update

Well, it’s been nearly two years since my cancer diagnosis; two separate cancer diagnoses, actually, a vividly entertaining tale in itself with which I might regale you sometime. And then in due course I had the drama of major surgery, brutal and astonishing, and the recovery from that: another rich source of grimly hilarious anecdotes. But for much of last year, certainly for the whole of the summer and well into the autumn while I was free of hospital appointments, I could almost forget that there was anything wrong with me. It wasn’t that I felt a fraud, exactly, but there’s a weird cognitive dissonance in on the one hand knowing that your cancer has spread, that you’re a stage four and therefore incurable, and on the other that it hasn’t been causing you any inconvenience whatsoever.

Now, all that is changing. From tomorrow, that cog diss will be thoroughly dissipated. In the morning we’re off to the hospital again, our familiar route, an hour’s drive each way on the quieter road that takes us past my friends the radio telescopes, for my first session of chemo. I’m using the term chemo as a shorthand: chemo, as most people may understand it, doesn’t work for kidney cancer, but my drug treatment is an equivalent. New routines will quickly become established: every fortnight that car journey for an intravenous infusion of Avelumab, an immunotherapy drug; and at home twice a day an Axitinib tablet, a TKI inhibitor, to try to stop the cancer cells from growing. It’s a new combination and the trials have been encouraging. I have been used to feeling very well indeed. Once those chemicals hit my system I don’t know how I’ll feel but it certainly won’t be as well as I do now. The possible side effects range from the inconvenient to the unpleasant to the serious to the actually life threatening, and I have no idea which I might get, when or to what extent I might get them. Fatigue, nausea and savage headaches seem most likely, digestive and thyroid problems, rashes, sore mouth, sore hands and feet; but whether I’ll get them straight away or over several weeks as the toxicity of the drugs builds up, I have no way of knowing. And I keep that going for as long as my body can tolerate the drugs and they can be shown to be holding back my mets.

I think I’ve been fantastically fortunate to have had this ‘free’ year, and it’s been of tremendous importance to me. To go the better part of two years from diagnosis before needing to start drug treatment is quite unusual too, I believe, but here I am now, at a stage of irreversible transition. I’ve mourned for what I’m leaving behind. Now I have to look at what’s ahead.