The brilliant artist David Shrigley often has a wise insight to offer and, as this shot of page 17 of his new book shows, when it comes to brains, he seems to have hit the nail on the, er, head! Following this sage advice, I opted against throwing my brain in the river, and am in the process of getting it fixed. A visit to the doc yesterday marked the beginning of my second of 6 tablet cycles (so I'll do 5 days on the tablets now, then cycle 3 will start in 28 days, and cycle 4 will be 28 days after that, etc). Although my blood counts are still a bit low, we're going ahead with the cycle: we're hitting it hard, as per the plan.
One of the things I've learnt along the course of this journey is that it's not a good idea to take anything for granted, and I need to be flexible with the narratives I construct for myself. For example, when my narrative of "I'll have an operation, then I'll lie around for a bit, then that'll be it" turned out to be not quite right, and I needed further treatment, it was a bitter pill to swallow (literally). So with this lesson in mind, yesterday I asked the doctor to go through all the possible outcomes of the head scan that I'll be having later this month. I want to be prepared for all eventualities; I don't want any surprises. Being flexible with my narratives, see?
She said that the scan pictures might show (a) improvement, (b) psuedo-progression, or (c) progression. Obviously (a) is ideal. (b) means it looks worse, but isn't really - it's the lingering effects of the radiotherapy causing swelling (this is why they wait a while after radiotherapy to do the scan). (c) means we have to talk about further options. What are the further options, I asked. Well, the next thing we would try, she explained, would be PCV chemotherapy, which is the one you have intravenously.
Hmmm. Clearly, we hope it won't come to that. But if it does, we'll be prepared and we'll get on with it, like we've got on with brain surgery, radiotherapy, and tablet chemotherapy. I don't think this is pessimism (although it feels faintly like it), I think it's being flexible and prepared. And I think David Shrigley's insight is a good one to keep in mind: however tempted you might feel, you really cannot just throw your brain in the river. Even if it takes a while, you must get it fixed.
I'll keep you posted.
