The next phase

I saw my oncologist on Wednesday last week and we were finally in a position to decide what my next treatment would be.

I won’t go into the details regarding why it took a while for us to work out what the options were as it’s quite complicated. Suffice to say that on Friday night I started on my third line of treatment for the secondary breast cancer I was diagnosed with in Spring 2019. The other two lines each worked for around a year before the cancer – which has progressed but is still confined to my bones and my bone marrow – found a way of outwitting them. I’d be more than happy to get anything near a year with this treatment I’ve just started. As with any treatment, though, there’s no guarantee it will work at all.

The drugs I’m now on are everolimus (brand name Afinitor) and exemestane (Aromasin). They come in tablet form and I’ve to take one of each, once a day. One has to be taken with or after a meal, so I’ll take both after our evening meal. I will also still have Zometa, the bone-strengthening dug I have monthly via iv infusion.

One of the drugs can cause painful mouth sores so I’ve been given a mouth wash to use to help prevent the sores occurring or to alleviate the discomfort they’ll cause if they do occur.

I’d been off treatment since finishing my final cycle of capecitabine – the oral chemotherapy drug I’d been on – at the end of the first week of April. It’s a relief to be back on medication, even if the drugs I’m now taking come with a horribly long list of common side effects.

I have to admit that not being on any treatment freaked me out, at least initially. “Should I not start another round of capecitabine while we wait?”, I asked the consultant. No, she said, adding that there was little point in taking a drug that has essentially stopped working. “You’d get all the toxicity but none of the benefits.”

As for my new regimen, everolimus is a targeted therapy that blocks cancer growth . Exemestane is an oestrogen blocker. As I’ve explained before, the breast cancer I have is the most common type in that it thrives on oestrogen. Even when when post-menopausal, they still produce a certain amount of oestrogen.

Some of the potential side effects of these two new drugs are very common. Some are specific to everolimus and some to exemestane but I’ll just lump some of them together here: pneumonitis (inflammation of the lungs); mouth sores; taste changes; the usual increased risk of infection; muscle and/or joint pain; fatigue; feeling low; diarrhoea and/or constipation (go figure); liver and kidney dysfunction; sleep disruption; back pain; headaches; hot flushes; and pain, numbness and tingling in hands and fingers. And that’s just the ones classed as very common, which means they affect more than one in ten people taking them.

Of the above, I really wouldn’t notice the sleep disruption as I’m already sleeping badly as a result of the pain I have in my feet, a side effect of capecitabine and also of the chemo I had back in 2015 when I was being treated for primary breast cancer. I’d also been having some joint pain although this has eased off in recent days. To be honest, I also think I’ve been sleeping slightly better too (more on that below).

“I have a feeling that things are going to be tougher from here on in,” I said to the oncologist after I’d signed the consent form for everolimus and listened to her go through the potential side effects. She didn’t disagree but did say she hoped we could get to a place where I was “healthy and happy” on these two new drugs. Let’s hope we can. I honestly would never have thought I’d be so well (as it were) over the two years since my diagnosis. If we can somehow maintain some of that, great.

The next treatment after this one may well involve weekly iv chemo (it’s not quite weekly as you get every fourth week off). This would mean a massive change in terms of quality of life so there’s good reason to hope this latest regime keeps my cancer in check for a good long while.

I’ve seen a lot this past week of St George’s, the hospital in south west London where I’m being treated.

On Tuesday, I went to have blood taken for tests before seeing the consultant on Wednesday. If any of you have wondered what blood tests are done, take a look at what was ordered for me on one occasion recently.

Also on Wednesday, after seeing the consultant, I had a chest x-ray. Given that everolimus can affect your lungs, doing an x-ray now means they will have baseline images to compare with those from the chest x-ray I’ll have after my first 30-day cycle of everolimus and exemestane.

On Thursday, I popped in to pick up some painkillers from the pharmacy, together with some low-dose sleeping tablets. I’m extremely reluctant to take them but not being able to sleep despite taking strong painkillers is no laughing matter. I have so far only felt the need to take them once but I guess it’s good to know they’re there. There’s no point being a martyr about it.

On Friday, I went to pick up the new drugs I’m on; one of them wasn’t in stock when I’d been there earlier in the week. After that I went straight to the Dermatology Department to have two moles on the sole of my right foot and one of my right calf removed. It was done under local anaesthetic. I’m bandaged up nicely and I’d to “take it easy” and have my feet up for the first couple of days after the procedure. I can go on walks but I’ve not to do anything more strenuous than that for at least two weeks, depending on how the healing goes.

The dermatologist who did the procedure reiterated that they were removing the moles for precautionary measures and that they weren’t expecting to find anything nasty when it came to examining the removed tissue.

It’s been a pretty tough few weeks on the health front. On other fronts, though, things have been great. It’s like I’m living two parallel lives.

