Fugit inreparabile tempus

... as Virgil said in his Georgics, which I re-read when I stayed with my sister in November.

I haven't posted anything to the blog for some time. With treatment and everyday life and work, time just disappeared.

I finished chemotherapy and had my surgery in mid November.  Happily my sense of taste returned in time for Christmas! I am now having radiotherapy and have just a week now before that too is done.  Time both stands still and rushes past while in active treatment; it is an odd sensation. Both chemo and surgery went well and I'm making a good recovery from both.

Radiotherapy has come a long way in the last nine years. Although the basic principles are still the same, the equipment and delivery (and imaging) are more advanced. Planning was a much faster process.

Somehow it feels more comfortable this time around. In part this is, no doubt, because I know what to  expect but it is also true that in spite of much more extensive surgery to the axilla  (not to mention lymphoedema), it is a more physically comfortable set up than it was before.

This time around I am being treated in rooms with a mazed entry rather than a heavy shielded door and that is more pleasant. The space feels more open and airy and there isn't the clunk and slightly forbidding feeling of the door rolling into place and locking you in.

It is is, as always of course, helped by having a kind, thoughtful and informative treatment team; prepared to indulge my requests to take photos and answer my incessant questions.  In this I have been fortunate throughout my treatment.