The Drugs Don't Work

So we had a spin in the donut of doom the other week and on Monday I totter off down to clinic to get the results. You know immediately it isn't going to be cute puppies and gambolling pink unicorns news when you see the oncologist has the colorectal specialist red angel of death with him and he's got his best "now this is serious" face on.

Dr Ahmad does a very good serious face.

And indeed the news is indeed pants and about as welcome as Donald Trump at Friday prayers down the mosque. The mouse gene drug and capecitabine that had been at least holding the liver metastices in check have stopped working and they were growing again; not by much, just a few millimetres but definitely awake and doing that uncontrolled dividing thing again.

Fortunately it's not all doom and gloom as my records show I had a good response to FOLFOX, the first treatment I had, so I can go back and have a few cycles of that and see if it works again. Now as you remember from last year this is a coctail of Flouracil and Folonic Acid that's been common to all my treatments (side effects: nausea and vomiting, mouth ulcers, painful hand and foot lesions and probably making you think that Justin Beiber isn't such a bad musician after all) with platinum based wonder drug Oxaliplatin. Now that's the one that alongside all the ususal happy chemo side effect buggers up your nervous system in what's called "peripheral neuropathy"; it's like having permanent pins and needles in your hands and feet with the added joy of touching anything cold is agony.

Oh and I have to go back to carting a bottle of highly toxic chemicals with a tube sticking out of my chest for two days every fortnight. What joy.

Still it's that or in six months someone will be kicking a dead dragon into a hole so we sign the "yes you can poison me" consent forms and we arrange to kick off next week (which does at least mean I get Xmas off).

So not the best Christmas present ever but to compensate I'm on a train heading to London right now where I will visit swanky grocers Fortnum and Mason and go hog wild with the credit card. Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we chemo!

Fig 67: Happy bunch of lads