Counting chickens

Don't count them til they've hatched!

Joe's bone marrow sample showed too few new blood cells, and so the doctors say he cannot be deemed to be in remission. ie he's not better enough. His marrow has to have recovered enough to be producing relatively healthy amounts of healthy cells. And it isn't yet. So they can't start the next phase of treatment fully (they have already started it, though: the lumbar punctures and the Vincristine).

That's sort of fair enough: everything was down in his blood yesterday except platelets. So he isn't bouncing back up the way he should at this stage of treatment. The doctors say they are not surprised, this does happen etc etc. Writing it now I suddenly feel sceptical, when I hadn't before. Normally blogging makes me feel better.

Anyway. They want him back for yet another attempt to get a decent end-of-phase-one bone marrow sample, next Tuesday, in Cambridge, at 8.30am. At which point they will also give him some more chemo in a lumbar puncture, since they need him to be under general anesthetic to do it. Two birds, one stone etc. No point giving him any more generals than is necessary. Quite how, when they are continuing to bombard him with noxious chemicals, his bone marrow is supposed to recover, I don't know.

Truth be known, they should really have taken (and noticed) blood counts before the last two procedures, and at least one would have been unnecessary. At least that's what I reckon. Me with my degree in History. What? It's got an H, it ends in a y. It could be Haematology. Being a doctor must be like being a football manager: everyone thinks they could do it; everyone's an expert.

OK, so they're the experts, and I have to trust them. And I trust authority. I just do. But authority does need to be either highly competent all the time or good at appearing to be, even when it's not. Or completely open, I suppose. One of these days I shall muse on the health service in depth and what I think it's for and stuff. But maybe not while I still want my sisters to do favours for me.

Really, I am just disappointed because we thought Joe was not going back until December. And now he's going back in 6 days. And that isn't anyone's fault. It's just ...

Shaved our heads today though! To see the heads so far use the link on the right: Check out the Shaved Heads. My favourite is Alfie's. You can flick back and forth all day: hair - no hair - hair - no hair etc. Also note that Joe was supposed to give me a No.1 cut. At a crucial moment the plastic guard flipped off, and Joe carried on cutting. Left a pink road right across the side of my head. It was an accident. Just. So I had to have a No.0 cut. And only fair really, since that's what we gave Joe.

From Shaved heads