Work, for example, continues to be challenging and rewarding. Socially, I’ve played tennis and I’ve met up with lots of different sets of friends now that some of the pandemic-related restrictions have been lifted. We’re still not allowed to socialise indoors so we’ve met in pub beer gardens, in roof-top restaurants, in people’s own back gardens, in parks and in the countryside. Lots more gatherings are planned over the next few weeks. The next big thing will be going to visit and stay with friends and/or family around the country that I haven’t seen in ages once that’s allowed.

The weather’s been good.

We’ve done the planned mini revamp of our garden.

It’s Spring. Everything is in bloom and there are lots of baby birds at the pond on Tooting Common at the bottom of our road.

Friday was a beautiful day and I went on a short bike ride before going to the hospital.

I cycled to and around our four local “commons” – Streatham, Balham, Clapham and Wandsworth – to remind myself of how lucky we are to have these beautiful open green spaces so close at hand despite living in the busy capital.

Our boys were home from uni for a couple of weeks and seemed to be on good form – remarkable given the year they’ve had.

Their returning home was well timed as they – the younger one in particular – did the painting that was involved in the garden upgrade.

I’ve also had a haircut, using a voucher our sons gave me as a Christmas present. They bought it days before the latest lockdown that forced all hairdressers to close. They’ve only just re-opened. My hair hadn’t been that long for decades.

My husband continues to be amazing. I could not be more grateful.

Medically, I continue to be closely monitored. I have blood tests and a follow-up with the consultant in two weeks’ time, mid-way through the first cycle. Before then, though, I’m to have an MRI scan of my liver. The consultant wants to see whether anything suspect is happening there that might not have been picked up on the recent PET-CT scan I had.

Let’s see how it all goes. We have no other choice. In the meantime, we’ll get on with enjoying those parts of life over which we have some control.

Restrictions lifting and moving on to the next treatment

Pandemic restrictions are loosening and things are looking up on that front. 

We’ve been limited to meeting up with just one other person outside for exercise since December but now the rule of six – whereby you are allowed to gather outside in groups of up to six, including in your back garden – is back. I’m already taking advantage of it. 

In the fading sunshine one evening last week, my husband and I had beers on Tooting Common at the bottom of our street with some friends who live locally. 

We were all so happy to see each other and to be able to actually sit down and relax and enjoy each other’s company. We’ve been meeting up on Zoom and we’ve had some really fun evenings. However, as everyone knows, it’s really, really, really not the same as meeting up in person. This group largely comprises people who were parents of children who attended the primary school at the time our two sons went there. Before the pandemic, we’d meet up once a month in a local pub. Our boys are now 22 and 20 and it’s been a great way of keeping in touch and maintaining friendships. There are way more than six of us; we did more or less manage to arrange ourselves into groups of six. 

Talking of our sons, one is already back home from uni for the Easter holidays. The other is due back later today or tomorrow. We haven’t seen them in three months. That’s not long compared with a lot of people, I know, but this is longest we haven’t seen each other in person. On Easter Sunday, the four of us will have lunch in our garden with my two London-based nieces. Blankets may be involved, depending on the weather. 

Tomorrow morning I’m meeting up, again on the common, with some other good, local friends, all women this time. We’ll be having coffee and pastries rather than beer! Before the pandemic, we would meet up in each other’s houses once a month to catch up, watch a film and discuss it afterwards. We’ve continued throughout the pandemic, remotely. Someone chooses a film, we have a chat on Zoom then we each watch the film in our own homes and we catch up again afterwards on Zoom to discuss the film. It’s been great. There are five of us in this little group, and I think it’s safe to say we all very much appreciate, and take strength and comfort from, each other. Since last August, the group has experienced three bereavements. My mum died from an infection, one member lost her sister to dementia, and another her husband, tragically to COVID. 

Later on next week, I have a game of tennis planned with my four very special tennis buddies, followed by a birthday lunch for one of them hosted in the back garden of another of them. 

Also in our short-term plans is a drive an hour or so out of London to meet and have a walk with some friends we haven’t seen since last August.

Pubs can serve food outside to groups of up to six as of 12th April. Not only have we managed to make two evening reservations for that and the following week, some friends have invited us to celebrate the 60th birthday of one of them one evening that first week at a pub where they managed to get a reservation. Also, an early supper is in the diary one evening over the next two weeks with the tennis crowd. Finally, the BellaVelo cycling club I’m a member of has booked all the outdoor tables at pub on 21st April and I’m due to attend that too. There can be no mixing between tables but it will still be lovely. 

Finally, we’ve booked to eat out – inside!!! – with four friends on the very first day that’s allowed, 17th May. 

If I sound rather desperate to be out and about again and see people, it’s because I am.

We’re also having a mini revamp done of our garden. That is very exciting, especially as we’ll probably be spending a lot of time there this Spring and Summer.

Staying with the good news, I’m due to have my second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine this coming Tuesday. It’s not known how much protection the vaccines provide for immunocompromised individuals such as myself, but it has to be higher than zero, so that’s something. 

On the downside, I didn’t get the best results from my most recent set of scans. 

