My chemotherapy runs as a set of six three-week cycles. Day 1 is spent in the oncology out-patients ward, hooked up to an IV drip from around 9AM to near 6PM. This starts with anti-sickness drugs and some steroids, then some saline through the IV, and then some big chemo guns: gemcitabine and cisplatin. Finally,…

My chemo runs for six three-week cycles, so the halfway point was after nine weeks (3x three weeks). There’s a CT scan at that point, which gives the first real evidence of how well or not the treatment is going. I was very keen to know this, as the initial diagnosis had been, frankly, very…

Those are not the words you want to hear from a specialist cancer consultant. I knew that in the range of possible outcomes this was one of them, down at the dark end of the list, but it’s a little different hearing the words in real life. ‘Okay, so that’s what I’m dealing with,’ was…