Taking back my life

A quick health entry then I see no need to talk about it until March - so I won't be.

After a 9 months of being cut open, systematically poisoned with various nasty drugs and shuffled round the health system the outcome is..... (this isn't worth a drum roll)... no change. That tumour is exactly the same size as it was in February. Apart from one scan that showed it smaller it has been the same size in all other scans right the way through.

Which leaves two conclusions really - the oncologist favours the various drugs are holding it in check theory. I subscribe to the nothing is actually working and it isn't a fast growing tumour anyway theory.

Actually there is a third conclusion which my mother feels has merit - she goes with the maybe it isn't actually cancer anyway theory. (and since the slackarse surgeons were late for afternoon tea or something and didn't actually biopsy it there is slight potential that Mums theory is the correct one - but I don't place a large amount of belief in the possibility - my family and personal history would suggest that if I believed that I would probably need the counselling they are falling over themselves to give me)

Anyway the upshot, after a careful discussion, is that I am going to ignore the whole thing until March.

I will take no more drugs that make me feel sick and subnormal, I am not going to be mucked around by the health system that attempts to ignore me and when it can't ignore me treats me like a number, (so unimportant that they can actually cancel an appointment and forget to tell me) until March. And then if things are going well I am going to bury my head in the sand for another three or four or maybe six months. The oncologist does not actually approve of this approach - in fact he didn't quite go as far as suggesting I needed mood enhancing drugs but he came close - but does agree that I am unlikely to change greatly for the worse in that time. And though I don't blame him at all I do feel that everything he has come up with to date hasn't been exactly a roaring success, so my plan has (to me anyway) as much chance of a positive outcome as any of his do.

I used to wonder why on earth anyone would refuse treatment. Now if I had the chance to live this year again with the knowledge I have now I would refuse treatment too.