are plans that we could go by train in an emergency or if Ray is ill in his treatment for Lymphoma.
A new car is all bought and we will pick up this Monday. We have always loved quirky cars, says me who loved and drove Skodas when all the jokes were around.
So the way the top goes right down on this car fascinates me, and the eyebrows make me laugh.
We attended the LASAG meeting and listened to a Leigh Day Lawyer explain about the legal side of mesothelioma so that was an interesting day.
Wednesday we went to London to the Foundations board meeting and then Thursday we were back in the same area to present a talk to Sir Robert MacAlpine Company.
Wow!! I was so in awe of being asked to talk here.
The Company is rebuilding London with so many great projects even the site that fascinates me as we arrive in London by trial. Battersea Power Station
https://batterseapowerstation.co.uk/sitemap
How it will look when completed:
We arrived and met such lovely people and couldn’t believe the room was crammed so full of people from all the various sites in all different forms of employment within the company.
The room was so quiet and so intense that I couldn’t judge whether they found it interesting. They were so young to us but when we finished so many spoke and asked questions. We really did hit home that safety is the most important word.
Thank you to everyone that was there especially Valerie you made us so welcome x
I will post the video that they did when I receive it.
With all that behind us, we came to Friday and Rays treatment day at Canterbury. We arrived early as neither of us could sleep.
It was weird walking into the day ward where exactly 10 years ago my story started. Now it was Rays turn with a different cancer, Lymphoma.
Lymphomas are cancers that start in the lymphatic system – a network of glands and thin tubes that run through your body. If you have Hodgkin lymphoma, certain types of white blood cells in your lymphatic system – called Reed-Sternberg cells – go haywire. The cells multiply and collect around glands and other parts of the lymphatic system, causing tumors to form. And the Hodgkin bit? That’s Thomas Hodgkin – the doctor who discovered this type of cancer back in 1832.
He was given paracetamol and an infusion of antihistamine and steroids to prepare his body for any side effects of the drug, an immunotherapy drug, rituximab.
They start off very slowly and they monitor the vital signs every 15 mins then every half hour. Increasing the speed of the drug.
Ray slept through most of it with me saying “How do you feel now”every time he stirred.
The ward has got so much busier than when we were here 5 years ago and yet the staff hasn’t been expanded so when the beeps on the chemo machines bleeped there was a long wait for patients to have the bags of drugs changed. The same old story of the NHS isn’t it.
It was a long day and at 5.30pm we were able t walk out into the sun and drive home.
Ray sat on the settee and fell asleep so I made him go to bed and then he looked really rough.
He came down the passageway to the bathroom later and looked better and he seems to have slept all night. Just waiting for him to stir to see what he feels like today.
So that was our week. the highs and lows of a Patients and Carer with Cancer. The roles reverse depending on what day it is I’m a patient on Monday and carer on Friday and vise the versa for Ray. We will win through
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