There are some positives. My secondary breast cancer is still confined to my bones and bone marrow; it hasn’t spread to organs such as my liver or lungs. Also, the cancer that’s in my spine isn’t exerting pressure on my spinal cord. 

The bad news is that the cancer has spread within my bones. It is showing up on scans in places that were clear before. “Disease progression with widespread metastatic disease activity now apparent”, reads the report from the combined PET-CT scan of my body from the top of my spine to my mid thighs. The MRI scan I had of my spine shows “widespread diffuse abnormal marrow signal throughout the spine, in keeping with metastatic infiltration”. That said, “overall appearances [of the spine] are relatively stable” compared to the previous MRI scan I had, almost a year ago.

In addition to there having been progression, the relevant tumour marker level in my blood is continuing to rise and my haemoglobin level has been falling. This means it’s time to come off capecitabine, the oral chemo I’ve been on for the past 10 or 11 months and move on to what will be my third line of treatment since my diagnosis of secondary breast cancer two years ago.

There are a couple or perhaps even several treatment options, each of which comes with its own delightful set of potential side effects. We’re still working out what is best and what is possible. I see the oncologist again this coming week, when we will have some more information to inform what the next steps will be. In the meantime, I’m still on capecitabine.

In light of the scan results, we made a change to the other treatment I’d been on.

With bone mets, the cancer weakens your bones. You’re therefore given one or other of two drugs that are aimed at reducing the risk of what are known as “skeletal-related events”, that is fractures, spinal cord compression, bone pain requiring palliative radiotherapy, and orthopaedic surgery. 

In my case, as well as taking capecitabine tablets morning and evening on a one-week on, one-week off basis, I’d been having monthly injections of denosumab (brand name Xgeva), one of the two above-mentioned bone-strengthening drugs.

On seeing the scan results, my oncologist changed from me from denosumab back to Zometa/zoledronic acid, which has the same aim as denosumab but works in a different way. The idea is that trying something different, even though I’ve been on Zometa before, will have a positive effect. I’m fine with that. My position is that almost anything is worth a go, despite the fact that long-term use of Zometa is associated with a higher risk of dental problems than denosumab, such as sore gums and tooth loosening.

I’d only just got used to giving myself the denosumab injections at home. Now it’s back to the treatment day unit at the hospital every four weeks for an iv infusion of Zometa. The procedure only takes half an hour so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much. However, I hadn’t been hooked up to a drip for more than a year (other than to have a blood transfusion last July) and I have to say it felt weird.

Also, because I don’t do things by half, I’m to have two freckles/moles/lesions/whatever removed and biopsied. The dermatologists who examined me said they don’t think they’re suspicious but they advise removal given my current situation and my history of melanoma. 

One lesion is on the sole of my right foot and the other is on my right calf, near the scar from where I had a microinvasive melanoma removed in 2017. The latter has been there forever; the one on the sole of my foot is new. I contacted my GP, who referred me to the dermatology department at the hospital where I’m having my breast cancer treatment. “I’m here so often I should bring a sleeping bag,” I said to my oncologist when I told her about this latest news. I thought it was funny.

I’m waiting to hear when my appointment to remove the moles will be. 

Since I completed my big athletic achievement in early March, I’ve been taking it easy on the exercise front to give my poor feet a rest after subjecting them to such a pounding in January and February. The throbbing - a side effect of capecitabine combined with pre-existing damage from the chemo I had in 2015 – has definitely subsided but it is so much worse at night than during the day. I could count on one hand the number of proper sleeps I’ve had this month. Getting up in the middle of the night to wrap my feet in a cold, wet towel in an effort to sooth the throbbing is not an uncommon event.

I’ve also been feeling knackered – probably due to a mix of a lack of sleep, the cancer having spread, a low haemoglobin level, general pandemic-related general fed-upness, and – perhaps ironically – not doing much exercise other than walking. Seriously, exercise is known to help reducing cancer-related fatigue. And as we all know, if we can exercise, it does make us feel better.

I’ll give the running a rest for another while, but hopefully I’ll start getting some proper bike rides in soon. As for what playing tennis will do for my feet, I have no idea, but I want to play and so I will. I’m not sure my feet can be much worse than they have already been.

Finishing off, we’ll just have to see how it goes with whatever new treatments I end up on. I was on each of the two previous lines of treatment for almost a year. Let’s see how long I last on this next one. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Fourth time lucky with the needle

I’m writing this sitting on the sofa feeling totally exhausted. I suspect my body is reacting to the fact that it took four – yes, four – attempts at the hospital today to find a vein into which they could inject the radioactive tracer for the PET CT scan I was to have.

We got there eventually but at one stage – I think it was during the third attempt – I started sweating and feeling queasy and I genuinely thought I might faint. I closed my eyes, rested my head in the hand that wasn’t being used for the injection, took some deep breaths and, thankfully, it passed. I felt sorry for the lovely chap doing his best to find a decent vein; he felt sorry for me, having to go through this. In the end, I had the injection through a vein in the back of my hand, the second attempt in that area.

