Bile Duct Diary XVII

20 February, 2009


I have just returned to my keyboard, with slightly shaky hands, after a week in an isolated room at the Royal Marsden being injected with the latest scientific advance: the Reovirus that is supposed to hunt down cancer cells and interfere with their DNA, so they are no longer able to reproduce. The week began with an infusion of a chemotherapy meant to weaken my own immune system, and this leaves the way clear for the Reovirus to do its thing. Because this is a drug trial that will one day lead to public usage, they are carefully monitoring all the side effects and reactions that I have to the virus. So I was isolated and sterilised and everyone who poked their head in to take a temperature had to be gloved, masked and gowned….(wasn’t there a Dustin Hoffman film about this a few years ago?) The reaction was like a heavy flu with aching, sweating and shivering, but thankfully only lasted for 2 of the 5 days. That I can cope with.

At first the experience did seem rather bizarre, and dissociating. It reminded me of the Jain religion in India who wear masks so they don’t kill airborne organisms while inhaling. I couldn’t even leave the room to stroll in the corridor…..(yes, if you’re wondering, I had my own toilet)….so my only exercise was about 5 paces across the room and back, and my second film reference emerged as The Great Escape with Steve McQueen.

The plan is that I repeat this in one month and then do a bunch of tests and scans so the medics can determine if there are signs of change in the cancer. If it is helpful, I can carry on with this for 8 months, and if it isn’t, I will leave the trial and look around for other options, but with pancreatic cancer, there aren’t many.

So……there’s been more time last week to ponder on what all is happening to me. I felt very achy and sleepy, so I wasn’t interested in reading or television. But I must say the longer I live with this cancer, (and I had my one year anniversary of my operation yesterday), the more I can feel my self living alongside it. I have no idea how I will react if/when things get worse but at the moment it feels like the cancer and I can live side by side. I can feels its effects, I can read about it, I like to talk about it, but I am also aware that it gives me more space and time, for perhaps a richer kind of living than I have done before. Maybe I’m feeling a little less frightened about living ‘in the meantime’.

I’ll write again in a month or so when results are more clear.

Love to you all

David (and Jane)