23/03/20

Here's the action plan for Monday morning:

1. 0800: phone the cancer nurses at Springfield to arrange another full set of bloods. This will tell us whether I'm still in as good a place (i.e. in remission) as I was when Cycle 4 of chemo finished at the end of February. If I am, then we'll simply continue without further treatment for as long as the blood numbers continue to look good. If OTOH the paraproteins are starting to creep up or there are other signs of myeloma activity returning, then it'll be back to more chemotherapy although not necessarily quite the same as before.

Based on past experience, the nurses will probably say "Can you come in now?" which will complicate the rest of this list. But there you go...

2. Phone the insurers to update them on the transplant plans and check that they're willing to fund more chemo if needed.

3. Phone the GP surgery. I had a prescription review appointment with my GP set for March 31st - which is about as late as I can possibly leave it without running out of a few things. We have one or two of these review meetings a year (can't remember which), and as they draw closer you get a message saying no more prescriptions will be written unless you attend the meeting - and I know from experience that they mean it. A week or two ago I wrote my GP a letter about a number of issues, said that I wouldn't be able to make the scheduled  review appointment because I'd be in hospital in London for several weeks, and what should we do about it?
I checked the surgery's website, where you can normally see details of future appointments, to see if it was still live or had been cancelled - but for some unknown reason they've removed the facility to see future appointments... If the appointment is still there I can keep it and I'll ask the receptionists to give Dr.Kumar a note not to cancel it. If he's cancelled it already I'll have to hope for a telephone consultation before the end of the month, or an unprecedented act of mercy to keep my supplies going. I'm sure someone else will have grabbed  such a "cancellation" spot within minutes.

4. Phone the people who maintain our BioDisc plant (no mains sewerage out in this part of rural Essex, we have to make our own arrangements) to arrange a pump-out. We haven't had one for probably three years, and when they came to do the annual service a week or so ago they told us one was needed.

5. Await a call from the Ward Manager at The London Clinic to give me an admission time for Wednesday, or perhaps to tell me that they're postponing from their end, which wouldn't at all surprise me. Either way, I need to let them know tomorrow as leaving it until the day before the admission date would be more unhelpful than I'd like. During that call I'm supposed to find out exactly what Prof.Gribben had in mind when he said he was happy with the idea of postponing for "up to three months", and also to get his views on whether I should have more treatment or not.

6. Probably something else but I can't think what at the moment.

While I'm doing all that, Sue will be trying to phone the dentist for an appointment because she lost a filling from the back of one of her front teeth this evening. I think it was a raspberry pip that did it - I can't eat a raspberry without getting several of them stuck. I like the taste but I hate the pips, so I tend to avoid eating them in favour of strawberries. Almost every night...