Paul. December 10th 2017

Hi all,
Been a bit quiet on the update front for a few weeks, sorry about that! "Rollercoaster" is a good way of describing things, we're gradually learning that trying to plan *anything* when cancer and chemo are involved is a fruitless pastime and so here we find ourselves a few weeks down the line with a lot of water having passed under the bridge. The key moments for you:
So almost two weeks ago we came back to Swansea, initially just for a "holiday" for a few days in the house but that quickly changed when we discovered that all my treatment had been moved up here too! So we're now permanently in Swansea which is just amazing. In the intervening two weeks I've had an overnight stay in hospital, a move of GPs, and more things that I can't remember! In fact I'm just going to skip to the important bits as my brain ain't what it used to be (which is worrying as it never used to be up to very much anyway!).
So, I went in for Chemo last Tuesday. The issue with that was that the Swansea team weren't aware that I'd had a reaction to my chemo the last time out in Exeter! Not a problem, I was sent home with some anti-reaction pills and the whole process started again on Thursday. (Including a LOT of steroids, I was totally expecting to be superman for 3 days but nothing happened, gutted!) It's funny how different hospitals run their various departments, Swansea is excellent but is also utterly different to Exeter which took a bit of getting used to. So I was hooked up to the pump and the pre-meds were sent in which were quickly followed by the normal chemo treatment...which was also quickly followed by the now obligatory reaction to the chemo. Joy! Cue a whole load of medical professionals, oxygen mask, a flurry of questions, pagers and so on - which was quite surreal as although my abdomen wasn't enjoying things the rest of me was completely calm and at ease so it was quite impressive to see all these people calmly, professionally doing exactly what they needed to do to get me back to normal. For those of you who are interested, it was a completely different reaction to before, I recognised my kidneys catching fire but they were extinguished almost immediately and my core was unbelievably uncomfortable for about 20 minutes or so, not pain per-se but just
extremely intense discomfort. All a little strange.
Anyway, once the immediate requirement of getting me back to normal had been completed the additional medical staff melted away to where they were needed most, my nurse continued unplugging all my appendages - interesting story here, when my nurse was in training she lived in a shared house, upstairs room. In the room directly beneath was a chap called Paul Perkin who hadn't seen her since the day he moved out about 12+ years ago...! I recognised the face but when she introduced herself I couldn't quite believe it to be honest! Another example of God going before you reassuring you that he knows what he's doing, these little "coincidences" providing comfort and reassurance that this really is all planned from long ago and that God's purposes and plans for our lives are well made, perfectly timed and bring great peace
even through situations that we find, in this case at least, a little tricky. There's a great verse in the book of Isaiah from the bible
that says:
Isaiah 14:24 - The Lord Almighty has sworn, “Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will happen.
Everything I'm going through and therefore many of those I love has been planned and is for our good, in this case the outcome is that clearly this treatment wasn't the one for me and so it's all gone back to my consultant whom I'm seeing again on Monday morning, a little quicker than he'd have liked to have a catch up I'm sure!
This seems a particularly good moment to digress for a second or two; when we were down in Exeter there was always the thought in the back of my mind of "Will the treatment in Swansea be as good as we've had here?", "Will it all transfer correctly?" etc etc. Well, when I was taken in overnight last weekend the consultant who was looking after me asked me after whose responsible care I was under, when I replied "Prof Wagstaff" a small gush of recommendation almost involuntarily rolled across the ward, a good sign I thought. When she came back later she told me how her father, a long time Swansea consultant was also going through chemo under Prof Wagstaff and it was his strong opinion that he was the best consultant he had ever had the pleasure of coming across. Funny how when you're in the middle of something a little unpleasant (who likes being tucked up in hospital due to crazy abdominal pain?) God just reminds you that he really does know what he's doing, that he's absolutely got your best interests in mind and that you really don't have to worry about anything... it also turned out that because I needed a CT scan and XRAY over the weekend when we did see Prof he had absolutely everything he neeeded for an up to date
view of what was going on with me. All of a sudden my overnight stay that came out of the blue looked a lot more like it had been planned an awfully long time ahead...
Anyway, back to it. So I'm off to see Prof on Monday morning where I'm sure he'll have a plan for what's to happen next, as for us at the moment we don't have a clue! We wait to see which direction we take on this road of life next, what joys God will bring as well as which pains. Once we find out I'll try and get another update up in slightly faster time than this one...  :)
Thanks all!