It has been a while since my last post. Fatigue hung around for a bit, faded away, came back and disappeared again. Which is pretty much how it goes. I have been working on getting more exercise and will be starting Nordic Walking class in about 10 days, I checked out with my consult whether this was a good idea and he thought it could help and there was no reason not to do it, but I jump ahead, more about my collarbone later. Hopefully, a short burst of medium intensity exercise will help. I still feel that exercise does help, so will try this and once the weather improves a bit will be back on my bike. In the meantime, I will just be walking.
So what else has been going on, not a great deal, doing a bit for Macmillan and have a full day coming up this week on the Peer Evaluation project. Still moving forward on sorting out the training to be a group facilitator. Seen a few friends, gave a friend a lift to pick up a car and then went on to visit Littlehampton. If it had been warmer and hadn’t clouded over it would have been lovely. There are some really interesting bits of street architecture on the seafront and an amazing cafe clad in Core10 steel. Will definitely be going back to get some better photographs, not happy with the ones I took hurriedly.
Also had a checkup with my orthopaedic surgeon for the collarbone. He perplexed about the continuing pain. I should not be having any. He was unsure if it was to do with my radiotherapy, a possibility that cancer had spread to the bone or that I have had 3 surgeries to that shoulder in under 3 years. I don’t think my cancer does spread to bones, my surgeon was unsure or unwilling to commit himself to saying it definitely didn’t, which is reassuring as he recognises that he needs to get advice on this. The upshot is that he is going to write to my ENT surgeon and Oncologist and ask them to review me. I am seeing my ENT surgeon in 2 weeks for my regular checkup, no doubt this will be discussed then. Whether I get an answer then remains to be seen. It could be that I would need further investigations. From my Orthopaedic Surgeon perspective, he could send me for tests but he would be doing so as a fishing expedition, hoping something shows up or to rule out something so he doesn’t feel it is good for me to be subjected to further tests at the moment. Likely tests would start with a CT scan, bone scan or MRI. I have no idea what the cancer lot will suggest if anything.
I am feeling pretty relaxed about this and am not as worried about this remote possibility as I was about the recent lung cancer one. Then as an ex-smoker, I was slightly worried. I haven’t done any research but am fairly certain that my cancer is not one of those that goes into bones. I am not going to go googling as it is unlikely to give me the answers I need to work out whether my cancer does affect bones. I know enough to know that I don’t know enough to go looking and get reliable answers. When working I used to advise clients against self-diagnosis by google and I will heed this advice myself. Many times I had clients arriving to tell me that they or their child had something, which they didn’t. Google is a wonderful resource but is also a curse if misused and causes people a lot of needless anxiety when used for self-diagnosis.
So this is pretty much my life at the moment, still, a greater focus on medical stuff than I would like. On the plus side, I am still here to be perplexing medical folk. I have a nice routine, am seeing a few friends and getting out and about, have the voluntary work to look forward to and once the next check-up is over will hopefully be in a position to think about booking my next trip away. Life continues to be pretty good.
paulbysea 