Injection over, I then had to sit quietly for an hour while the radiotracer worked its way round my body before then spending half an hour lying on my back in the scanner with my arms stretched out behind my head, taking care to stay as still as possible for the whole time.

Scans and needles generally don’t bother me but today was taxing to say the least.

This was my first scan since starting on capecitabine oral chemotherapy at the end of May. It’s to measure how this latest treatment is working. That is, is it having the desired effect of stopping the secondary breast cancer that has spread to my bones and infiltrated my bone marrow from spreading further?

Until very recently, all the signs were positive. I’d moved from a three-week cycle comprising two consecutive weeks on chemo tablets followed by one week off to a four-week cycle of one week on followed by one week off and the same again.

My haemoglobin level was again within the normal range – albeit at the lower end – for the first time since April.

As for side effects, I was tolerating capecitabine well. I’d been feeling fine on the whole. Walking for miles, going on long bike rides, playing tennis. Also, no diarrhoea whatsoever; this can be a big problem. I’d been getting some tingling in the fingers of my left hand and my toes and the surrounding area of the soles of my feet had been feeling kind of numb – even more numb than usual (a side effect from the chemo I had as part of my treatment for primary breast cancer five years ago now, known as chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy). It’s undeniably annoying and irritating but it is tolerable. There’s still no pain from the cancer itself.

Importantly, the relevant tumour marker had been falling with each cycle of capecitabine. Until this latest cycle, that is. The number is not up by much, relatively speaking, but it’s still up. I can’t deny it was a bit of a body blow when the consultant gave me that particular piece of news at my clinic appointment with her last week. “I’m never going to be stable, am I?”, I think was my response.

Capecitabine is my second line of treatment and I started cycle #6 this evening. With the first line (see previous blogs), the tumour marker kept going down until it got to a certain level – at which point it started going up again and just kept going up. We eventually moved on from that treatment when scans showed signs that the cancer had progressed. Will it be the same with capecitabine or will we manage to keep that tumour marker subdued and hope this recent rise was a one off?

I get the scan results in a couple of weeks’ time. I’ll have another round of blood tests beforehand and will get both the scan and blood test results at the same time. We’re clearly hoping for no progression but we have to be on the lookout for what might be causing that marker to rise.

I could have had the scan next week, in which case there would only be a week between having it and getting the results. For various reasons, I chose this week, even though it means a longer wait.

Pandemic restrictions permitting, we’re planning some nice adventures over the next couple of weeks but I’ll no doubt find myself increasingly thinking about what the results might be the closer we get to the date of my next appointment.

I’ve had many, many experiences with needles in recent years – to have blood taken, to enable the insertion of a cannula so I can be given iv chemotherapy or iv antibiotics or blood transfusions, or, as was the case today, to have a radiotracer injected for a PET CT scan. In all that time, there have been very few problems. Regardless, you always have some degree of concern that it won’t go well, especially when you’re aware that your veins are most likely damaged from earlier iv chemo. This is as good an opportunity as any to express my gratitude to the fabulous phlebotomists and oncology nurses at St George’s Hospital in south west London where I’m currently being treated. I know it’s their job, but the care they show and the tenderness with which they treat you make things so much easier. 

As for the results of this latest scan, what will be will be. In the meantime, let’s take each day as it comes.

Note: This is my first post since early August. A lot has happened over the past couple of months and for a while I really didn’t feel like writing. It feels good to be in the saddle again. 

A cathartic week in Scotland

I very recently got back from Scotland, where I spent a whole week visiting family and friends I’d not seen since last November.

I feel like a weight has been lifted from me. I also swear that for much of the time I was there, I came as close as I possibly could to forgetting that I have incurable breast cancer.

The main reason I went to Scotland was to see my mum. This wonderful lady is 83, has dementia and lives in a care home in my home city of Glasgow. She is very well looked after but things are tough with the pandemic. The restrictions on visiting are very tight – for example, indoor visiting is banned. In common with thousands like her, my mum is struggling to understand what is happening and is suffering quite badly from among other things the lack of social interaction and physical contact.

Over the course of seven days, I saw as much of my mum as I possibly could. I also spent time with each of my five brothers. I saw nine of my eleven nieces and nephews (the other two live here in London). I visited a few good friends, and, thanks to the good organisational skills of one brother, I managed to combine a lovely bike ride out in the countryside south of Glasgow with a visit to a cousin who recently lost her mum – my own mum’s last remaining sibling.I had four 30-minute “window visits” where I spoke to my mum on the phone while standing outside her room with her inside at the window. I also had one 30-minute socially distanced face-to-face visit in the grounds of the care home. 

While my mum now struggles to remember who we are, there’s definitely still a connection. Even if she can’t process the fact that the person standing there in front of her is her daughter, she knows that the concept of daughter is important and that the person talking to her is important to her and that she is to him or her.

The proof lies in the following anecdote.

