Saturday 3 November 2007

Out of It

Sorry for being missing for over a week. The main reason was a bout of Gastric flu. The whole family has had it in various forms (some coming out of one end, and some the other) lasting a couple of days but not being too bad.. except for my case, I now know what it means to have your immune system messed with by Chemo.

The symptoms were no worse than anybody else on the surface but I basically slept for three days only dragging (or rather being dragged) to my radiation therapy to break up my sleep. I was like the proverbial Zombie. Today I awoke feeling almost normal, despite the continuing squits.

Anyway to other events of the week:

NOVO-TTF
On Tuesday I dropped an e-mail to the Dr. in charge of the Novo TTF trial centre at the University Hospital in Zurich. This is a new tumour treatment that has been showing a lot of promise in early trials by destroying tumours as the cells divide turning them into useless bits of sub-cellular matter. The Novo-TTF device does this by using low energy electric field at specific frequencies and thus interfering with the division process. I'm not currently eligible for the trial because it is for recurrent or progressive GBM's and mine is still going through its first attempt at killing me. But I thought I'd show my interest anyway. I was very surprised to get an appointment with the lady in February to talk about my interest. I know I shouldn't be tempting providence like this but this one sounds cool.

Bought tickets for my son and I to go see "We will rock you" on Thursday... I never made it but my son in law enjoyed it on my behalf.

Professor Neuro
A visit to Professor Neuro on Wednesday (the neurologist who is responsible for my well being) where I got an EEG to see how my brain waves were acting up. After 20 minutes of opening and closing my eyes, bright flashing lights and ringing bells I was returned to Prof Neuro who showed me some abnormality on the left side of my brain, commensurate with the outstanding potential (no pun intended) for minor seizures. He said that the current small seizures were not likely to cause any damage. We then discussed upping my anti-seizure medication (mainly so that I can do some exercise) and after a quick call to chemo man (who has all the ins and outs of my blood state) he agreed to up my Timonil (carbanmazepine) from 900mg to 1200mg per day. So let's see how this goes.

Funny each time I talk to somebody with Neuro in their name my chances of sitting behind the wheel of my X3 or riding my precious F650GS ever again seem to become just that little bit more out of reach

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