YOUR TURN TYRONE!

Apologies for the delay in updating you.  It has been another whirlwind week and yet another week that I care never to experience again! 

As you know, we received the dreaded call last Friday notifying us of Tyrone’s trespass.  I genuinely feel for Mr Laban because I know he deliberated enormously about making such a call just before a weekend. However his judgement didn’t fail him.  As hard as it was to receive, he made the right call! Of course he did!

As planned, we all met on Monday to formulate the eviction strategy.  James and Jo greeted us with their smiles of genuine hope and the reassurance that gives is immeasurable, yet conflicts with the knowledge that we weren’t there for a knees up! 

Our first glimpse of Tyrone on the scan showed him to be an ugly, asymmetric brute, cowardly lodged at the base of the back of the skull.  It would appear he has been on the protein shakes because he has grown at colossal speed.   However, I am assured by the radiographers that melanoma (skin cancer) is known to be one of the quickest growing tumours there is.  Needless to say, it takes a real feat of human skill to be able to deliver the message of a third, brand new, brain tumour in the fashion that James and Jo did. To come out feeling hopeful despite your world crashing around you is an odd sensation. But hope is so, so key!

The silver lining is that Sammy’s senses had been extremely acute to pick up Tyrone’s presence and thank God she did!  The bravery, courage and defiance Sammy continues to display is awe inspiring.  Despite so many knocks (we aren’t talking a bruise here either) Sammy remains tough and resilient. However, she did ask James out of curiosity how long Tyrone would have taken to do his evil business if gone unnoticed.  The response was an alarming 3 months! 

It is sometimes difficult to get a true measure of how Sammy is feeling because she emits such an amazing façade of Churchillian valour.  Yet underneath it she is one of the most warm-hearted, loving and caring beings there is (not saying Churchill wasn’t).  As you also know she is no fool and she is of course extremely scared, as it would be churlish otherwise.  However, it is this mixture of fortitude and kindness which makes her the person she is and the reason that Terry is not getting his way!  This recent leg on the “cancer rollercoaster” has been a plunge into a monstrous abyss, a massive kick in the nads and it has successfully petrified us all!  How is it that Terry’s accomplices have been given a proper decking in the liver yet Tyrone has appeared in the brain?

We have been informed that there are two likely reasons but it is worth pointing out that the fantastic immuno drugs aren’t as effective in the brain as they are in the rest of the body (the brain has a barrier protecting it). So:

1.         Either a rogue cell lodged itself here when Terry bled back in November last year.  However it appears odd as he wasn’t present in the scan in February but this is still the most likely scenario.

2.         Or, more alarmingly, that it might have emanated from the spine.  I.e. when Terry bled prior to operating a cell could have gone into the spine and spawned Tyrone back from the spine. 

As you can imagine, hearing the second rationale rapidly induced bile to the mouth and stomach flips of epic proportions. Suffice to say that we have been living this week in a sense of utter fear, a feeling that I can probably imagine assimilates to being given the death sentenced for a crime you did not commit.  It has been torrid because if it were in the spine the brain operation would not go ahead.

I am not what one would traditionally call a “religious man” but I have said more prayers in the last week than in my lifetime.  It is fickle I know but it has helped and it is an alarming predicament when one finds oneself hoping for “just” a brain tumour!  These prayers have however been answered today with the news that Terry’s accomplices are NOT in the spine! Sammy has just put down the phone to this news from Mr Laban and I cannot tell you the tumultuous relief we are experiencing. 

That said the next battle looms as she still has the small issue that is another brain tumour.  Tyrone needs to be exterminated too and Sammy will go to St Georges on Monday to be operated on, on Tuesday.  It is very odd that she seems so accustomed to another 6 hour craniotomy and another spell in intensive care.

Yet again I please ask for your help?  The comradery, support and love that our friends and family have displayed to date is different class and I cannot thank you enough!  I probably sound like a broken record now and I apologise but I assure you that your help makes every bit of difference, particularly when you make her laugh.  Please keep it coming and hopefully Tyrone is but a minor inconvenience, a small bump in the road to recovery. I am sure she will continue to defy her physicians and she will do this with your help.

As ever, all my thanks and love.

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