On my first visit, I suggest that my mum write in her diary that I’m coming to see her the following day. She gets her diary out, opens it on the July 27 page, and I suggest she write “Maureen”. She writes “Maureen to visit today” in that still lovely and still neat handwriting that I’d recognise anywhere. I’m aware that the more memory prompts she has, the more likely it is that she’ll make sense of what she’s written. I therefore suggest that she also write “daughter”.  She duly writes daughter. Then, out of nowhere, she adds a little tick and a few kisses. As she adds the final “x”, she looks up, gives me a massive smile, and says with great satisfaction and pride, “there”. I can’t describe how happy that made me.

I felt relaxed, cared for and loved throughout the whole trip. Despite talking about my situation at length to anyone who cared to and was brave enough to ask, I became aware many, many times throughout my stay that the fact that I have incurable breast cancer was as far back in my consciousness as it’s been since I was diagnosed over a year ago.

It helped that the week I was there coincided with my week off treatment. Under the drug regime I’ve been on for the past few months, I’ve been taking a certain number of tablets of the oral chemo drug capecitabine twice a day – every day, morning and evening, more or less 12 hours apart – for two weeks then I have the third week off. You have to take each set of tablets within 30 minutes of eating.On the week off, I don’t have to eat at a specific time, twice a day. I can skip breakfast if I want. I can have a late supper without having to remember to eat a snack a couple of hours earlier to stay within the 11-13 hour range that I think is acceptable. I don’t have to think about whether I need to take that evening’s supply of tablets out with me in case I’m not at home. I turn off the “Tablets AM” and “Tablets PM” reminders on my phone. It’s nice.

I packed a lot into the week but it never felt rushed. 

I visited friends and family in various places – Glasgow, Killearn, Perth. I rode a tandem for the first time. I had my first ride on an e-bike. I discovered a new park in Glasgow. I was introduced to the music of a couple of bands I hadn’t come across before. I had some really great food. I played tennis. I went on two bike rides, one of 35 miles and one of 20 miles. I breakfasted on wild raspberries during a walk in a park in Perth. I had my first meal out since lockdown was introduced in mid-March. I also managed to read a whole book – Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell.

If you’ve read the post I wrote for the Institute of Cancer Research, you’ll know that I don’t have a bucket list. That said, being on the tandem was such good fun that retrospectively I’m adding “have a go on a tandem” to and ticking it off from that non-existent bucket list! The e-bike was fun too, but not bucket list material. It may yet become so, I guess, once getting up hills on a regular road bike becomes too much of an effort.

On the book front, parts of Hamnet moved me to tears. The protagonist in this beautifully written novel is Agnes (William Shakespeare’s wife). In one particular scene, it’s Agnes’s wedding day and she’s thinking of her mother, who died years earlier. O’Farrell writes:

“[Agnes] senses, too, somewhere off to the left, her own mother. She would be here with her had life taken a different turn… So it follows, of course, that she will be here now, in whatever form she can manage. Agnes does not need to turn her head, does not want to frighten her away. It is enough to know that she is there, manifest, hovering, insubstantial. I see you, she thinks. I know you are here.”

Again, as I wrote in the ICR blog, I try not to worry about possibly not being here for specific events such as weddings – the events we fear we’ll miss may never happen – but that passage did make me tearful. Indeed it’s not exactly easy writing this now. I find the words sad but also hugely comforting. I hope that when I’m gone and people feel they have need of me, they’ll think along those lines and find some sort of peace. I recommend the book, not just for that passage.

You should get the message loud and clear from reading this that I had a really lovely time. If I’m in any doubt at all myself as to whether I had a lot of fun, I have a physical reminder that I did. I’ve got a sodding big cold sore on my bottom lip.

I’m an atheist but I was brought up a catholic and I can’t dissuade myself from thinking in a very Old Testament-esque way that cold sores are God’s way of punishing me for enjoying myself too much.

I get them quite regularly, in exactly the same place on my bottom lip. They never just happen, though. They always happen in the immediate wake of my having done something that’s really fun – skiing, being on holiday in the sun, cycling on a sunny or windy day (that’s what caused the one I have now). Of course I know that bright sunlight and the cold and the wind can trigger cold sores but I have fun thinking divine retribution is to blame.* I hate them. They are horribly painful and can make you feel really low. The Scottish word “louping” seems tailor-made to describe how your lip feels when you have a cold sore. In addition, of course, they’re unsightly – so much so this time round that I’m quite thankful I have an excuse to wear a mask in public places!

Going back to the god issue, I have to confess that I went skiing several times earlier this year and, despite skiing in glorious sunshine on some days and in bitter cold on others, I didn’t get any cold sores. I like to think that was god giving me a bit of a break cos he/she knew that 1) the scans I was due to have soon after I got back would show signs of progression and I’d have to move on to a new line of treatment and 2) coronavirus was around the corner.

The pandemic forces us to make choices. You balance the risk of catching or unknowingly spreading the virus against your desire and/or need to go to certain places and do certain things. I didn’t need to go to Scotland but I chose to go. I took care on the hygiene front and on the social distancing front I did what I could. Everyone was very accommodating. Almost everyone I came across was complying with the recommendations on social distancing and mask-wearing. I felt pretty safe. 

