Oncologist out

Imagine feeling cared for, nursed, being someone special.  When you're waiting in a busy waiting room, in the oncology department of a big hospital, with no one to talk to, a nurse comes up to you, addresses you by name (almost right) and asks very nicely if she may weigh you.  Someone's paying you attention, aren't they?  They care whether you've put on weight or lost it and the nurse will pass the information to the doctor who knows that some anti-breast cancer drugs tend to make you put on weight, and the doctor will discuss that with you. 

But no, "that's just something the nurses do", explained the oncologist (B) I saw that time, saw just the once, never again.  The next time I came to the oncology department, I courteously though somewhat nervously refused to allow the nurse to weigh me.  She told the doctor - at least now I know that they communicate - and the doctor (C) talked about placebo treatment - visiting the doctor makes people feel better.  Yes, I understand that, having once visited my doctor anticipating our second baby, but wanting a home birth - he said he couldn't treat me because he didn't do home births, and I went home rather melancholy.  Being treated makes you feel good.

Nevertheless, last week when I went to the oncologist, I allowed the nurse to weigh me.  It amused me to note her complete lack of observation as I stood on the scales fully dressed and holding  two bags, one with a purse, a digital recorder, a camera, and a paper back book inside.  Needless to say, I weighed more than before. 

However, for the first time, I saw the same oncologist again.  This man (C) copes with me citing breast cancer research on predict, vitamin D, hyaluronic acid, aromatase inhibitors and that women diagnosed when over 60, gain less benefit from these drugs.  We had a discussion on the relative statistics of taking an aromatase inhibitor versus exercise (pdf), and he tells me not to stop taking the drug but that as far as the oncologists are concerned, I'm cured.  They removed the physical lump; they radiated the area in case they dropped anything; the aromatase inhibitor will prevent anything else starting up.  Keep up the annual mammograms, keep taking the aromatase inhibitor for five years (I can have a trial month out to see if the aches go away and if they do then they'll use a different aromatase inhibitor) but otherwise go away and don't come back. 

I'm cured.

Radiotherapy

Seven treatments down, thirteen to go.

They told me the side effects would mean that I'd be tired and lethargic, but the tiredness is only because I'm driving so much. I'm out of bed half an hour earlier to get to work twenty miles away an hour earlier, eat my lunch at my desk, and then drive 44 miles to the hospital for the treatment, which is nearly always late. The lethargy is because you sit around lethargically waiting, fifteen, thirty, forty-five minutes until your machine is ready for you. It takes five minutes or more for the radiographers to position you exactly right, with the tattoos and their latest felt tip pens marks lined up with the green laser lines, and then two minutes for the treatment. Then I drive 20 miles home again, in the rush hour.

These radiographers work long and intensely without a break, from eight o'clock in the morning until 6.30 in the evening, hoping to reduce the waiting lists. In the mid-afternoon, there are more people to chat. The men agonise over how long they have to wait and just how full their bladders have to be before they have the therapy - they've got prostate cancer - and they have to have a full bladder and an empty bowel so that the full bladder pushes the bowel out of way of the radiation that would otherwise give nasty side effects.

Waiting, we read, chat, do suduku puzzles. I take a research paper to peruse. I'm making a lot of progress on my reading, and I drive home calmly, usually later than I'd hoped but in time for evening activities like tae kwo do.