Monday 12 December 2016

12 December 2016 - Cancer Centre, Old QEH, Birmingham

Deb has finished her third monthly cycle of chemotherapy and had an MRI scan (No 38) yesterday, 11 December. Today's appointment with Dr Sanghera and Claire (a researcher looking at clinical trials for brain tumours was also present) was to discuss the results of the scan and future treatment.

I was disappointed with the meeting. For Deb and I this was an important event: the results of her first scan since the return of the tumour following 3 months of chemotherapy. But because Deb's scan had taken place the day before Dr Sanghera had not had a chance to look at the results. He thought he could just call Deb in, ask her how she was, find out she was OK and prescribe more chemo. It wasn't till he called up her notes that he saw she had had a scan. He then looked at the scans briefly while the four other people in the room chatted. This is wrong. Scans are difficult to interpret. (They really are 50 shades of grey). Anyway after a couple of minutes Dr Sanghera said that the scans showed that the tumours at worse had stayed the same at best may even have shrunk a little. He showed me the scans but he was flipping so quickly between different sections of the brain taken at different times that I couldn't see properly. Anyway Dr S said they had not grown and I am sure he is right.

Deb's blood was taken but could not be analysed (machine malfunction) straight away. She was given her prescription by the pharmacy but had to wait for a call from Claire to say the blood results were OK and she could go ahead and take the chemo.

So we are back on another 3 months of chemo before a further scan.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE