Monday 30th March 2009

Hi All,

I've just had the follow-up meeting with my oncologist, and have also shared the address of this blog with her (hi Jo!), and I think the information I got confirmed my usual feeling of "Good news with a healthy dose of uncertainty".

I had a few concerns and questions that I wanted answering and they were all covered. In particular, the recommendation is for no further treatment at this stage. This decision is based on a lack of evidence that post-operative chemo (or radiotherapy) actually has any real benefit in these kind of situations.

I'm ok with this. There is no evidence at the moment that there is still any cancer in me, so it would therefore be impossible to measure whether any chemo had been effective, and based on the fact that there is little evidence that the pre-op chemo was particularly effective it would just seem like putting myself up for a possible bad experience for absolutely no reason.

In the meantime, my oncologist does want to send my tumour sample to a pathologist who specialises in endocrine tumours just for a second opinion on the histology, and this might throw up something which might mean a different approach, but otherwise, this means that my next follow-up will be with the surgeon in three months time.

Going forward, I will probably have the option of having regular scans if I want, but the advice is actually not to have them as they can be counter-productive. The stress caused by waiting for the results of a scan may outweigh the benefits. Apparently there is little advantage to catching a re-emergence early, over catching it later. Apparently the body is very good at indicating a re-occurence - if it comes back, you will just "know" anyway.

As you may have noticed from this blog, I'm pretty good at not worrying or stressing out about stuff unless there is something actual to worry about, so apart from a few wobbles in advance of the surgery, I've been pretty stoical about all the meetings and results that I've waited for during this whole process, so I'm not sure the argument above applies to me.

The question is really - if it is going to come back, do I want to know as soon as possible, or do I want to maximise the period of blissful ignorance? Interesting philosophical/psychological question! I need to put a bit more thought into this one!

One thing is for certain, I'm not going to spend the rest of my life worrying about the rest of my life!

No point! As soon as my diet is sorted, I fully intend to get on with things 100% - back to work, back to travelling, back to gigging and maybe a few other projects on the side. Which leads me to my latest "hair-brained" scheme ...

Many of you know that I like my cars and am long overdue to replace mine. The general idea is to get a two-seater for fun, and replace my Audi with a van for the band gear at some point (rather than the compromise of a big cruiser like my S8 which serves the purpose of being fun, but also having a big boot).

My latest idea is rather than go out and buy a sporty number, I would like to build one. This would be cheaper than a production car, but also more satisfying as a project.

Having seen a few of these at Le Mans in previous years, my heart is currently set on an Ultima GTR. The World's fastest production car from 0 - 100 - 0. Faster than a Ferrari Enzo or McLaren F1, yet fairly practical (will go over speed bumps etc) and a 20th of the price. I reckon you don't get much more fun than that!

Of course this is a bit of a pipe dream at the moment, and probably won't come to fruition, but I'm struggling to see a reason why not to do it - what better excuse do I have after all? If I'm not going to live out a few dreams now, when am I? :)

Check out the pic below, and the website (click here) and see what I mean ...

Ha ha! :)

Cheers All!

Colin x