In December, after half a year on sick leave, I felt the need for a little change in my life. I discussed the possibility of returning to active work life with both the doctor at the hospital and the doctor and my manager at work. All parties were very positive and supported the idea. We decided I will do 60% for a three months period, from January until end of March. Then we'll review with the doctors my health situation and decide how to continue.
As we're approaching February it means I've been close to a month at work already. It has actually been a very good experience. There are lots of nice people there and I've got some interesting stuff to do. Hopefully I'll be able to continue working after this three months period is over.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
The dog
I had an incident with the car. Some friends of ours from Norway visited us a this weekend. On Friday afternoon I picked them up from the hotel they stayed in and headed back to our place. We drove through a residential area where speed limit was 50 km/h. It was dark and the roads were icy. Out from nowhere came a small dog and ran straight into the road in front of us. We heard a bang as if we had driven into a large chunk of ice. It happened so fast I didn't even manage to hit the break before the impact.
I parked on a side street and ran back to find a woman, the dog owner apparently, lying on the road and crying. She was holding tightly onto the dog. The dog was surprisingly alive but didn't move and was bleeding from one eye and looked at me with the other. I felt horrible and didn't really know what to say.
There were some people around desperately trying to find a phone number to an animal clinic. They asked me and I replied I had no clue if even such exists in town. I said I was sorry for what happened but that there was nothing I could have done. There was a man there who seemed to be part of the family. After a short while he had found the address to the clinic and went to get his car. I got his phone number and they drove off.
Later on in the evening I contacted him. He said the dog was still alive and that the doctor had fixed him up. I didn't quite get all what they had had to do, but some bones were broken and the dog had taken a hit to the head. If it gets away with it it is a very lucky dog all in all. He asked if the car was damaged but I said that didn't matter. I will probably contact him again later this week to see how the dog is doing. My wife suggested we'd buy the dog owners something. I suggested a dog chain. That was a (bad) joke naturally.
I parked on a side street and ran back to find a woman, the dog owner apparently, lying on the road and crying. She was holding tightly onto the dog. The dog was surprisingly alive but didn't move and was bleeding from one eye and looked at me with the other. I felt horrible and didn't really know what to say.
There were some people around desperately trying to find a phone number to an animal clinic. They asked me and I replied I had no clue if even such exists in town. I said I was sorry for what happened but that there was nothing I could have done. There was a man there who seemed to be part of the family. After a short while he had found the address to the clinic and went to get his car. I got his phone number and they drove off.
Later on in the evening I contacted him. He said the dog was still alive and that the doctor had fixed him up. I didn't quite get all what they had had to do, but some bones were broken and the dog had taken a hit to the head. If it gets away with it it is a very lucky dog all in all. He asked if the car was damaged but I said that didn't matter. I will probably contact him again later this week to see how the dog is doing. My wife suggested we'd buy the dog owners something. I suggested a dog chain. That was a (bad) joke naturally.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Ninth round
Today we had another doctor's appointment and afterwards I started the ninth round of chemotherapy. Surprise, we were called in by yet another doctor we haven't met before. She was quite young and said all decisions are made by the senior doctor that we were told last time would become our fixed doctor. This appointment was obviously considered a routine follow-up that the junior doctor could easily handle. Well, she did handle it well, but there wasn't any new info really. Only the standard blood tests were taken last Friday and all values are still pretty much the same they have been since July. That's good, as usually they of course tend to get worse during chemotherapy.
My wife had as usual a long list of questions. Some of them were so tricky the junior doctor said we'd better ask the senior doctor. My wife asked when does the surgeon look at the CT scan pictures to see if a resection or radio frequency ablation of the liver tumours would be possible. The doctor replied that the senior doctor goes to surgeons' meetings and brings forth cases as he sees fit. We'll put this down on our questions list for next appointment as we expect to see our fixed doctor again then.
The senior doctor had confirmed before the meeting that we will continue with the same medication this round. However, we had an interesting discussion regarding one of the medicines, oxaliplatin (Eloxatin). The doctor told us that the long-term side effect, namely neuropathy (loosing feeling in fingers and feet) from oxaliplatin, tends to start getting worse from eight or ninth round of chemo, and they then need to consider if they should stop that chemo so that the damage to the nerves does not get bad. I have increasingly had the problem of numbness in my fingers, and I got my ninth round of chemo today. They may have to drop oxaliplatin soon. The doctor said that then they will continue with capesitabin (Xeloda) and Avastin only. They are effective drugs by themselves too, but of course they would then monitor if the tumours would start growing again, in which case they would add some other chemo to the treatment.
The next treatment is three weeks from now. Five weeks from there, on February 16th, there will be a CT scan. Until then there will not be very exciting news I am afraid.
My wife had as usual a long list of questions. Some of them were so tricky the junior doctor said we'd better ask the senior doctor. My wife asked when does the surgeon look at the CT scan pictures to see if a resection or radio frequency ablation of the liver tumours would be possible. The doctor replied that the senior doctor goes to surgeons' meetings and brings forth cases as he sees fit. We'll put this down on our questions list for next appointment as we expect to see our fixed doctor again then.
The senior doctor had confirmed before the meeting that we will continue with the same medication this round. However, we had an interesting discussion regarding one of the medicines, oxaliplatin (Eloxatin). The doctor told us that the long-term side effect, namely neuropathy (loosing feeling in fingers and feet) from oxaliplatin, tends to start getting worse from eight or ninth round of chemo, and they then need to consider if they should stop that chemo so that the damage to the nerves does not get bad. I have increasingly had the problem of numbness in my fingers, and I got my ninth round of chemo today. They may have to drop oxaliplatin soon. The doctor said that then they will continue with capesitabin (Xeloda) and Avastin only. They are effective drugs by themselves too, but of course they would then monitor if the tumours would start growing again, in which case they would add some other chemo to the treatment.
The next treatment is three weeks from now. Five weeks from there, on February 16th, there will be a CT scan. Until then there will not be very exciting news I am afraid.
Beat it!
A group of friends of ours got fed up with our inability to respond to their offers of help. They designed a t-shirt that people who know us and want to "support our cause" could get. To be frank, we felt a bit embarrassed about the entire thing at first but we also understood that this way people could feel like they are contributing. We probably would have felt the same if we'd been in the same situation. The shirt was going to look like a sports t-shirt so our friends asked for some input what number they could put on it. I gave them the magic number 20. They put in addition the text "Beat it!" on the shirt.
Just before Christmas two of our friends stopped by our home to tell us how many people had gotten the shirt, and to show us photos of people wearing the shirt. We were astonished. We had not realised how many friends we have and how many people my story had touched. We also got a list of e-mail addresses of everyone and we sent out a thank-you mail nd Christmas wishes to everyone. Many had been wondering about the number on the shirt and this is what we wrote about the magic number 20:
Well, it's simply the number the Norwegian footballer Ole Gunnar Solskjær played with during his many seasons in Manchester United. He's probably the most successful Norwegian footballer ever. So thank you for supporting Norwegian football! :o) Well, there's something more to the story. Ole Gunnar was a great football player but turned more into a second choice for the manager Alex Ferguson. However, he never ever complained and always tried to make the best out of the situation. In fact, he became very good at coming in at the end of games to make last minute goals. This positive attitude and "try to make the best out of it" are then two issues that are important to me as well at the moment.
Just before Christmas two of our friends stopped by our home to tell us how many people had gotten the shirt, and to show us photos of people wearing the shirt. We were astonished. We had not realised how many friends we have and how many people my story had touched. We also got a list of e-mail addresses of everyone and we sent out a thank-you mail nd Christmas wishes to everyone. Many had been wondering about the number on the shirt and this is what we wrote about the magic number 20:
Well, it's simply the number the Norwegian footballer Ole Gunnar Solskjær played with during his many seasons in Manchester United. He's probably the most successful Norwegian footballer ever. So thank you for supporting Norwegian football! :o) Well, there's something more to the story. Ole Gunnar was a great football player but turned more into a second choice for the manager Alex Ferguson. However, he never ever complained and always tried to make the best out of the situation. In fact, he became very good at coming in at the end of games to make last minute goals. This positive attitude and "try to make the best out of it" are then two issues that are important to me as well at the moment.
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