I also didn’t need to have a massive hug with each of my brothers or they with me, but hug we did.

It was sad that I couldn’t hug my mum. This photo shows how close we were allowed to get to each other on the outside visit. It was far from ideal but, under the circumstances, it was the best I could do. It was enough. It had to be. I feel like a different person after my trip. I realised in hindsight how concerned I’d been about my mum.

I hadn’t seen her in eight months. That’s a long time. It was a huge relief just to see her – even within the very limited boundaries of what was possible. It was also so good to be in the company of so many family members and good friends. 

I got back from Glasgow on Sunday evening. First thing yesterday I went down to the hospital to have blood taken for the regular end-of-cycle tests. Today I saw the oncologist for the results. I’m tolerating capecitabine well, the relevant tumour marker is down again and all the other blood test results were good enough to switch from a three-week cycle of two weeks on and one week off to a four-week cycle of one week on and one week off times two. I start cycle #4 this evening. Back to enforced breakfasts and reminders on my phone and, more importantly, taking the cancer treatment that for the moment at least is enabling me to get on with living my life.

*While this image made me howl with laughter, I do of course realise that it is based on an outdated stereotype. One of my mum’s sisters was a nun and she was the life and soul of the party. More pertinently, my mum’s care home is run by nuns. Before lockdown, there was plenty of singing and dancing and fun and frivolity. I hope they can return to those days soon.

Please don’t ask to see my feet

I have three pieces of good news.

One, after getting pretty positive blood test results on Tuesday, I started on round three of oral chemo that evening.

Two, I have had a post-lockdown haircut.

Three, in another very welcome development, it turns out that the seven cases of COVID-19 that had been diagnosed at the care home where my mum lives in Glasgow were false positives.

I had blood tests done on Monday, on Day 21 of my second three-week cycle of the capecitabine that I’m taking as treatment for secondary breast cancer. I saw the consultant for the results the following day. The relevant tumour marker level has fallen again by a huge amount. In just two cycles of chemo, it has more than halved. It’s only one part of the jigsaw but that’s very good news.

My haemoglobin count was fine; it has held steady since the blood transfusion I had around a month ago after my first round of capecitabine. My white blood cell count is also healthy enough, and within that, without any additional pharmacological support, my neutrophil count is ok too. Various other measures – to do with my liver, for example – are also fine.

At my appointment with her, the oncologist talks me through the results and asks how I’ve been. She has previously warned me specifically to watch out for two main side effects of capecitabine – diarrhoea and palmar-plantar or hand-foot syndrome, where your hands and feet can become red and sore and swollen.

No diarrhoea whatsoever, I report happily. “Hands and feet?”, she asks. Fine, I say, showing her my hands. My nails never recovered from chemo first time round and the treatment I was on for a year before I moved on to this current treatment made them even worse. They’re not at all painful but they are not pretty. That’s just my nails, though. My hands themselves are fine, with no sign of the dreaded syndrome. 

This is going well, I think. And then it hits me. “Please don’t ask to see my feet, please don’t ask to see my feet,” I think. I mustn’t give her any cause for concern, I think. My left foot in particular is a bit of a mess at the moment, with a couple of large and unsightly blisters at varying stages of healing (reasons below). What if she suspects they’re caused by the chemo?

Anyway, she doesn’t ask – at least not then. Next comes the physical examination. I undress to the waist and get on the examination table. The consultant does the usual (usual in normal times, that is; this is the first time this has happened since February), feeling for lumps and bumps in my chest and abdomen and getting me to take deep breaths in and out while she listens with her stethoscope. 

And then it happens. While I’m still on the table, she says “shall we have a look at your feet?” Shit. As I take my sandals off, I start wittering on about how she has to believe me when I say that the fact my feet are a mess has nothing to do with the treatment and everything to do with new pumps I bought and wore without socks and ended up with several big and really painful blood blisters and one popped and I had to cut away the skin because it was making it worse and that’s why it’s got a plaster on and I’m listening to myself and I’m saying to myself, “Maureen, shut up, just show her your feet” but I keep going and now I’m telling her – and the breast cancer nurse who’s also there – how I have a permanent flap of hard skin under my big toe as a result of a bunion-removal operation a million years ago that blisters really easily, and, really, really, this has nothing to do with the treatment.

I finally shut up. I take the plaster off to expose all. She looks and says, “that’s fine, it’s healing”, applies a fresh plaster, checks between my toes, and we’re done.

Next time, I’ll just show her.

Incidentally, these side effects can develop at any time while you’re on this drug. You can have been on it for months without any problems and then they appear.

Anyway, the end result is that I‘m on Day 3 of round three of capecitabine – at a slightly higher dose than I was on for the first two cycles. 

Everyone has a maximum dose based on their body surface area. I started on 85% of my maximum dose and now I’m on 87.5%. Ideally it would have been 90% but the tablets only come in certain strengths and that’s the closest they could get. It doesn’t seem much of an increase but these are highly toxic drugs and I guess you have to take things slowly. 

