Good News

Now that we know the stomach cancer has gone life is improving. Like the Goat Story. (If you have a problem buy a goat. The goat adds so many more problems that when you get rid of the goat, your other problems don't seem so bad because life is improving.)

Prayers

The cancer of the stomach turned out to be a misreading of a misleading scan shadow. If we had prayed, and believed, we might have thought our prayers had been answered. 

T quips, 'I don't have to pray. Other people are praying for me.'

I used to read that prayers had an effect, like the placebo effect, on those who believed. Assuming that their troubles are either psychosomatic, or exacerbated by losing heart. 

But more recently I read scientific trials which showed that a comparison of two groups, some praying, others not, showed no difference.

I read that a UK nurse had got into trouble for praying for a patient. At first sight that sounds absurd. Surely evidence of her concern would reassure the patient.

Obviously somebody had complained.

One can imagine in such a situation a relative objecting, perhaps because the family think the nurse is relying on prayer, not medicine. More likely, they are of a different religion or no religion, and suspect the nurse is going to persuade the patient to give money to her/his religious organization. 

Milk

T buys food at the supermarket and can stop looking for soy milk and buy semi-skimmed real milk again. He says it tastes better, even a little added to soy milk. 

He cancels the shopping trip he had planned. He feels too tired.

At the beginning of stage one of the treatment he spent a day in hospital under observation. Now he tells me he is feeling tired at home - but less tired than when in hospital on the same day of the cycle last month. Then he slept all day.

Wasting Time In Hospital

He has spent hours researching on the Internet. He is shocked that people sit for hours in hospital without a book, entertainment, or keeping themselves informed. 

Supporters

Some of the patients, out-patients, go to hospital in pairs, mother and daughter. Sometimes it's daughter with the older mother who is being treated. 

Other times you are shocked to see the younger daughter languidly resting in the chair while her older mother is standing, watching, or pacing about. But in this case it's mother helping the younger daughter who's being treated.

PEP Scanners

The UK has lots of the PEP scanners. (I keep wanting to call them PET scanners because I can't remember what that acronym stands for and it sounds like PET. He thought there were only five. But internet research shows not only the ones in Singapore (which is so small that from anywhere on the island you would not be far away even if they had only one). But the UK has several in major cities and so do Dublin and Belfast.

Hair

For the cold treatment to prevent the side effects of the drip, a woman in hospital wore a cold 'hat'. She was asked to remove her ear-rings and necklace. The cold could give her what I would call 'frostbite'.

His hair is falling, he says. He plays mournful classical music. Mourning loss of hair.

Hair today. Gone tomorrow.

I play jolly Country and Western. Not when he's around. Living together has many advantages. So does living apart. 

One has to keep cheerful.