1st week back after Radiotherapy

As I mentioned on Monday this week was my first week back after the 1st week of radiotherapy for my Ledderhose disease. As I have commented on before last week (the week of my radiotherapy not the week at work) was relatively good in terms of pain and I was hopefully that this was the radiotherapy helping me much quicker than was to be expected but it was just me being off of my feet.

How has this week been, well as I mentioned on Friday I have started to see changes in my foot. I now have a darker patch where the radiotherapy was applied and this is kind of nice as it shows that although I could feel nothing in terms of pain there was something going on whilst I was laying on the table.

I have now been back at work a week

How was that week? Well in my personal life it was great I am in a really good place there and I am learning lots of new things and some of my hobbies are keeping me happy when the Mrs is out teaching.

Work though was demoralising from the foot point of view. Imagine that you have been off of work for a week getting treatment for something that causes you a lot of pain in your foot, not only have you had to save up the money to get this treatment (thank you everyone) but you are having to travel for several hours everyday to get. You know that this treatment is not supposed to help immediately but you are feeling a little bit better during that week but it could be because you are off of your feet much more than normal or it could just be because the treatment is working. After all the lump in your foot, in your mind at least, feels a litter smaller, though this again could be because you have been off of your feet so any size change due to inflammation is going to make it seem smaller.

So you get back to work and sure you are in pain but you think maybe just maybe it is not quite as bad as it was before treatment, maybe. But as the week progresses you are sure it is not better if anything your foot is feeling more sensitive and you are maybe actually in more pain than you were before the week of treatment but realistically it is about the same. How would going through that make you feel? Because about my foot that is how I am feeling right now.

Still for those that don't know it is a long weekend here in the UK, a 4 days weekend to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. I have been making the most of this by not doing too much yesterday apart from going to a BBQ in the evening which was very nice and today I am going to my parents for dinner and a game of cards. Tomorrow my wife is doing another 10km run as part of her training towards the marathon at which she is hoping to raise money for the British Dupuytren's Society.

I mentioned last weekend about watching sports and I am about to get back to watching the French Open and I watched football yesterday so I guess not much has changed in that sense.

First day back at work after Radiotherapy

Today was my first day back at work since having radiotherapy on my Ledderhose last week, for those who are new or are forgetful this was with Dr Shaffer at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford.

Just a picture of my bench at work. 

I have certainly learnt something for next time and that is that because of the travelling it was knackering and that despite not doing a lot at the weekend I still felt completely shattered this morning and think it is probably best that next time I take an extra day to recover but will have to see how I am feeling nearer the time.

Of course the important news is what is my foot like. Well the answer is that I am not sure, if doesn't really feel different (hasn't softened), it doesn't look any different (same size) and the pain is not any better although a little bit different. I'll explain further....

Normally I have a high level of background pain and a decent level of increased pain when I step onto it but today, whether by fluke from being off of my foot last week or because of the radiotherapy I am not in so much pain at rest however this does seem to be accompanied by a much sharper and more painful um pain when standing and walk. So overall it is not an improvement but different. This is not to say that there was no pain when resting, in fact there were probably more of the short sharp burst of really bad pain than before radiotherapy but then I didn't really quantify the pain.

Today I also seemed to tweaked something in my left ankle on my way back home on my way to the bus stop and I guess this was probably a result of me trying to be nice on my foot. This ankle has been really hurting all evening and I hope it clears up in the morning.

I am also now starting to run out of my pain killers that the foot specialist gave me when I went to see them. This means that I need to go to my GP and see if this time they will actually be helpful or not, I do't have high expectations my I am not sure what I am going to do if they don't give me more pain killers.

Hopefully I see some improvement soon and hopefully some good will come from spending the £2000 for radiotherapy other than just the huge amount of hope it is going to give me for the next 6 months. To be fair that hope is worth quite a lot of money but that would probably be negated by the depression of it not working should that happen...

I am not sitting down watching a program about pain...Should be interesting How to beat pain