DAY 134

We saw Dr Cave the Oncologist this morning. The good news is that she thought that I was recovering remarkably well. She was impressed with the range of foods I was eating and she noted that my weight had stabalised. In short I was in far better health than most patients she sees who have had the same operation. The one down side was that the dry cough far from going away seems to be getting worse. I had a bad night last night. Dr Cave was of the view that the cough was caused by the acid reflux. She recommended increased dosage of the drug I have been taking to combat this plus some Gaviscon. This brings me to the vexed subject of chemotherapy. We were given a number of statistics which showed that someone who had an operation only had a 50% less chance of surviving 5 years than someone who had chemo + operation + more chemo. Unfortunately the one figure she could not provide was the difference between those all of whom had chemo before the operation but only some who had chemo after it. Sadly this meant that I couldn't make a choice based statistics. Equally I can't allow this thing to drag on as it is very wearying for both of us. What I intend to do is to see the the surgical team tomorrow morning and make a decision after that. I hope to be able to communicate this tomorrow, but the computer is playing up so I may have to find alternative means of blogging.