 Today marked a couple of milestones in my life. I turned 33 (don't tell my nutritionist about the maple syrup on the pancakes), and received—through luck, fortune, or fate—a special present: the end of radiotherapy. This means I won’t be visiting the hospital on a daily basis, as I’ve done over the past six weeks. I’ll miss the painting placed above the ‘tomotherapy’ machine (see below) and the team at the hospital—which I’m hugely grateful to for helping get me so strong… but I’m ready to strive to step from patient-hood to a bit of normality. Hence the joyous ‘shake-down’ of my running and cycling legs this past weekend, the first time I exercised outside since October.
Not being high on medications will help ease the transition: I was taking 33 pills per day at the beginning of treatment. That has come down to 6, most of these paracetamol to control ever diminishing headaches. Also, the salubrious effects of the radiotherapy should continue to kick in over the coming two months, and apparently my energy levels should get a boost, although I’ve already been feeling pretty energetic. So what happens next? In terms of treatment, I will continue to take a few courses of chemotherapy (in the form of pills at home) over the next few months, and hopefully I’ll continue to respond well to these. I'm therefore hoping these updates will get really boring. Beyond that, we're keeping our options open by speaking to leading doctors in this field around the world. More on that next week. |
