“The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.”*
‘Good news, bad news’ provides a simple format for many popular jokes and they often feature conversations between patients their doctors. My experience is that there always an element of good and bad in conversations with doctors when one would rather prefer just some good news. So it was with my clinical meeting yesterday.
Let me say straight away that the good news far outweighs the bad – my prostate has shrunk, and the swollen lymphs have reduced considerably in size, in one example from 4cm to 3.3ms (17.5% reduction) and in another example from 2.8 to 2cm (28.5% reduction). Add to this the fact that my PSA score has fallen again to 0.69 and the trajectory is clearly going in the right direction.
However, I can’t help being disappointed that they are not prepared to zap the cancer with radiotherapy. Don’t get me wrong – I understand why – at the moment there would be little benefit to justify the side effects of the treatment. But there is part of me that yearns for them to do something dramatic and get it over with.
But it’s never going to be ‘over with’. I think I was somehow holding onto the belief that they could zap the buggers and I could get on with my life. Now the doctor has ordered a CT scan to ‘check’ that the cancer hasn’t spread further. It is clear that I am in for the long haul.
