Thursday 1 May 2008

Good news Bad news

Went with Mum to see the Haematologist this morning and there's good news and bad news. The good news is that her tumour is the only one. Her xrays didn't show any other tumours in her body and her blood results showed no anaemia or kidney damage. So that was a relief. The bad news though is that the tumour mum has at the back of her nose is cancerous and has spread to her eye socket. She's been complaining of pressure and pain behind the eye, her eyes are streaming as though she has a heavy cold and she has double vision in one eye. Apparently its all down to the plasmacytoma spreading to the soft tissue within the eye socket. More bad news is that its down under her eye and right at the back of the eye socket near the brain. Its inoperable, at least for someone of my mum's age and frailty.

The consultant did not recommend chemo for her as he felt her body would not cope well with it but he adviced radiotherapy. It will help reduce the size and the swelling in her eye and relieve the pain. The tumour is very large, much larger than expected, too large for surgery. She was told they could not cure it just reduce it and that it would come back, however, it could be as long as 2 or 3 years before it gave any problems again. He kept saying he didn't want to be ageist but in that time a lot could happen. Guess all they can do really is palliative treatment. Mum's quite philosophical about it and quite relieved she won't be having surgery.

After I got back home it was time to meet Keith for our dental check-ups, okay there. So as you'll guess I didn't get any sewing done at all today and tonight I just feel washed out. Think I'll have an early night and start afresh tomorrow.

1 comment:

Digitalgran said...

Your Mum is looking so well in her wheelchair there with you (how very like each other you are?)
I think the surgeon is right and I wish they hadn't operated on my mum when they did as I'm sure she would have lived a lot longer. I hope the radiotherapy helps to take the swelling down and stop the nosebleeds.