58. The finish (for now) line

Mile 55 – All easy downhill to the line.

When the finish line of a marathon has come into sight, I have kept my eye on it, focusing on nothing else other than reaching it. This is not the time to stop for a breather, whatever distractions there might be.

At the Edinburgh Marathon I was aiming to beat four hours which seemed plausible, given that most of the course was downhill. By halfway I had enjoyed the following wind and found myself way ahead of schedule but the second half involved coming back into a strong headwind and proved much harder. When the big clock on the finish line came into view it was already counting through the seconds of three hours and fifty-nine minutes, so I ran as fast as I could. I made it in 4:00:00 exactly.

The run up to my finish (for now) line was accompanied by the effects of my chest infection from last weekend and the diminishing inconvenience of my broken leg. The antibiotics have been slowly working on the former, combined with Fisherman’s Friends to help prevent coughing, but even by this weekend it had still not gone so we ended up making another trip to hospital to track down more antibiotics.

None of that interrupted my last consolidation chemotherapy session on Wednesday. The treatment didn’t take long but we had a wait of a couple of hours for the appointment with the consultant, something we are quite used to by now.

I am officially in remission, the finish (for now) line! My blood test showed no detectable paraproteins.

The Multi-Disciplinary Team reviewed my earlier MRI scan and found no critical lesions, so no one in the medical team could have foreseen a risk in my going running. My broken leg of six weeks ago was probably just bad luck, falling hard onto the pavement as I did.

In years gone by a broken leg in my circumstances would have automatically triggered radiotherapy to deal with cancer cells, but the chemotherapy drugs that I have been taking are so much more advanced and targeted that it may well not be required. I have an appointment at the fracture clinic in mid-April when I guess there will be a further x-ray and checks to see how I have recovered, so I will report that back to the consultant. I am recovering with no pain, other than the aching muscles that need building up. The consultant was able to glance at my bloods and confirmed that one of the measurements indeed indicated that the fracture was recovering. However, I’ll be holding off the running for a while yet.

The low haemoglobin has been slowly improving, and when I complete my course of iron tablets in a couple of weeks, I shouldn’t need any more. When I begin the maintenance treatment I can expect the continued medication to keep my haemoglobin quite low, at around 110 g/L, whereas the normal level would be 135-185 g/L. It sounds as if I can ask my GP if I want more iron tablets to improve on that in future, but as anyone who has taken them will probably know, they don’t half mess with your digestive system.

Maintenance will start next week, so I won’t get my free Wednesday just yet. It should be a shortish visit, for a blood test and then to pick up my medication for the month – all tablets. I will be “rechallenged” with Lenalidomide, which earlier in my treatment was linked with a rash, but which is worth trying again because it gives the best chances of long-lasting remission. I’ll take Len for three weeks in four then have a week off. Although the remission could come to an end at any time if the paraproteins flare up again, if it lasts four or five years I may find that the Lenalidomide becomes less effective and we may need to consider a second line of treatment, which the consultant already has in mind.

I will continue to take the supporting tablets – Aciclovir and Apixaban – and I’ll be armed in case I have any more digestive problems, which are apparently common.

I’ll repeat this maintenance routine every month in future, until the Multiple Myeloma comes back, and with Zoledronic Acid infusions added to the mix a month after I have completed my current dental work, to continue for a year. I can expect to be more prone to skin cancer so I’ll have to be careful to cover up and apply the factor 50.

—oOo—

I began my training as a digital access volunteer at the library on Friday. It is a well-established programme, with plenty of training material, dealing with anything that customers might want to find out about IT, from setting up emails to researching the family tree. There are lots of free services available through the library that most of us know nothing about: access to daily papers and popular magazines via the PressReader app that you can load onto your phone, and a host of options to access audiobooks. It’s probably a resource many ignore because we just imagine the plastic covered books of old, but the library has gone digital in a really big way.

I followed that with lunch with an ex-work colleague and a surprise call from an ex-neighbour for an afternoon cuppa. Catching up with friends’ news is a real tonic, making up for all the other health issues that have plagued me. I’m very grateful to people for keeping in touch.

To end the week, Sue and I headed out for a well-earned Sunday Roast to celebrate remission and the start of maintenance.

I’ll carry on the blog for at least a few weeks into remission, as long as the analogy ideas keep flowing and I have a picture or two to show you.

Thanks for reading and take care.