Poseidon Strikes Back

Poseidon had it in for Odysseus. After Odysseus had enjoyed the hospitailty of King Alcinous, the King gave a him a ship and crew to take him to Ithaca. When they landed there the crew took him ashore whilst he was asleep, but when he awoke he did not recognise his homeland. Poseidon, enraged that they should have helped Odysseus, visited revenge on Alcinous and his people by sinking their ship as it returned home and piling a mountain around their port. Really! Like many of his family, he had a serious anger-management problem.

Odysseus thought he had not reached home, but in fact he had. I had thought that thanks to the medics I was home, but in fact I was not. Poseidon, or one of the other Gods, has got it in for me as well.

The earlier PET scans had shown a good response to the treatment and despite the relapses at the turn of the year, it looked like the lymphoma had gone. However, the latest PET scan shows that it has come back in slightly different places, so at the review on 6th June, the anniversary of the start of my treatment, I was told that I needed a second round of chemotherapy. This was discussed again a week later, confirmed, and the second round started last Friday.

This time they will be using rituximab, which was part of the first round, and three new drugs which are rather more powerul than the last lot. That means the side effects may also be more severe. They will administer them very slowly so this time each session involves three days as an inpatient rather than just one day as an outpatient. The good news is that they are going to review things after four sessions rather than six. They will do another scan after the first two sessions to check on what is happening.

As my immune system will be knocked for six again, the ban on air travel is back in force, as is a ban on attending crowded gatherings, so I have been cancelling some of the arrangements already made for the summer. It won't mean total isolation, and thankfully now it is summer it is possible to find restaurants with seats in the open air. I just have to be careful.

This is all an unwelcome surprise and a source of great frustration, but is necessary as things stand. If this round does not work, there is a third line of defence called CAR-T, which involves taking some of my T-cells and modifying them in the lab to recognise and attacked the cancer cells. They are then injected back and left to do their job. As you can imagine, this is quite an elaborate procedure and has attendant risks. It's a fall-back for now.

The first session is now behind me and it wasn't too bad. The Marsden is a small specialised hospital with no A&E, which means that once you are on a ward you tend to stay there rather than being bumped around as new cases come in. For some reason they gave me a room of my own, probably because that was all there was, so I wasn't complaining. It was quiet, and the air conditioning worked. An air conditioning system which is both working and controllable in the room is always an unexpected bonus and was particularly welcome over the hot weekend. Even more surprisingly, the food was quite good. Because the infusions were done so slowly, I was hooked up most of the time, but I was not tied down on the bed as I have been in the past, so I could move about. So far, side effects have been limited. The day after I came out I was even fit enough to meet a client. Doing some work keeps me psychologically fit and has almost become a form of relaxation.

I have been wondering whether I should get out the barbecue and offer some burnt up lamb kebabs to placate Poseidon and his vindictive clan, but if I offer them to the wrong God the others will get jealous and I could just end up making new enemies in high places. Better to get through the summer by sticking to the old Churchillian watchword of KBO: