2008-06-03 — Newsletter

Dear Friends

It has been a long time since I wrote one of these letters.

Many of you know the latest news (if so then just delete this, and I'm sorry to bother you) but I am not sure who has and who hasn't.

The good news is that I've been feeling really great since getting over the mouth operation and the intensive care episode — am still confined to essentially a liquid diet but you get used to anything — the weight I lost was a 'good thing' and I have felt much fitter and much more comfortable. A recent CT scan of my mouth and throat area has provided good news and shown no return of the tumour. Essentially, apart from a minor speech problem which sometimes confuses people in shops and makes them treat me like a Dorftrottel (village idiot), I have been in pretty well top form.

I no longer have to take my blood pressure medicine (before I stopped it I had one day with very low pressure which prompted me to faint and involved a trip to hospital in an ambulance as a suspected stroke victim — turned out ok but was scary, and I was very lucky that Margaret was here at the time and acted promptly)

The bad news is that a routine lung scan suggested by one of my normal routine pre-tumour doctors showed up two new things on my left lung (they are called Rundherde in German — which directly translates as 'circular stoves' — obviously not things you'd want in your lungs! In real English they are/were circular lesions).

Despite this news, the scan was really a piece of good luck — almost as much a random coincidence as the dentist visit which caused the detection of the original tumour — I am feeling a very lucky person and am exceedingly grateful for that

I was immediately sent to a lung surgeon (yet another Professor for my collection) and he made an appointment for an operation to remove them — this was all about 3 weeks ago.

The operation was done on Tuesday night, 27th May and on Monday 2nd June I got home. So no nasty complications this time thank God! I was not in the AKH (the large state central hospital) this time but in the Confraternität — a private hospital with very friendly and helpful staff and a beautiful shady rose garden where I spent much of the weekend reading, listening to my IPod and sipping coffee).

I have yet another scar to show for it — a year ago there I was with perfect unblemished body (dream on, David) and now I am starting to look like a practice stand-in target for a circus knife throwing school

While the lab tests won't come through until Wednesday, the surgeon says they were certainly secondary cancers — offspring of the late but not lamented mouth tumour. He is pretty sure he got everything out but it is almost certain I will be in for chemo-therapy treatment. This will all be carried out by oncologists under the supervision of my original mouth surgeon but it'll take a week or two before details and plans are clear

Meantime I am feeling in good spirits, am confident and have been very grateful for the visits, phone calls and emails from many of you, my friends. Many, many, thanks!

love to you all

David