On 23 July, I sent off the following email:
Dear friends,
I must
apologise for sending the same email to a lot of people, each of whom merits a separate message (or in some cases may wonder
why they have got it at all). However, I think that a few will be glad I have sent it, and hope that the rest will be understanding.
The message is simple: yesterday Robin went into Castlemaine hospital, and the prognosis is not good. It is also not
catastrophic. They are not quite sure what the problem is, but the symptoms are clear: general muscular weakness and
some pain. It seems it is not the lung cancer or the kidney cancer, and she is having a string of further tests as a guide
to appropriate palliative measures.
She remains cheerful and (though frequently drowsy) totally lucid and with
all her characteristic wit and charm. She seems to have the whole hospital staff under her spell.
I followed this up on 1 August
with the following:
When I sent you the first email, it was because it looked as if Robin would not last the week. For
four days she took virtually no food or drink, and was so drowsy that conversation was impossible. Then on Friday she suddenly
perked up, and the weekend was good. She is now eating quite well, though she seems to prefer my own invalid concoction, avocado
vinaigrette, to the hospital's Sustagen And she is trying out her skill at walking with a walking frame.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that a bone scan has revealed five abnormalities, and it seems certain
that the cancer has spread to the bones. It seems that bone cancer is almost always a secondary, and the issue is whether
it is a secondary to the lung cancer (very bad news) or whether a lump in her left breast is malignant, in which case it could
be secondary to that (slightly less bad). So we are in the unusual situation of hoping she has breast cancer.
Either
way, however, her oncologist says it is a matter of weeks rather than months.
This is, of course, the same man
who gave her 8 to 16 months nearly five years ago, and it is now ten years since another expert gave her five years after
she had a malignant kidney removed. So she has a remarkable track record as a confounder of medical wisdom.
But I have
a feeling the the prognosis in this case is more firmly based.
Rather than send further emails. I am thinking of
putting a sort of bulletin board on my website. I am not quite sure what form it will take - I will get it going at the weekend
- but it will at least mean that you can be as up to date as you want to be, not as up to date as I have forced you to be.
