NHS to Private

I have private medical insurance with AXAPPP and have been paying out for their "Comprehensive Cancer Cover" for years. No better time to use it than this...

It's a little annoying that I also had a separate cancer insurance that would have paid out cash at various stages of a cancer diagnosis and treatment. That policy terminated when I hit 70, just a few months before all this started. Well, the premiums weren't all that much...

Anyway, I've moved from NHS - which has been excellent, no complaints at all - to private care based at Springfileld Hospital in Chelmsford with its new Oncology Centre, and the lead consultant there is Dr. Ch (Haematology / Oncology). He's a very thorough, meticulous character who's not easily put off from saying what he wants to say but also enjoys good questions. Sue and I have both taken a liking and are very happy to be under his care.

Anyhow, this is the treatment plan, put together first by Dr.Ko at Broomfield and adopted pretty much wholesale by Dr.Ch:

1. Early hit of steroids
2."Palliative" radiotherapy to try to reduce the size and impact of the big lesion / tumour impacting my left hip joint so as to improve mobility / walking. That will start of 26/09/29, just over a week to go. Have already had a meeting with Dr.Ha, the man in charge of that.
3. After that, VTD chemotherapy (4 - 6 cycles). No huge rush to start chemo early as my blood numbers are still pretty good, so getting the radiotherapy in first.
4. Autologous stem cell bone marrow transplant at Bart's in London sometime next Spring.

If that goes well, should lead to several years of remission (with maintenance drugs, regular blood tests and scans, etc. etc.) before the apparently inevitable relapse and move on to "second line" treatment. Then third line, then fourth... and eventually to a fatally compromised immune system and pneumonia. Probably. Or maybe not - treatments and understandings improve all the time. We shall see.