"My, Mr. French, That is a Large One!"

Excuse the 1950s seaside postcard humour, but the quote is almost word for word.
The appointment with Dr. Anne Garry was at 2.30 this afternoon, and, although my post was very positive yesterday, after it had been written, a few things occurred which made the meeting today a little more laden with significance than it otherwise might have been.

The first being that, soon after writing the post, I had to give myself two bolus doses (the boosts I have referred to), as even at the new improved levels of concentration, the pain was still breaking through at regular intervals and at unacceptable levels. The second of these boluses had left me almost entirely unable to walk, and as Sarah was home at the time to witness it, things became very emotional as we both thought I would very quickly need another increase in concentration (as soon as next Monday), and that the next increase would be the one that pushed me over the edge.

Secondly, last night saw me jumping out of bed twice as the pain broke through and woke me up, requiring immediate boluses to get the pain to a level at which I could return to sleep.

With these two elements combined, Sarah returned from work at 1.00 pm this afternoon and immediately began to cry, facing, as she believed, my imminent decline. I was able to reassure her a bit, because during the morning the pains had abated, and I'd had no need for the boosts. Still, the meeting this afternoon could still have been one where the news was unremittingly poor.

As it was, we were seen by Anne at 3.00, and as usual there was a student doctor in tow as she is not only a very proficient doctor, but a damn good teacher too. As usual, I was asked to run through the symptoms and the levels of pain relief to see if there were any significant changes to worry about. The new developments to tell her about were the pains in the groin (which have only shown up since our previous meeting), the pains last night (which I said I believed were due to infection, and that I had taken antibiotics in higher doses yesterday to tackle it, and it seemed now to be working), and a sensation that has only developed in the last two days of a curious electric shock sensation running from my left foot to almost the crown of my head!

Anne then asked if it was OK to see the tumours on my behind, and it was at this point she said the words, "Yes, that has grown significantly, hasn't it?" She examined both tumours in the groin, and again, the one on the right was noticably larger than before.

The summary at the end of the meeting was this: the electric sensation is due to the tumours beginning to touch nerves in the pelvis, and hence the shooting sensations. The pain levels were probably due to infections and the antibiotics seemed to be working as the accompanying odour (I hadn't mentioned that had I?) was hence much less than previously. The next level of pain relief through the cassette would probably mean at least the walking frame was necessary, and perhaps we'd have to move from a fortnightly change to a weekly to ensure I could give myself sufficient doseage to eliminate the pain as much as possible.

I am now going to wait for a day or two to see how well the pain relief is working, and to confirm that the infection was a cause of the higher levels of pain yesterday. If all is well, I won't need to contact Dr, Hall to bring the cassette change forward to this coming Monday, but wait the two weeks as usual. If all is not well - well, I'll cross that bridge if I come to it.

Sorry I can't be clearer than that, as I know some people are on tenterhooks when I post something that could imply a potential problem, but I am afraid that is what my and Sarah's lives are like now - we do not know what is going to happen from one day to the next, and we just have to make the most of it.