Touring the hospitals

Thank you for all the positive comments about my last post: interestingly, it was one of the easiest to write...

Anyway, today I went to the Royal Marsden, Sutton, to see Dr Saran, who is in charge of my cranial radiotherapy. I'd met him before when we were planning Total Body Irradiation, so it was quite pleasant to be discussing a procedure with fewer side effects! He's German and, well, a little eccentric. But I digress. My appointment was scheduled for 12.30pm, and I was going to go on to St George's to have a blood test afterwards. But this morning the Marsden rang and moved my appointment to 4pm... This meant I wasn't going to make it to St George's in time for a blood test, so they wondered whether I could go there first. However, this could have meant going up to Tooting, down to Sutton and then back up to Tooting if I was ready to go in for my next block of chemo. So they suggested having my blood test at Sutton: much more sensible!

So I went to the Marsden, had my blood taken by some lovely nurses, and then met Dr Saran, who thought I was another patient at first, but recovered quite effectively to tell me about the cranial radiotherapy. It's done over 12 consecutive weekdays (so we're trying to work out where I'll stay: obviously it's not feasible to run up and down from Southbourne each day) and I won't feel a thing when it happens. Side-effects can include nausea and vomiting (though they can give me anti-sickness drugs if that's the case); losing my hair (erm... further preventing my hair from growing back soon perhaps?); somnolence; long-term neurocognitive changes; slightly increased risk of secondary cancer in the future; and maybe cataracts. I remember coming out of the TBI meeting a bit terrified by the long list of side-effects: this is much more manageable! I then signed the consent with Dr Wong, before being given some dates for planning (this Thursday morning), simulation (Monday morning) and then the radiotherapy itself (7th July).

I then tracked down my blood results and rang through the results to St George's. Yes, yes, I know, I said that I just needed a neutrophil count of 1... But actually I also need a platelet count of 100, and today I was on 86. So I'm nearly there.

So here's the plan (this might help me more than interest you... apologies):

• Wednesday morning: ring St George's to talk to my consultant or a registrar to check that the dates for the radiotherapy are ok, as the former originally suggested I could have it between consolidation blocks, but one of the latter said that I'd be having it at the end.
• Wednesday afternoon: go to St Richard's for another blood test, and ring the results through to St George's. They might want me in any time when the counts are ok.
• Thursday morning: go to the Marsden @ Sutton for planning (assuming George's are ok with that). Potentially try to get another blood test done there, if my counts aren't quite up on Wednesday?

Right, that's a bit straighter in my head now. And I can always come and check on my blog to see what I need to do, while boosting my hit counter at the same time! Hehe...

So there we go: I'm getting a nice variety of hospitals these days. I'll let you know when I'm back in St George's, though I don't yet know whether that'll be from my laptop or my mobile.

Take care!