Jane's Journey - The final leg.

Since I started his blog two and a half years ago (was it really that long? It only seems like yesterday) I've always tried to write in a light hearted, hopefully humorous way. Shortly after I was diagnosed I made the choice to be positive and upbeat - no matter what was thrown at me -and be happy and just so very glad to still be here.



But there comes a time when humour doesn't work any more, when all the positive thoughts in the world wont make something disappear. And that time has come.



I wasn't expecting anything to show on my bone scan, I thought it was just a formality to confirm the pain I had been getting in my joints and muscles was due to Sutent. I didn't even ask Martin to come with me for the results. "I'll be fine" I said. "It's ok I'll take Catherine for company"



I should have known better. A small voice should have warned me that each time in the past I had received bad news Martin wasn't with me.



It was a busy, busy clinic again and Dr P was running over an hour late - that didn't really matter though especially as it took 2 nurses over half an hour to coax a few drops of blood out of me from the one teeny, weeny vein I have left in my hand now. That one has now finally given up the ghost and they were eyeing up my feet for the next time I need blood taken. Catherine and I then sat waiting with all the prostrates and their wives and a new young chap who I assumed to be a 'testicle' because he was so young - only in his 20's. Poor lad - he looked terrified. I remember how I felt the first time I came to the Cancer Centre. I remember feeling how out of place I felt because then I looked and felt so well. Now I hobble in using a stick and all the staff call me by my first name and ask after the children and we chat about holidays and who's had a baby and who's getting married. I feel like part of the fixtures in there now.



When Dr.P. called me he pulled up the bone scans on his computer and turned it round so I could see. A bone scan looks a bit like an x-ray with outlined in pale white - except on mine there were several large dark masses in the middle of them. I knew straight away. Dr. P didn't have to say a word. I felt like someone had sliced my stomach open and the contents were spilling onto the floor.



In the middle of my left femur, my right humerus, my sternum, on my right ribs and on the top of my skull were large dark blobs. And a lot of smaller, slightly lighter, less defined deposits.


Bone metastases.


Oh shit oh shit oh shit - it's everywhere.



Total shock.



Why hadn't I seen this coming?



Why was I completely and utterly unprepared for something that I know is a natural progression of my disease?



I had been so wrapped up in what Sutent was doing to my joints and muscles I had forgotten that although my cancer was being slowed down by Sutent, it was still working away inside me like some nasty insidious parasite. And spreading.


So it seems I am on the final 'leg' (yes it's a pun - you can smile!) of my journey. There is no disguising it now - it is what it is.