Welcome @Tinyhands I hope you get some good news. My dad has prostate cancer too but at 81 they're just monitoring (he's otherwise pretty healthy, apart from a series of skin cancer lesions).
Congrats on the transplant @blossomtoes, I hope it sticks.
@bookwormcrazy glad you've made some progress with the sofa bed. I have a stibborn one here too, and our house is very vertically arranged. I wonder if the day will come that we need a bed downstairs (there's plenty of room, and a WC/shower room).
Things not so good here. DH had 4 cycles of paclitaxel and carboplatin between April and July with a good response on PET after the first 3, then they decided to swap paclitaxel for pemetrexed. You won't believe how quickly his hair has grown back, but he's not celebrating yet in case they have to switch back and it all falls out again. The last four weeks he's really been deteriorating and the team said he just needed to get back on chemo and hope to stick to a tight 3 week cycle going forward (we'd had a bit of a break due to travel and his symptoms). One of the cancerous lymph nodes in the groin is very sore and swollen, and all of the pain relief achieved by radiotherapy in April has been undone lately with a huge resurgence in pain in the back and pelvis, as well as the return of night sweats. Last chemo (new regimen) was 17th Aug, and since then he went downhill further and very quickly, so by Sunday he was absolutely wiped out, but refused to go to Emergency and said he would message the oncologist on Monday, which he did. I got home from work and he was worse still, but continued to refuse to go to hospital, and when he finally got a response from the doc on Tuesday of course she said go straight to Emergency!! He was admitted, so has been there the last three days and they don't think he can be discharged until at least Monday. This has been his first admission since the diagnosis in March, and it really does feel like we've moved on to a next stage - as he said to me, 'This is where it starts.'
So far he's had three RBC transfusions, 2 platelets and a whole load of antibiotics, blood clotting agents (he's coughing up blood but chest CT doesn't show any tumours in lungs), morphine, paracetamol and oxycontin. Today he's been a bit more lucid but still very tired. Nights are busy with constant interruptions to manage the various things being dripped into him and in the daytime it's remarkable if we get 30 minutes without someone coming in for something. I made the mistake of saying yesterday that we'd had a nice quiet spell and within 5 minutes we had the respiratory specialist, nurse and catering assistant in there!!
The goal at the moment is to get his pain under control, reduce or stop the coughing up blood, and get his haemoglobin and platelets back in/close to safe limits. He will need more frequent monitoring with the next cycle as he's clearly susceptible to the possible impact of pemetrexed on blood cells.
We passed the 5 months since diagnosis milestone this week, and with a median survival of 4-15 months for this type of cancer every month that passes makes us feel that it's bringing us closer to an inevitable end point. There have been times in recent weeks where he's been in so much pain and so miserable with it all that he's said he doesn't care if he falls asleep and doesn't wake up again. His oncologist said today that they know there is progression, which is a change from the PET scan on 1 July where it was considered stable and well controlled. We just haven't got data or had a detailed conversation about how it has progressed and whether it's enlarged lesions and/or new lesions.
One of my friends is kindly meeting me in the hospital coffee shop tomorrow for a bit of respite. I've been sitting in his room from around 9am - 7pm daily. It's weird being home alone, even the dog isn't here because we had to drop him with our fabulous dog sitter on the way to Emergency on Tuesday and there's no point in me collecting him at the moment (plus he's having a whale of a time!)