New Scientist

I'm a subscriber to New Scientist (a UK science magazine) and have been for many years. Last night I got bored and sent a question to "Last Word" which is, unsurprisingly, the last bit of the magazine where people ask sort-of scientific questions, leaving it open to anybody to offer an answer.

So I sent the question: "How many megabytes do you think the approx 100mm cubed of material removed from my brain during the biopsy represents?"

And then I wondered - could it be terabytes or petabytes - or, as work colleagues suggested, just bytes?

And I thought I was the one with the problem...

So I turn up yesterday after being told that they'd given me the wrong day (i.e. the day before), ready for being "measured up" - whatever that entailed. I meet the very friendly nurse who confirms that my radiotherapy (RT from hereonin) will start on the 20th Dec. WHAT? I ask. Okay, I don't raise my voice, but I still ask. "I said that if it were possible, I'd rather that the RT didn't start until the new year!"

I'm met with a slightly blank face. "No, that's not written down here," she tells me. Luckily, Nick is around (he now knows, and accepts, that I call him Nick). We have a short meeting later, although that still means that I'm hanging around in the hospital for over an hour. So I see Nick and he tells me that he wasn't aware that there'd been an agreement to the RT not being started until 2009 but, reassuringly, says that he considers that to be okay.

So I still haven't been measured up yet. What I haven't mentioned is that this includes a CAT scan which is slightly more claustrophobic than an MRI scan. Plus I have to try out the bed where I get zapped which just makes me think of the "Goldfinger" movie. This basically involves making sure that you're comfy because you're going to be lying there for the next six weeks (not the whole time - just for about 20 minutes a day - but they need to make sure you'll be in exactly the same position.

Maybe the next appointment will be more illuminating...

Sad Santa

I have my appointment sorted for when I get measured up for my mask. I asked whether I had to be clean-shaven, including my eyebrows and the nurse laughed and said that unless I looked like Santa, I didn't have to worry. So let's hope Santa never needs radiotherapy...

Apparently, the way that they create the mask is not using bandages and plaster of Paris (another reason not to use Google) but by using a form of plastic that is thermo-pliable. Which I think means that as long as my face is warm they can form this plastic accordingly. I'll believe it when I see it. I now have in my mind that bit from one of the Star Wars films where Han Solo gets frozen in carbonite...

More info after the appointment.

Juuuust A Minute!

I met my radiotherapy consultant for the first time, whom I shall refer to as Nick. He doesn't know that yet. Anyway, he was an extremely pleasant chap who sounded like he was a contestant in the famous BBC Radio 4 show hosted by Nicholas Parsons. He spoke incredibly quickly but he also had a great sense of humour. For example, he said that I should bring along the CD of my most recent MRI scans (I so want to bring out an album with that title) to the hospital when I start my radiotherapy. I said that I could just do a copy and send it to him. "No," he said, and then to inspire confidence in him to me he added: "I'll only forget it or something..."

Anyway - the good news is that when he looked at my scans he described my tumour as "subtle". I asked him what that meant and he said that it confirmed it was low-grade. Which was nice.

He also intimated that the radio-therapy was less of a pain than I thought. Yes, it's still 30 working days, yes I may get nausea, hair-loss and tiredness as side-effects and yes it is an hour long per session, roughly. But the actual time that you're being zapped is more like 20 minutes. The rest of the time is all the messing about, waiting around, and so on. He seemed to think the whole thing was a doddle. But then, of course, he's not the one being zapped...

But, as with Andy, they all seem to be quite laid back about the whole thing and I don't think that's just because it's not them it's happening to. So I have my fingers tightly crossed that there'll be nothing more in this blog 'til 2009!

How much is your brain?

I'm very fortunate in many ways and one of them is that my job includes private health care. This has been very beneficial. It can also be quite enlightening at times. For example, today I received the latest notification of health expenses they have paid out on. For obvious reasons, everyone and everywhere shall remain anonymous but it's quite interesting reading the figures.

For example - my one nighter in the room was £1,300 (and no double-entendres are intended there). Plus £118 for physiotherapy. I'm not quite sure what that entailed... I certainly don't remember anything (ditto, re: double-entendres).

Then there was a bit less than a grand charged for "Pathology" which I assume is looking at what had been sucked out of my brain. Now - when you consider that they also charged just over 500 quid for a preliminary MRI scan and that the op itself cost just under 3 grand, that seems quite a low charge.

Like it's more expensive to give me a room with breakfast and a copy of The Times (which I didn't ask for) than it is to have highly trained specialists examine these especially important cyto-cells that were removed and announce that I'm okay! Relatively.

Ho hum. More news on Thurs, no doubt.