In the end she had six rounds of Chemo, once every month, with pills to take in between. These were to stop the sickness, and to counteract all the other nasty side effects.
She had to eat properly – we would buy high protein drinks, some even on prescription, so that we had a cupboard full (they got thrown away eventually as she couldn’t stand them). I had late night trips to buy angel delight (splodge as my childhood fondly called it), and came adept at cooking pancakes. Anything to keep her strength up.
After three rounds we had had a scan, and a meeting with our specialist. Thankfully the pain was doing the job, and we were seeing shrinkage of the tumours. This was amazing news, as it meant the aim of surgery might be coming.
It was also around this time that we had a battle with our life insurance company. Now, we had taken out cover fortuitously only a couple of years ago, and thought we were covered for an event like this – don’t we all. But oh, no, we weren’t, at least not easily.
There is a distinction between terminal illness cover and critical illness cover – and we had only got terminal. This meant that while hoping beyond all hope that the treatment was doing some good, and our specialist doing the same, we had to give evidence to the insurance company that showed a twelve month or less life expectancy. Always check the small print…
But after all that, the six rounds of treatment did work, the tumours had reduced, and she could take a break to get some strength. We took a short holiday with our children, and prepared to enjoy Christmas, in the knowledge that the probable next step was a peritonectomy.