Another clear scan!

If this were a renovations blog, I could have been posting most days. But it's not.. It was created to update everyone on Quent's fight with cancer.

Another round to Quentin. He had another scan yesterday and it was clear. He also had totally normal blood results which Prof says he doesn't see very often. Amazing. I mean amazing that Quent has ever had a result calling him "totally normal".

Prof seems very optimistic in terms of keeping the cancer at bay and doesn't need to see Quent again until September - nine months away!

We remain totally indebted to Prof Hawkins and his team, to Dr Savage for leading us to Prof and to all of you for supporting us through it.

HAPPY new year!

Fragility of life

Yesterday we went to Manchester for Quent's scan. On the M6 we saw a near accident happen just a few cars in front of us. A car reversed up the grass verge backwards, then roared across into the outside lane. There it came to a stop, complete with grass caught in the lights & under-carriage and a very shocked-looking couple in their sixties. We later saw them at the services and they were totally unhurt - it was amazing that no-one had crashed into them or vice versa. Then we passed the emergency services attending a totally burned out car on the hard shoulder - it seems hard to imagine the driver of that car was as lucky.

Back to the scan. It was six months since we had last been and they have been busy transforming Nathan House into a swish new outpatients unit. It seemed to put the old ward and our experiences there firmly in the past - and given it's all but 3 years since Quent finished his Christie's treatment, I guess that's where they belong. Quent's scan was clear again, so we certainly won't be back this side of Christmas.

Talking of which, Quent's great news was tinged with sadness as Prof told us that Mr Christmas has recently died. Long term readers of this blog will remember that Mr Christmas expertly removed Quentin's kidney complete with 1.5 kg tumour, in October 2006. We don't know the circumstances of his death but we know he would have been about 55 years old and that he had a 4 year old little boy. He is a great loss to the kidney cancer world - he was an eminent physician and very nice person... the sort of Father Christmas who delivers the gift of life, rather than the sort who delivers the gift of Lego. We like every type of FC, but this one was particularly special and our thoughts are with his wife and son.

And on Friday, Quent will attend the funeral of his Scouting friend Dave Long, who ran Explorer Scouts with Quent for several years and continued to work tirelessly for Batchworth Sea Scouts until his sudden death. Once again, he was one of the good guys and will be sorely missed for both his work and his company. Once again, he was far too young to die.

All of which has reminded us of the fragility of life and of our amazing fortune. Carpe diem - and may you all survive the grass verges of life!

Winning the battle...

This blog was set up to update everyone on Quent's battle with cancer and we are happily having a truce at the moment, so I won't apologise for the lack of recent posts. It's nearly five months since we last went to Manchester and it's still another month before we go again.

But tonight we got great news from Philip, worth sharing with you. He had a scan today and it was clear - three months after his tough open heart surgery.

And last week our friends Ben and Miranda came for dinner and told us that their son Alex, 3, is doing amazingly well, fighting his neuroblastomy. Alex is currently having immunotherapy (and all that it entails) although not IL-2. He might have had IL-2 alongside everything else he's being given, but he wasn't allocated onto that part of the trial.

Two other family members, both recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, also seem to be doing well.

A cancer diagnosis is a real body blow but it seems the Doctors are making great progress. Philip and Quent discussed the decoration in the new wing at the Christie more than their health this evening. Isn't that uplifting?

Philip is recovering well

Sorry for the long delay in posting. We've been rather busy. I am writing this from Scotland, where I am press passing my book.

Philip is recovering well and was out for a walk when I called earlier today. They have taken out his 59 stitches and aside a bit of a weepy wound, all seems to be well.

Thanks for all your concern. Philip will be so touched when I tell him how many people have been asking after him.

All your loving...

We are so very grateful that Quentin has had two years without treatment. But our dear friend Philip (who first shuffled down the corridor mid-IL2, to encourage us with his story) has not been quite so lucky.

Philip's cancer returned a few months ago and, after a course of Sutent, he is due into hospital on Monday to have the offending tumour removed. It has attached itself to his aorta, so he has two surgeons working on him - one of whom is called Professor Brunette or something similar. (We have to explain here that Philip is a hairdresser, so that might just be his interpretation of the name).

His surgery is booked for Monday and will take 8 hours. Which beats anything that Quent has been through. As Philip said, "If you're still writing the blog, please tell everyone that I am much more ill than Quentin has ever been." If humour gets you through these things, he'll be fine.

I feel for Philip's lovely wife, Sue. It's not easy waiting around while the man you love is under the knife and eight hours of tenter hooks doesn't bear thinking about. Still, I am sure it's all small fry to the cardiothoracic surgeons who do heart transplants with their eyes shut these days. (Hopefully not literally).

All our thoughts will be with Philip and Sue on Monday and we'd like to ask you to send him some of the loving that got Quentin such great results.

Red letter day

Quentin's full results have come through with "no new metastases are seen" and "no recurrent disease is seen".

And Oakley collected his hamster, Tiddles. As I tucked him (Oakley) into bed, he told me he'd been wanting a pet for 7 years.

Days don't come much better than that.

Recycling the diaries.

Each year since Quent has been diagnosed, I have bought a "health" diary. If we have appointments, we write the notes from the meeting on the relevant page. When Quent was having his IL-2 treatment, I noted drugs, rigors, side effects and became a little database of trends over the various sessions.

Last year's diary was a blissful waste of money. I didn't write in it once. Who needs to write "everything looks fine" in a book? That's the sort of thing to shout from the rooftops, not put in a journal.

So I am recycling the diary this year. Today we had our first hospital visit of 2011. Although we haven't had the full results yet, Quent's lungs and abdomen are cancer free. They are the riskiest areas and Prof fully expects the rest to be clear too. He's signed us off until July and the diary remains empty. (Hooray!)

So what happens if we still don't write in the diary this year?

Well, now, here's the clever bit. At this point, I enter it into the Turner Prize as a piece of art entitled "Miracle" or "Trial" or something - and the blank pages tell the most amazing story of hope, determination, discovery, faith, kindness and luck. Pickled calf. Dirty bed. Empty diary. I reckon it's got a good chance.

So, dear blog reader, keep your fingers crossed for Quent's lungs and modern art in the making.