06/01/20

A busy medical day today, starting with a Zometa (bisphosphonate bone strengthener) drip in the Springfield Oncology Centre. That means starting two a day of the new AdCal tablets for the next three weeks - it seems I should have been taking these after every Zometa, except that nobody told me abou them and the pharmacy didn't give me any until now...

A few weeks ago the routine Q&A assessment included a question about red hands which didn't mean much to me and I let it pass by, but I have been getting bright red palms of hands towards the end of the day for a week or two now, so I asked about it. The first reply was "What about the soles of your feet?" to which I could only answer "No idea, haven't looked!" It turns out this could be the beginnings of Palmar-Plantar Erythrodysesthesia aka Hand-Foot Syndrome, which could get quite nasty if it develops. Lots about it here: https://www.cancer.net/coping-with-cancer/physical-emotional-and-social-effects-cancer/managing-physical-side-effects/hand-foot-syndrome-or-palmar-plantar-erythrodysesthesia

So I shall inspect the soles of my feet more thoroughly and report any developments, esp. pain, to the cancer nurses. But so far there are none other of the long list of symptoms, and nor do any of my drugs feature on the list of likely causes.

Then on to an appointment with haematology consultant Dr.Ch, who is happy with progress and will be writing to big name haematologist Jamie Cavanagh to start the process of setting up the transplant at The London Clinic to follow the next cycle of chemo (early March, we hope). Also discussed the foot/ankle oedema business and he supported cautiously increasing the dose of Furosemide (diuretic) from the current 20mg (pretty ineffective) towards the 40mg that I started with.

In the afternoon, an appointment with GP Dr.Ku to review results of recent blood tests. Main thing is the cholesterol numbers: total 3.68 (should be below 5), bad 2.4 (should be below 3), and TC:HDL ratio 2.7 (should be below 4.5). So that's all very good. We also looked at my blood pressure readings (average 118/67 over the last twenty days) and agreed no need to go back onto Felodipine, especially as the diuretics might lower BP a bit.

I raised the question of PSA (prostate) as I couldn't remember how long it was since I last had it tested. Turned out it was as recently as summer 2018 and OK, so we agreed to repeat in August this year. Now I'm being checked over all the time for almost everything, it seems wrong to be ignoring such a major area of male health. That was about all, apart from getting Fybogel added to my repeat prescription list