v's virtual vacuum
Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2004
email I sent out to the masses
sorry to mail a bunch of people on bcc but it saves me a bit of time.this is regarding mums recent diagnosis and at some point you have expressed an interest in wanting to know how things are going so here is the latest:
we got the biopsy results today and there is good and bad news. the lymph nodes appear to be clear which is the good news, but whilst analysing the cervix and staging the cancer things were more advanced than they thought on initial dignosis and there appears to be a secondary presence in the cervix (which was obviously removed during the hysterectomy) which means that in order to stand the best possible chance of the cancer not returning mum needs to have radiotherapy.
this will take place at the marsden in chelsea unless I get her transferred to somewhere near colchester. at this stage it's unsure exactly what type of radiotherapy treatment she will have as there is a trial underway at the moment for internal radiotherapy but i am not sure that mum fits all the requirements to be suitable for the test. if she has standard radiotherapy it is likely that she will attend the hospital in chelsea every week day for five weeks. aunty eileen has offered to be her escort for that as they are both now retired old biddies and have their twirly bird freedom passes to get around london on and terrorise all the bus drivers.
We've decided that mum is going to go and stay with her sister eileen in coulsdon for a week and I will go back to colchester to regroup so to speak, then I'll come back in time to take mum to her gp a week on friday. by which point we should have heard from the marsden about when her appointment with the consultant radiologist will be.
at the moment my head is in a bit of a spin as i am sure you can imagine, but i am doing ok, not so sure about mum - she's holding it together very well at the moment but is desperately upset that the cancer wasn't fully contained and is terribly scared.
My apologies if i have sent this to you and you didn't want to know all this information, please let me know not to include you in future!