The last few days have been interesting!
The NHS has proved that for a large organisation it can be surprisingly efficient. Too efficient in fact.
We've been waiting for the results of analysing the tumour that was removed by Mr Rogers (we've finally found out how he spells his name after spelling it Rodgers in previous posts).
On Thursday I received a phone call while at work from the Hematology and Oncology department to inform us that they'd been asked to make an appointment for Rhys with one of the consultants in the Teenager and Young Adult clinic on Monday. Confusion ensued.
As Rhys is in hospital we couldn't understand why the consultant couldn't come over to see him instead of making him go to them. We also couldn't understand why they wanted to see him and the person that rung couldn't give us any more details. Checking with the doctors there was nothing to indicate that any results had come back from the tests. Even the nurses couldn't figure out why we'd been asked to go to the clinic.
We did eventually find out that when youngsters reach Rhys' age that they do get migrated from the children's clinic to the teenage and young adult clinic. It looked like a case of bad timing.
But no!
Friday saw us receive some news from Steve, Rhys' consultant, which cleared up everything.
The results of the tests had come back and Steve had been consulting with one of the oncology doctors.They'd agreed a way forward with his treatment. Before Steve could talk to us and explain what was planned the NHS managed to be super efficient and offer us an appointment but which left us confused.
The results of the tests done on the tumour showed that although there was clear tissue at the edges there were several areas where the tumour went right to the edge of what they were looking at, the implication of this is that its possible that microscopic amounts of tumour could have been left behind. Amounts too small to be seen by the naked eye. Its entirely possible that all of the tumour has been removed and that the surgeon was incredibly precise. However, to ensure that anything that remains is destroyed then Rhys will have to have a course of radiotherapy. We don't know the full details yet but its going to be over a period of 6 weeks from Monday to Friday, which means he'll be home for weekends and staying at CLIC House during the week.
Of course for Rhys that's not going to be such a hardship. The radiotherapy isn't going to be easy but staying somewhere that has a pool table is something that he's looking forward to. Now if only they had a ten pin bowling alley so he could keep his hand in.
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