Friday 27 January 2012

And The Decision Is...

Well, that has been a tough 24 hours and all we did was think and talk.
We didn’t get to bed until three in the morning as neither of us could sleep, so we sat up drinking tea and coffee talking about all the pros and cons of having radiotherapy and not having it.
The final decision had to be Adys. He is the one with the cancer and he is the one who has to go through the treatment or not. All I could do was talk through the options and go around in circles with him.
Ady really felt very much on his own with it all. He is simply not one to make decisions at all. Normally, I make the decisions and he agrees with them. It’s much easier that way I find !

We went through all the different scenarios and weighed up all the benefits and negatives. We talked about the children, the cancer and general life. We also talked about what Ady has been through and how it has affected him, and us as a family.
What Ady really wanted, was someone to tell him the best way to go. He was all ready to go for radiotherapy, but the oncologist threw a right old spanner in the works by sitting on the fence yesterday.

After a whole great big long night, Ady came to the decision to go for radiotherapy and he wanted me to ring the oncologist in the morning to speak to her about it because we both felt that she had gone off the idea of giving it to him.
Ady then went to bed and slept well.
This morning, I rang the oncologist’s secretary. Can you bleeding well believe it, she was on bloody holiday until Monday, but not to worry, the message said, leave a message and someone else will deal with it.
I left a message asking for the oncologist to ring me, if possible, today, but I understood if it wasn’t until Monday.
We were both hoping that we wouldn’t have to wait all weekend to talk to her, we wanted to get it sorted, and in a way, have her approval of what Ady wanted to do.
Ady was still happy to do radiotherapy, but had a nagging thing in the back of his mind that the oncologist was not so happy.
All day, I waited for her to call, and at 5.20, she did. Phew!
Our oncologist is lovely, and I overheard someone else in the waiting room the other day saying that she is the top gal, so that’s good then.

I explained to her that we felt she had really changed her tune about treatments and before Christmas, she said that the increased percentage of bowel problems would not stop her from wanting to do adjuvant radiotherapy, yet this time, she seemed to think it is a problem.
She said that it still would not stop her, but she was sitting on the fence because she wanted Ady to decide because there are pros and cons for each way.
I told her that he wanted radiotherapy, and she said absolutely not a problem.
We had a good chat about adjuvant versus salvage and his chances of survival and recurrence.
We talked about his pathology report and the risk factors that came with it.
Dr B booked us in straight away while we were on the phone. We then started talking about hormone therapy and the Radicals trials.
During our conversation, I mentioned that Ady feels that he would really kick himself if he had a PSA rise later on and he hadn’t fought it with everything he could in the early days.
We were going to see the Radicals trial people on Monday to get randomised into the hormone therapy part, but Dr B said that actually, she will treat Ady with the standard treatment and give him six months of hormones and 4 weeks of radiotherapy.
This will be off the trial and she has cancelled Mondays appointment. She feels that there is a chance that he has micromets in his bones so a few hormones won’t hurt.
She has faxed our lovely GP to get a prescription of Casodex to take every day and another tablet to take once a week to stop him growing boobs! Oh, dear,God!
We will start hormone therapy on 1st February and radiotherapy in about a months time.
I asked her if she thought we were over reacting, and she said absolutely not.

Ady might as well have treatment now, while he is young enough and strong enough to give everything a jolly good bashing before the cancer has a chance to regroup. Hopefully, this treatment will see the end of it for a very long time!

Ady and I spent a lot of time hoping someone would give us a ‘yes do it’ or a ‘no, dont’, and then my friend Caroline said  “There are too many unknowns to make a rational, informed decision. Therefore, it’s got to be a gut one that only Ady can make”
Those words made everything so much easier and confirmed that we are doing the right thing. It is Ady’s gut feeling that has made his decision, and he will have my full support.
It was a toss up between his arse or his life really. His arse has taken a good pounding in recent months, so another pounding wont make much difference. You only get one life.

Its bloody hard, trying to make the right decision and do what is best. After all,  if people were really capable of making the right decisions all the time without guidance, then Amelia Lily would have won the XFactor. We all make mistakes, but in this instance, Ady and I both think we are making absolutely the right choice.
The road we will travel over the next six months or so, is going to be a bloody hard one, there is no doubt about that, but I am sure that we will do it with humour, tears, friends, jokes and courage.

2 comments:

  1. Glad the decision has been made. At least you will both sleep tonight now you know what the way forward is.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Phew! I just caught up with it all. A big and brave decision and, FWIW i think I would have done the same. My heartfelt best wishes and hoping the next few months turns out to be less gruelling than you fear. xxx

    ReplyDelete