Nadine Williams

The Cancer odds of 1 in 2 hits our home

Life has dumped a heap of dirt on us again with Olivier spending another 10 days in hospital with unmanageable pain.  The hormone treatment has failed to hold his advanced prostate cancer, which has now moved into his bone marrow and blood.

It is a terrifying time as his oncologist delivers this grave news on the Friday morning, two days after Olivier’s Emergency admission.  After lunch, eminent pain management/palliative care expert, Professor Ian Maddocks is at his bedside telling him how to use Morphine injections for quality of life.

He doesn’t want Olivier to return to our island home, but to stay in Adelaide.  This is the one piece of frightening news which we understand: His life is under threat.   Everything changed in a matter of hours.  After dinner, Olivier has his first chemotherapy treatment.

We don’t mention the unthinkable to each other and I marvel that he does not seem at all anxious with the diagnosis.

I spend my days and early evenings at his bedside and in my private hours, I cry a river of tears over the deteriorating state of his disease.   Suddenly there is anurgency to finish building our new  retirement home.

What a situation!  Our house is not even at lock-up stage, even thought the foundations were laid seven months a go.  One of his sons contacts our builder, Stellar Homes, and gives the grave facts – that Olivier is facing a period of palliative care without a home. They promise  to accelerate building and his son Herve reports that Stellar is planning to finish the house within six weeks.

I leave to visit the building block to make a list of trades needed to finish the contract and I pick shrubbery, some olive branches and some hardenbergia to remind him of our little garden patch, now largely decimated by the building process. It is a small gesture of hope for a future at Belair and race back to the hospital to  place it in a vase on the shelf in his room. He is pleased.

On the 7th day, nurses (a wonderful team of women and a fellow named Robert) take a blood test, after which he is hooked up for  a blood transfusion. Another follows on the 8th day, when he also receives steroids.

I am there at 7.15 am on the 10th day, another Friday morning to meet the oncologist, Dr Parnis. It is the day he is to be discharged and also when we find out if the chemotherapy has worked. Olivier is asleep, so I sit in the patients’ lounge and write notes.

Doctor sees me and quips “Now I know you sleep here overnight,’’.  “No, I simply have to be here to meet you,” I say. “Remember the one morning I wasn’t here you delivered dreadful news to my husband and I wasn’t there.”

“Well, we haven’t had anymore bad news,’’ he says.  My heart leaps as he adds “Come with me’’. We are overjoyed when he tells a sleepy  Olivier that although his PSA count is still very high, two other types of blood tests have shown that one element has returned to normal and the other has fallen to half. “It means that the chemotherapy is having an effect on the cancer and we will give you another cycle in a few weeks,’’ he says.

“Meantime, you can go home, but you  do need to follow Professor Maddocks’ instructions about pain management.’’

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
•