Sunday 24th May 2009

Hi All,

A little bit of a development this week - I got a last minute appointment to go in for another endoscopy (tube down the throat) on Thursday with my surgeon.

I opted for the sedation again as it makes life much easier, and the procedure was fine - the main problem as always is the not eating for hours beforehand.

The result of the test was that the surgical join near the neck is absolutely fine, and the stomach appears to be fine too. He used the balloon on the end of the scope to stretch the lower sphincter a little (where the stomach empties into the intestine), as the nerves that used to control that were cut as part of the surgery. I didn't feel that at all, so not as bad as it sounds.

He couldn't see any other reason for the nausea, so he's booking me in for another CT scan in the next week or so to see if anything shows up on that.

The upshot of the test and the stretch appears to be no real change, although I have only had one actual sick episode since then. It seems that the stomach may now be emptying quicker which reduces the actual sickness (but not the nausea unfortunately) and appears to have re-introduced the diarrhoea instead. This may be to do with the fact that I have changed my Loperamide dose (anti-diarrhoea) to one every two days from one every day, but I can't say which has caused it. Not too bad though, I've not gone back to the bad-old-days.

Unfortunately, there is no improvement in the nausea itself, it is just not leading to physical sickness at the moment. I had an awful day yesterday and spent 90% of the day sick in bed, but today has so far been good - just the usual nagging, underlying nausea, but not enough to really affect me.

I'm still keeping pretty positive, although yesterday was a down day. It's getting tough though as I'm still seeing no overall improvement and its starting to worry me that I am losing weight and seemingly unable to consume enough to stop it due to the nausea. I have some concerns about whether they are ever going to be able to stop this nausea and if they can't, what the future holds. Still, we take each day as it comes, and no-one has given up on me yet, so I'm not about to give up on myself.

On a lighter note, a good day of sport today (unless you are a Newcastle fan - sorry Andy) - a great chance to compare Formula 1 (great Monaco grand prix) with the US equivalent (dull Indy 500). I just don't get the US versions of motorsport. 200 laps of an oval, just waiting for someone to crash to break the boredom! Somewhat pointless in my view, but I guess it amuses some people!

Spurs finish the season 8th - unfortunately not the critical 7th with the benefit of a European place - just one of those games we threw away would have been enough :( - but amazing considering we were bottom of the league back in January, so not a bad season overall.

Nothing else to report, so hopefully some news about the CT scan to come next week.

Cheers!