The Drugs Don't Work (Part Three)

I had my ultrasound today to see if Colin has got smaller.

If you remember, he hadn't last time. That is because I was non-responsive to my first lot of chemo (FEC) and my cancer was resistant to it.

I am also non-responsive to Taxotere and my cancer is resistant to that one too.

Colin has not shrunk at all, meaning my cancer cells just laugh in the face of Taxotere. They have stuck their cancery middle finger up to it. They have blown a raspberry to anything some oncologist thinks ought to work.

I am beginning to realise that this has all got terribly complicated and all very negative.

To be non-responsive to chemotherapy is just not cool. My chances of actually dying of cancer have increased...

It also means radical mastectomy and complete clearance of my lymph nodes (even though only one, Malcom, actually looks dodgy). The reason for this? I can't have rasiotherapy post-surgery because of my psoriasis. Apparently. I have read about this but a nurse I met (who has a mum with psoriasis) said it too. Radiotherapy causes a skin reaction and anyone with a skin disease is more at risk. It is not recommended to anyone with severe psoriasis.

So not only are my chances of relapse higher because the chemo has failed, they are also higher because I can't, apparently, have radiotherapy too.

However, I am sure this will all be confirmed on Tuesday when I see House and Scouse...

Pillarboxredheadedgoddess came with me to the hospital for my ultrasound. Except she is no longer pillarboxredheadedgoddess, she is ravenblackheadedgoddess because she has gone all gothlike in the hair colour department. She finished uni on Wednesday and came up by train to stay for a few days; I haven't seen her since Mother's Day. I was pretty chipper post-ultrasound. For her sake. I didn't not tell her the truth, but I did it in my usual Plaingoldband chipper way. I didn't want her to get upset...and she did a reasonable act of not being so. But she is.

What can I say? It's not great news. My chances of survival at five years have decreased I imagine (five years seems to be the 'magic' number; still alive at five years, more likely to live another).

I do not regret having neo-adjuvant chemo. If I hadn't, I would never have known the chemo didn't work, as there would have been no Colin to measure its efficacy by. How may women, I wonder, have surgery first and then have adjuvant chemo and think it is all a-ok, only to find they have secondary cancer in their liver/bones/lungs a few years later. At least, if I find Colin's babies in my liver/lungs/bones it won't be a total shock, will it?

I suppose the only thing I could possibly regret at the moment is having chemo at all. I shouldn't have had it. I should have had surgery then radio. I wouldn't have my psoriasis and I wouldn't have been any the worse off than I am now!

I shall sleep upon it and report back tomorrow...