My bad news shirt.

I have a special shirt I keep to wear to hospital appointments - I call it my 'bad news' shirt because I only wear it get to bad news. Over the years it's heard a lot of bad news and I'd rather not be reminded about the times I wore it by having it pop up in the clean washing at random.

I happened to be wearing it on my first visit to hospital, when I got an early diagnosis.

So last night I looked it out from the very bottom of the pile, upsetting bottles in the process and then swearing under my breath as I went to get my picker upper so that I could replace the bottles, hurting my back in the process.

I increased my meds a bit, which made no difference to the pain or how long I slept for.

In the morning I drove up to Charing Cross Hospital, with everything hurting and arrived completely washed out, ready to give my blood sample and get myself weighed, which is quite exhausting in itself.

I've lost more weight, of course.

It was lucky that I sought out my bad news shirt - I got bad news. My chemo has begun to fail, which given the pains, makes a lot of sense.

There aren't many options left; one last ditch chemotherapy which doesn't really work and an infusion of radioactive material which reduces the pain but which also is the very last treatment possible. There are no roads back.

In the meantime I'm going back to a medication I had in 2013 and which didn't work very well back then. Nasty side effects too.

We came out and I drove back to my doctors, where they missed off one of the meds I ordered over the internet and for which I have to go back next week.

We then went to Tesco's where I struggled to the pharmacy to drop off my prescriptions. By the time I got home I was in agony and worn out. I slept all afternoon.

Talking to Dr Feelgood, it's obvious that she will go on giving me treatments as long as she has them and as long as I'm up for taking them. I think lots of people have given up by this point, but I'm not in a mood to give up until I have to.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com