Get in the ring

When I first shared the news about the tumour, one of my favourite responses was ‘This thing is like getting in the ring with Mike Tyson’.

How to fight back? I’ve received a lot of valuable advice, with each person sharing a different perspective. Oversimplifying, some have simply responded ‘holy shit’. Others have told me ‘all that is needed is the loving, calm acceptance of God’s will’. One friend asked ‘are you allowed to get drunk? If so…’ And then, many have focused on choosing the best treatments (mainly with doctors in hospitals; although Amazonian healers were brought up by my dear mother).

Today I’ll tell you about 'standard of care'. For GBM, this brings with it today the same aggression conveyed by words I’ve heard often over the past months: ‘Fuck Cancer’. The radio-chemo one-two combo is all about hitting hard, closing your eyes, and seeing what happens. Usually this strategy will put a few scratches on the opponent; but as with Ali’s rope-a-dope, the tumour absorbs punch after punch before coming back with a knockout blow at some point.

So respect to my oncologist for having healed many of the bruises from Round 1. These included a ringing ear, headaches, tiredness, vomiting and seizures. If you prefer hard figures: my ‘Karnofsky Performance Status’ must have shot up from around 50 (eg disposable handheld urinal in hospital) to 90 (eg 5k race last week, but don’t tell my nutritionist!). Encouragingly, this upward trend goes on, and is expected to continue for at least six further weeks as the treatment takes full effect.

Looking ahead to future Rounds: GBM is truly like Iron Mike. It’s aggressive. Having your ear bitten off is the least of your worries. But you cannot counter-punch nearly as hard because it’s got hold of the most sensitive part of your body. You can only throw so much relatively precise radiotherapy at the brain (no more for me) and pump so many imprecise toxic chemotherapy agents through your body (I may be done with this stuff by June).

Fortunately, many supplementary and alternative treatments are being trialled around the world, opening up new ways to stay in the fight. Perhaps the most promising involves teaching and priming the immunological system to use new jabs so it can punch in the right place at the right time. We’re exploring these approaches with myriad doctors for use in the longer term.

And then there’s learning to love to hate electromagnetic fields and Evian. Yes, I’ll tell you about this nutritionist I keep going on about next week.

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