14th March, 2018

Nick continues to get a little better each day. He's off oxygen, walking with a cane, still coughing quite a bit, but at least is eating normally, and is less exhausted. He's been making trips over to Alex's place, and even short visits to restaurants. Only a few more days to fatten him up before chemo resumes on Monday! 

Nick has a follow-up with his oncologist on Friday, preceded by blood work. Hopefully the blood work indicates that the beta-hCG tumour marker is moving in the right direction, and also that the white cell count is high enough to proceed with chemotherapy. Not sure if they're doing a CT scan right away - they tend to be pretty conservative about these, as they do represent a lot of radiation. I think a CT scan is equivalent to about 50-70 chest X-rays. 

Our family doctor ("Dr. L.", to respect his privacy) continues to impress us. He'd  worked as a pediatric oncologist in Toronto, but moved to London to be closer to his wife's family. He's a counterexample to the old joke: 


Q:    What do you call a doctor who graduated medical school with a 50%? 
 A:     A doctor.

Dr. L is extremely compassionate, passionate about medicine and a relentless problem solver. He'd dealt with his own cancer a couple years ago, and had some well-researched dietary and lifestyle recommendations which he passed along to us, among which are:

-- stay hydrated - chug a litre of water first thing in the morning
-- avoid sugars and excessive eating during treatment - you'd only be feeding the cancer.

Dr. L. is off on leave for a couple of months as of this week. His job is way too stressful, and relentless. HIs endless hours in the clinic M-F are matched by endless hours of paperwork on the weekends. Hopefully he returns rejeuvenated.

That's it for now. I'll do an update on Friday. There was a little mis-scheduling at the cancer clinic - they had to squeeze Nick in at the last minute on Friday. This means that they may not have the blood work results back to us immediately - but treatment will proceed on Monday regardless. 

Our feeling is that chemo cycle #1 must have done something, since Nick was at the point of collapse at the start of treatment, and is much better than that now.


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