Update

At the beginning of December, the pain in Kevin's back was getting a lot worse, and as he was also losing the use of his right hand, he phoned the hospice for advice. He was told that he needed to have an urgent MRI scan done, to determine if it was spinal compressions again that were causing the problems.

Kevin rung 999 and two lovely paramedics turned up around 40 minutes later. As they knew that the local hospital wouldn’t be able to do a scan quickly, they left voice messages with various people at the London hospital where Kevin had been treated previously. Eventually, one of them responded, which enabled the ambulance to take Kevin to London instead.

The MRI scan was done late on the following afternoon. He then had the good news that they should be able to zap the main tumours with targetted radiotherapy, as they were in the lumber area, which had not been treated before. Once the radiotherapy was completed, in the T4 to T6 and L1 to L5 areas of the spine, he was allowed to get out of bed. This then enabled the physiotherapist to give Kevin various exercises to do.

Hopefully Kevin's mobility will improve a bit more over the next few days. As I had brought in his hand therapy putty today, which he was given when he had the nerve damage to his left hand in May, he will now try to see if he can get any improvement in his right hand, which he can't do anything with now, and is a lot worse than his left hand.

We don't know when Kevin will be home. The physiotherapist will be back on Monday, to see how he is getting on with the exercises.

M