I don't want pig flu!

Starting to Think About Work
I called into work on Wednesday morning to discuss how I may be able to contribute from home. I found it quite difficult to sit at home on my good week (ie. the week before chemo) when I am feeling pretty well, without feeling an little bit of a fraud when my already busy co-directors and Jonathan are juggling the balls I've let drop. I met with Kevin and took some marketing work off his rather full plate - I'm hoping to replace some of the embarrassingly out of date content at the company website hopefully next week when the tiredness and ickiness subsides.

Consultation
In the afternoon I visited the Oncologist at the Bath Clinic. The first chemo session went well and I tolerated the drugs well - "grade 1 toxicities". Although the MRI scan of the liver showed good results - the scan instigated by impaired liver function test (LFT) from an earlier blood test. Consequently for the first chemo session one of the chemo drugs (5FU) was reduced by 30%. Since I coped well the 5FU will be increased to full dose in the second chemo session unless the LFT results are worse. Therefore, I may get worse effects in the next session; I've also been warned that some of the symptoms are cumulative - especially the tiredness.

I've been a bit slack with my blogging recently (these last few posts have been written retrospectively), and this has been because the rest of the family have been down with flu and high temparature - Henry first (1 day in bed and 38.5°C); quickly followed by Ben (2 days in bed and 38.9°C - impressive nightmares!); and then this week Sarah (3 days in bed and 38.7°C) - pig flu???. Consequently I have been doing a lot of the child care - meals, bedtimes and taxi runs and it has been knackering. Amazingly, I have thus far managed to evade catching this myself - which would inevitably involve a stay in hospital for me because of my weakened immune system. I explained this to the Oncologist who admired my resolve not to catch this, but said it was inevitable -- we'll see. Either way we go ahead with chemo since the illness was considered viral - they are much more worried about bacterial infection. As a precaution I will have flu and pneumococcal (pneomonia) jabs just before the 3rd chemo session when my immune system is at it's strongest.