Sunday June 27

Helen and I have had a fairly routine week. She has had some lovely visits with Shirley, Bilha, Sandra and Bronwyn. I have On Wednesday we had a fairly draining and unsatisfying day attending the oncologist. The appointment was planned to discuss recommencing/continuing chemotherapy. In and of itself the result is not terrible - they think Helen should cease having IV chemo and consider an oral treatment - a "tyrosine kinase inhibitor" instead, but the process of the appointment was not so good. We waited for an hour and a half to be seen, then saw the registrar who had not much idea about Helen's situation, then saw the oncologist himself Dr K who seemed to me to have made up his mind without seeing her and wasn't particularly interested in finding out anything about how she had been going and what if any symptoms had developed during her 4 weeks off chemo. Anyway I found it upsetting and after he left the room leaving us with the registrar I burst into tears which he was somewhat uncomfortable with - going for the old doctor standby of "let me get you a tissue" but then offering me a selection of those hard dry cheap paper hand towels instead. As I obediently dabbed my eyes on their scratchiness he said "I'll just print you out some information on that treatment - it can cause an acne like rash...". Ah...doctors...

Anyway I still don't know where we are with that but I was informed the other day that we have another appointment with oncology tomorrow so I guess we'll discuss it further.

The news of the day is I impulsively bought Helen 3 week old chickens at the markets this morning so we sill have them as mobile decorations/entertainment for a bit. Photo to come.

Also over the last week we have not used the hoist at all as she is doing much better with independent mobility and is able to do her own transfers with support. I have turned the hoist into a clothesrack for the time being - the visiting doctors and nurses comment that it is the most expensive clothesrack they have ever seen.