Tuesday 11th December

Tuesday

What a day! We had stayed at my friend Gaye overnight cos Phil was working in London and it’s easy to get from her house to the Marsden. Which reminds me that I must tell you about this lovely lady who emailed Phil after my first blog (she normally reads his blog and is had followed a link to this one). Anyway this lady who we had never met wrote to say that if we needed to stay overnight for any Marsden visit she would put us up as she lives in a nearby village. See… I keep telling you how wonderful people are and here is a fantastic example! She’s a librarian and they are often good people but even so I was blown away by such kindness. Not sure when I’ll need to take her up on her offer but it’s such a relief to know that the option is there if we need it.

Anyhow after that digression; back to Tuesday Phil went off to the train and Gaye had rearranged her first meeting so that she could drive me in to the Marsdan (I did offer to get a taxi, honest!). At the hospital they did the line flushing blood tests ECG etc and then at about 11.30 broke the news that as my blood pressure was 158 they couldn’t do the chemo. The Doctor explained that high BP was a known and common side effect for both of the trial drugs which makes sense of why the protocol is so strict on this issue.

So I’m on a break period from all the chemo drugs and now taking Amlodipine &.Bisoprolol Fumarate so hopefully this will work, he said they often have to prescribe a combination of drugs to keep the BP down and there are still other which can be added to the mix if needed. So I collected my drugs, had a bit of lunch and then took the bus back to Gaye’s house to wait for Phil.

In the meantime poor old Phil was having huge problems; the trains were totally cocked up so that although he left Gaye’s house well before 8am it took nearly 3 hours for him to finally get to his destination.

Once he finished his course and finally got back Gaye cooked us dinner before we set of back home so that was nice.

I don’t need to have my BP taken again till Thursday/Friday so fingers crossed that the new tablets work. I’m also going to look at cutting down on my salt intake to see if that can help, generally I eat a pretty healthy diet so it’s difficult to see what I can do the improve the situation by diet/exercise as evidenced by the fact I’ve never had a high BP reading before. If all is well I go back for chemo on Monday, sop fingers crossed.