The Tao of Tash February 2007

10th February 2007 Part 2

I should point out that music is no respector of anyone's schedule and no sooner had we got into bed, but Tash was up again, being on earlies that week, she was obviously going for the 'Rock'n'Roll chick of the week award'. I was reviewing her super Herculean effort later on that day as I waited for her outside a very windy St Paul's tube station entrance. Thursday was the day to meet our new Dr Onco' (christened rather unoriginally 'Dr Onco' II', which can be shortened to an SMS'able DR.O.II) at St Bart's Hospital.

A) Yes it does seem that most locations in this part of London are saintly
B) St' Bart's is one of the leading teaching hospitals and therefore is on the NHS, not our usual plush private ventures.

All of Tash's treatment so far has been paid for on her medical insurance, but as private medicine is run for profit, such things as new and experimental treatments are left up to the public hospitals. So here we were sitting for 2 hours in an over crowded waiting room (containing at least 70 people) waiting for our turn to see our new man.

Tash and I are grateful for our position, we are young enough to live in London and cope with the hustle and bustle and also are young enough to cope with the challenges that cancer presents to us. As we sat in the waiting room, a more appropriate name would have been 'waiting hanger', I thought about the sorts of journeys that most of our companions had to make. One old couple, who made quite an entrance due in no small part to the wild disco music ringtone that annoyingly screeched outwards from her mobile phone, obviously a hand me down from her children, divulged to her caller, that "we had a good drive down, yes about 4 hours, the only traffic was coming into London and Dad is parking the car now", whereas we just had a short tube ride. It is easy to forget that some people need to travel from all over England to get there. Unfortunately the grumpy old chap in front of them who greeted me with "this place is bloody diabolical" couldn't have been far enough away.

Dr Gallagher (DR.O.II) is a relaxed Kiwi, he started, as many have done before him, by reading Tash's extensive medical history back to us. Doctors seem to do this in an attempt to catch us out, just incase we are not who we say we are, cancer munchausen by proxy perhaps. Maybe they are just suprised to see her.

DR.O.II talked to us about this current trial. In the same way that, hopefully, we have shown you that to have cancer does not mean that you will die a week after diagnosis, to be on a medical trial does not mean that Tash has a 50% chance of getting a polo mint instead of a drug. The initial clinical trials have already been completed and this new drug has shown itself to be quite effective after Herceptin. Now, two things to consider, firstly Herceptin as we have already said, tends to grow more ineffective the longer you take it (and incidentally is not good for protecting you from tumours that appear from the neck up), so even if the clinical trials started more than two years ago, we are all still in uncharted territory and secondly there are always going to be many other factors that will have a bearing on a drug's usefulness, so this trial should be thought of like a wider acceptance testing, the more information they can collect, the more accurately they will be able to deploy this to everyone else going forward. The testing that Tash is now involved with will hopefully lead to it being licenced, which is isn't yet, in any country.

Tash will be joining several hundred other women on this trial, the new drug is called Lapatinib (link 1 and link 2). She will be taking it daily, alongside 6 cycles of a chemo drug called Capicitabine which she will start in March on our return from the homeland. Both these drugs are taken in tablet form. This chemo is what is referred to as "very well tolerated" or "less toxic" than what she's had in the past, that is to say, it shouldn't make her too fatigued and will not make her loose her hair (which is a relief). Apparently the only real thing that she has to worry about will be a bad attack of acne, which in itself doesn't seem too bad, but Tash is a woman in her 30's and shouldn't have to deal with such things.

That just leaves 8 weeks for us to get through, 4 of which will be taken on the other side of the world.

bespoke wedding invite from vectorartportraits.com

Yes I can design invitations too!

Marisa and Nathan are getting married at the end of February in Adelaide and being the fine upstanding man that I am, Nathan asked if I would be one of his Groomsmen (I am quite pleased as it means half the responsibility, therefore half the blame and a short speech). This gave us the perfect excuse to use up the considerable amount of air miles that we have built up over the years and in fact anyone else's that we could find (many thanks to Ken and Paul) to go and have a break, our first proper one without some medical thing hanging over our heads for over two years.

Tash should be due for a scan now, but this won't happen as the new treatment will be started as a "clean slate" and as I pointed out to her in conversation, I am tired of us having to go off on holiday knowing that she is broken. And try as you might, it does tend to fuck things up a tad. We usually manage to get on with our holidays and as best as possible ignore these issues, but by their nature they have to be discussed once or twice during our time away; this nearly always happens when we are out to eat, the dinner table is Tash's favourite place to sniffle and it always makes me nervous because I am very aware how it can look to the waiters.

"and what would Madam like, a new 'usband perhaps, not one that is obviously such a buztard who makes you cry"

I can only imagine what indigestible products I have actually eaten on these occasions if the waiters have misread the situation. For once this won't be the case, though we will continue to pay an almost microscopic attention to every ache and pain that Tash has, but at least this time we are free from taking a large grey cloud away with us.

The Dean's fly to Melbourne at the end of next week (if I am vague, it is because my MI5 training tells me not to divulge dates for fear of kidnap attempts!), sleep off the jet lag and then have a quick drive down to Adelaide. I say quick, it is 800km, but we have secured a 6ltr Australian muscle car to do it in, so providing I remember to turn around the bends and can find enough petrol stations on route, we should arrive about 10 minutes before we leave.

Our three days in Adelaide will be focused on the wedding and then the last week of February is to be spent in the delightfully named township of Bendigo where we will be seeing the heavily-pregnent-about-to-drop / exhausted-new-mum Kate, I have described it that way because we will be arriving pretty much during the drop zone, even so I imagine that the girls will still find time to go out on the town for a few beers!.

The next 10 are in Sydney at 'Hotel Ken' where I will be enjoying the sites and flowers of Sydney, probably with Ken, and Tash will be spending her time driving from social appointment to social appointment like a wild thing, as usual. That is unless you can all help me to make her time at home less stressful.

From Sydney we fly to Thailand for the proper part of the holiday, I can't tell you where because I have not been listening, too busy thinking about the car I get to drive.

Next months post may well be a little late, incase you haven't noticed we have usually post in the first week of each month (yes I appreciate that this is the end of the second), but will be in Australia, or maybe Thailand by then. I will try to update on route, so please bear with me.

Carolyn's tao update to follow

The Tao will be keeping up to date with Carolyn's progress and we would like you to consider helping her to reach her target of £3,000.00 in sponsorship money. Visit her sponsorship page here or from the link on the navigation bar.

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