[Citroënbender]

My mate and I regularly check in with each other, we have a lot of overlap both in our careers and extended family situation. Today we caught up in town, went for a walk and a chat.

He’s into Round Four of the six chemo doses. Lost most of his hair, his voice has gone up, he’s lost muscle tone and also a lot of his self-confidence. Plus his employer is unravelling by virtue of both foreign machinations and a management shortcoming they can’t address.

Cancerous lesions have now been detected in his spine, and the doctors were urging an immediate halt to chemotherapy to commence radiotherapy. He’s not giving ground - yet - he wants to see where the chemo has pointed him before any further steps are taken.

I heard of an oncologist who had basically not read the patient notes at all before a consultation. It’s hard to imagine how dismaying that would be, paying someone to be ill-prepared for consulting on a life-defining condition.

He’s complaining of being emotionally numbed; unable to experience emotions other than anger and frustration. I’d guess that is partly from internalising trauma but without qualifications to probe this, I can only encourage him to talk about it - which I hope is better than saying nothing.

In a nutshell, treatment has so far not provided much immediate “good” to him, but has certainly allowed time to resolve fringe issues more decisively.