That Roadkill Feeling

Meh...(sniff).
Bottom line, today's weigh-in sucked about as much, or actually more, than I'd anticipated:
15 stone 4.25.
That means in the space of the last week I've put on two hard-won weeksworth of weight. A whole four pounds. I'm back to 5.25 stones of weightloss.

Anyone I say this to at the moment kinda looks at me weirdly, as if I'm losing the plot. And of course to some extent I am.

Back up the hospital this morning, with Ma, for more eyeball-wrangling. Looks like the laser treatment did its job pretty well - pressures are down - but something is still not right, so she has a follow-up a week tomorrow to see whether she needs proper, slice and crochet eye-surgery, rather than high-tech laser tomfoolery. The very thought of which makes me nauseated...

Meanwhile yesterday, Dad's visit was...Interesting, in a thoroughly Chinese fashion.
The consultant told us that we had to appreciate certain things. We sat there, pursing our lips, determining that we'd decide how appreciative we'd be once he told us what the things were, thankyouverymuch...

Dad has the following:
Chronic Lymphotic Leukaemia
Dysfunctional bone marrow
Chronic Anaemia
A touch of Asbestosis
Insulin-Dependent Diabetes, resulting from a Whipples Procedure which removed a good chunk of his innards.
A touch of pleurisy remaining.
And an enlarged spleen.

Now, let's see. What we had to appreciate, said the consultant, was that this is a thoroughly grim combination, because each element closes off treatment options for the other elements. Let's play Dad Battleships for a second...
Normally, to combat the CLL, the best option would be chemotherapy.
Enter dysfunctional bone marrow to knock that idea on the head - dysfunctional bone marrow, I should add, just because I'm hopelessly bitter about the whole thing, resulting from a medical error in a previous round of treatment for what was then not CLL, but Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. They gave him two full chemo treatments in the space and time of one, essentially reducing his bone marrow to a consistency that would excite the likes of Heston Blumenthal. So now, the bone marrow is not strong enough, as it stands, to withstand chemo. Next!

Let's have another try at the CLL, shall we? How about drug treatments?
Welllll that's a nice idea except he's now had every currently available drug but one. And the one that remains is threatened by a combination of the CLL itself (how that works is too complicated for this blog), the Asbestosis and the Pleurisy - these three bastards block off this drug because they vastly raise the possibility of chest infections in a chest already stuck with enlarged lymph nodes, asbestos and pleural inflammation. Next!

How about a clinical trial? Yes, possible. Except, a) you've got to have a high-enough platelet-count in your blood to stand a reasonable chance of dabbling with as-yet-unregulated treatments, and b) you have to be, for instance, steroid-free...
If you combine CLL, dysfunctional bone marrow and chronic anaemia, guess what? It's gonna decimate your platelet-count. Guess what the next available treatment is for CLL?

Steroids, that's what.
So, you choose - treat the CLL here and now, or risk forgoing the treatement and get on a clinical trial...

Are we having fun yet?
Should I also mention that taking steroids will send your diabetes spiralling out of control, possibly give you gout, and leave you wide open to the likes of thrush?

Anyway - to cut a long story short, what we had to understand, said the consultant, was that we were trying to balance five or six different illnesses or conditions, each of which pretty much hates at least four of the other, and wants to unbalance them. In the end, we all agreed to get Dad on a steroid treatment for now, to reduce the size of the lymph nodes, then give him a resting period, and try and get him on a clinical trial after that...

That was yesterday. Well, that and a magazine, and work on my new business (we have a website now - details when I've tweaked it some), and trying to write a novel, and enter some writing competitions, and oh yeah, trying to Disappear...

So people are right when they tell me "Don't sweat it, you'll pull it back around when life is less frankly mental." No really, they are. But still, to get on a scales and see the numbers start to backslide, not just a little, but a lot.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here feeling like I've been run over by a van on a Wild West backroad. Feels like being Wily Coyote in a Road Runner cartoon, where the van runs over him, and then he gets up, and the van reverses back over him, and then goes forward and backward about eight more times, just for the comedy of the scene.

Yes, yes, I know, it's just Man-Flu. But it's also like Man-Flu that's phoned around and picked up all its Man-Flu mates to kick the bejeesus out of some poor schmuck it found lying on the side of the road.

And tomorrow I go to London and Ipswich for the rest of the week. Gonna be cool to see my pal Wendy and get finally introduced to her fiancee Ria. But on the other hand, I'm feeling like crap, Re-Appearing at a rate of knots, and going away at a time when 98% of me thinks I should stay home...On the other hand (it's a Beeblebrox deal), with any luck, three days of being away from home will break me out of a stupid habit into which I've fallen this last week or so - having fairly hefty bread-based meals at lunchtime. On the fourth and probably final hand, it also means the opportunities for exercise will be significantly reduced.

Oh and on one final hand - I'm in London for three days...come to me Starbucks, my frothy latte darling...