If there’s evidence that the capecitabine (also known as Xeloda) is working well  and you’re also tolerating it well, you can be switched from a 21-day cycle of two weeks on and one week off to a 28-day cycle of one week on, one week off, one week on, one week off. On this longer cycle, you have less capecitabine overall even at the higher dose and your body has more recovery time within each cycle. You also have fewer blood tests and fewer hospital trips; you have four weeks at a time to live your life, as it were, rather than three*. You may also be switched if you’re not tolerating the three-week cycle well. Luckily it looks as if I might be in the former category.

In terms of knowing whether the drug is working, we currently have the CA 15-3 tumour marker level and other blood test results to go on. My first scan or scans to assess the full impact will be sometime in the autumn.

As for the haircut, it looked great when I left the hairdressers – all moussed up, blow-dried and straightened. It won’t last five minutes under a bike helmet, I thought. Having done several bike rides since, I have been proved right, but at least I know what it can look like!

I wrote about the COVID-19 scare at my mum’s care home in my previous blog post. A few days later, the seven people who had tested positive were retested and the results came back negative. To everyone’s huge relief, the original results were deemed to have been false positives. I’m getting closer and closer to deciding to go up and visit, even if it’s through a window. The fact that two friends have just very recently lost their mums has made me even more aware that this is something I have to find a way of doing, pandemic or not.

*It’s hard to keep everything in sync when you’re on treatments with different dosing schedules. For example, I have to go back to the hospital next week, just one week into my three-week cycle, for the other part of my treatment. That’s the monthly injection of denosumab, the bone strengthener that’s given to people like me whose primary cancer has spread to their bones, to reduce the incidence of “skeletal-related events” such as fractures, radiation or surgery to the bone, and spinal cord compression. Hopefully from next month I’ll be able to give myself that injection at home.

Cycling jersey memoirs, Part 1

Shortly after I moved on to oral chemotherapy at the end of May, I got it into my head that I would do a bike ride of over 50 kilometres in each of the seven cycling jerseys that I own.

There’s a story to each jersey. This challenge, I reckoned, would provide me with an opportunity to reflect on each one of those stories. As for the distance, I reckoned fifty kilometres constituted a proper bike ride. It’s sufficiently long that you have to plan and decide where you’re going, but not so long as to feel intimidating before you even set off. 

There will come a time for most of us when we’re no longer able to do the things we love. In my case, that time is likely to come far sooner than it will for most people my age. I was 57 a couple of days ago* and I view every day that I can still get on my bike and ride any distance at all as a bonus. 

I’m on treatment for advanced, currently treatable but ultimately incurable breast cancer. I’ve been on treatment for just over a year, since May 2019, but I only recently moved on to chemotherapy. I take tablets of a chemo drug called capecitabine (also known as Xeloda) in the morning and evening every day for two weeks then I have a week off. I’m coming to the end of the week off in the second cycle. I have blood tests tomorrow and I see the consultant for the results on Tuesday and she’ll tell me whether I can move on to round number three.

I’ve cycled all my life but it was only after I was treated for primary breast cancer in 2015/16 that I took up road cycling in a serious way. Before then, I’d never owned a cycling jersey. Four years on, I have seven. You may think that’s a lot. All I can say is don’t judge until you’ve read the stories. 

There wasn’t a hint of sadness involved in the decision about the jerseys and the rides. It was more a case of providing myself with an opportunity to reflect on and celebrate all the great times I’ve had on and off the bike in the past few years. Also, as I say above, it was a challenge and, as everyone who knows me is aware, I’m a bit of a fan of those.

I managed to complete the seven rides in exactly one calendar month. Or rather, I almost did. One was 42 kilometres, but it was such a nice ride that I’ve decided to include it. It’s my game and I make the rules! Anyway, I’ve included an eighth ride, which was longer than 50k and so more than makes up for the shorter one. 

This post covers three jerseys and the first three rides, in chronological order. I originally meant to cover all the rides in the one blog post but I found myself writing more than I had intended. I did these three rides with my husband, who has only just started riding a road bike again after many years of riding a hybrid for commuting and short leisure rides. He’s loving it and for me it’s great having a new and enthusiastic riding buddy who very conveniently lives in the same household!

Number 1

31 May, 68k

I wore my Mellow Jersey top for this fabulous ride of 68k from our house in Balham in southwest London out to a place in the county of Surrey called Reigate Hill. This was on 31 May, just three days after I’d started taking the capecitabine tablets and I was feeling fine. It was one of the sunniest – and hottest – days of the year so far and there was a lot of climbing involved. This was the first time my husband had used a road bike in more than three decades. Also, he hadn’t ridden anywhere near that distance before. On top of that, it was the first time he’d ridden with cycling cleats.

There was a real sense of freedom with this ride. The sun was shining and it was blazing hot, I was just grateful be out riding and my husband was loving it too. The view from the top of Reigate Hill was amazing, as you can see from the photo. Cafes were opening again in the wake of the loosening of the coronavirus restrictions and there was almost a party atmosphere at the cafe where we stopped for a break. Everyone was clearly happy to be out and about; we were no exception.

