Monday, September 16, 2013

Update Autumn 2013

About this time each year I rock up to the house in Fernie and have a great couple of weeks hiking, biking, running, swimming in Lake Koocanusa and generally getting a feel of how the up coming ski season is going to pan out. Well this year has turned out a bit different.

When we got back from Canada in May of this year Lynda seemed to be suffering from some kind of allergy. When it didn't go away she went to the docs and they rushed her into hospital and by the end of that day with x-rays and scans they told us she had a tumour in her chest.

We had a dreadful three weeks while they tried to work out exactly what was wrong. Of course in everyone's mind was lung cancer which would have been really bad news as the prognosis in all variations of that are not good. Eventually they got a chunk large enough the analyse and told us she had a mediastinal large cell type B lymphoma. Whilst this was far from good news it did mean that what she had was treatable with good success rates (total cure) if the patient was tough enough to stand the full treatment.

Since that time she has been getting very aggressive chemotherapy every three weeks. The treatment runs for 5 days but thanks to an experimental mobile pump system she just has to go into hospital for a few hours on the Monday to get plumbed in and then back on Friday to be disconnected. During the next two weeks she recovers in time for the next cycle.

So far she has had 4 out of 6 cycles and the dose increases each time so that last time she got 175% of the standard dose which is something of a record, but the stronger she can take the better the results. The side effects mean that she is tired but by the end of the two weeks she is almost back to normal - of course all her hair has fallen out but that's just how it goes.

Needless to say this has rather disrupted our plans. We have only managed to do a bit of local sailing throughout the summer and I have had to cancel all the sailing events where I was judging and I haven't been able to put in enough training to enter the usual end of year marathons - still getting in about 8 miles a day. Lynda has been getting out with us on the Falmouth Working Boat from time to time but on the strict understanding she does nothing to disturb the PIC line which runs from her upper arm through her veins and ends up inside her chest and which she has in all the time.

This autumn's trip to Fernie had to be cancelled and it's a big thank you to our buddies Rob and Katie for looking after the house. This winter is still up in the air. Lynda finishes treatment early November and then there are a few weeks of tests to see how successful the chemo has been. Hopefully she will be clear and we will aim to get out to Fernie some time in January for a curtailed season. Of course not knowing what the results will be we don't know how often, or even if they will want us back at the hospital for further tests or treatments.

So it looks like this year the blog will not be starting until January at the earliest and even then there is some doubt. Sorry to all the followers but I am sure you will understand that in the circumstances I just have other things on my mind - Bill