As for the kit, I hadn’t really given any thought to which jersey I’d wear for which ride. However, given that there was a lot of climbing, it was fitting that I chose the Mellow Jersey top for this one.

Mellow Jersey is a cycling tour company that runs cycling camps in the UK, France and on the stunning Spanish island of Mallorca. I’ve been to Mallorca with Mellow Jersey three times now on women-only camps and I cannot praise the organisers of these camps highly enough. My most recent trip, in March this year, was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic, but each time I’ve gone, the team has been incredibly accommodating and supportive and has got me up hills I never would have dreamt of tackling on my own.

I’ve always been a very slow climber and I’m even more so now. My haemoglobin count is low as a result of the disease and the treatment and I just don’t have anything extra to give on the hills. I make up for it somewhat on the descents, though, and I’ve never ridden faster than I have in Mallorca with the folks at Mellow Jersey!

Such great memories every time I wear this jersey – especially as all the times I’ve been on these camps, I’ve been in the company of friends and/or fellow cyclists from either one or both of the two cycling clubs I’m a member of here in London.

Number 2

7 June, 56k

The jersey I wore on the 56k ride we did on 7 June is part of the kit for one of the two clubs I’m a member of, in this case the Balham Cycling Club. 

I largely have this club to thank for the fact that I can call myself a road cyclist. I joined this super friendly and open group early in 2017, not long after I’d decided to sign up for a closed-road, mass participation, 100-mile charity bike ride known as Ride London. I did some googling and it turned out my luck was in. The club had just re-established itself, having originally been set up in 1897!

I got in touch, signed up and started riding out with the club straight away, in the “steadiest” (ie slowest – love that euphemism) group. I loved it right from the start. I told a few friends who were also cyclists about it and they joined too. Soon I was regularly doing rides of between 60 and 80k. As Ride London neared, the club organised recces of the three main hills on the 100-mile route so that those who hadn’t done it before knew what to expect on the day. It was the perfect preparation for the ride itself (more on this in the next post).

As for the kit, this was my first cycling jersey.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to all club cycling being cancelled. Even before the outbreak, I hadn’t ridden with the club for a good while. I can do distances but I’m slow and I don’t like the thought of potentially holding back even the steadiest group. I’m fine with that. I still do plenty of cycling in the club kit and am in regular contact through various social media groups.

It’s great when you’re out on a ride and you come across fellow club members. Also, it’s a truly local club; there’s even one member who lives on the same road as me and another few who live close by that you bump into off the bike from time to time.

The friends I introduced to the club have become quite involved, which has been nice to see. I have huge affection for this and my other club, BellaVelo. Last October, in a hugely moving gesture, the two clubs came together and organised a 100 kilometre bike ride in my honour and to raise funds for research into secondary breast cancer.

As for the ride in mid-June, it was put together by the club’s ride captain during lockdown. It too has some beautiful views – not to mention some sharp hills that appear from nowhere!

Number 3

14 June, 59k

I bought the jersey I wore on this mid-June ride of almost 60k in Manhattan when I was there almost a year ago, in September 2019.

I’d gone to New York to visit two aunts of whom I’m extremely fond. They’re my late dad’s sisters and one of them is my godmother.

Wearing this jersey reminds me of that lovely trip and also of the almost two years I spent living in New York in the mid 1990s.

The make of this jersey is Rapha. It’s a high-end brand, is very expensive and cyclists either love it or hate it. As for me, I loved this jersey as soon as I tried it on and I decided to buy it there and then, as a massive treat to myself. You can imagine how pleased I was to find out when I went to pay that it was in the sale at a vastly reduced price! 

The photo here is of me enjoying a well-deserved ice cream near the end of what turned out to be yet another hilly ride on yet another very hot day. If I look sweaty and exhausted, it’s because I was!  

Writing about these rides has reminded me just how much of what we enjoy about life has to do with the people we share it with. 

I didn’t know what to expect when I was first diagnosed with this life-limiting illness in March 2019.  I’m not sure I thought that almost 16 months on I’d be managing to cycle 50 kilometre rides once or twice a week. Who knows for how much longer I’ll be able to do that? At this precise moment, I don’t feel any need to dwell on that question.

The stories for jerseys and rides four to eight will follow.

*My birthday on Friday involved family, friends, tennis, cycling, cake, prosecco, being cooked for, and some very nice gifts. How could that be anything other than hugely enjoyable? On the downside, yesterday we heard that seven cases of COVID-19 – all asymptomatic – have been identified among the residents and the staff and the nuns who run the care home my mum is in up in my native city of Glasgow. They had done so well; these are the first cases they’ve had, or at least identified, and everyone is devastated. Just as they’d announced that limited face-to-face visiting would be allowed for the first time since the start of the epidemic in March, they’re having to impose even stricter restrictions. My mum has dementia and is really struggling with the isolation. Where will it end? Things like this really ram home what a very difficult time this is for so, so many people.