Once more unto the breach, dear friends.

I have to admit being a huge fan of Shakespeare's "Henry V". Two great movies have been made from this play, the first in 1944 as a major contribution to British wartime propaganda, starring Laurence Olivier (the picture here shows the scene outside Harfleur), and the 1989 version directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh, in my view the significantly greater of the two.

So the line "Once more unto the breach" is foremost in my mind as I re-enter the chemotherapy fray, having had a week off with my hospital interlude. I had my irinotecan infusion yesterday, and already this morning more hair is falling out, though I have so little now it hardy matters. Anyway, I have been provided with two stylish "beanie" hats by Robin Dykstra (Scott Base variety) and my daughter Catherine (Icebreaker and very chic).

This morning I took my first capecitabine for the next two weeks of pill-popping, but on a reduced dose of 6 per day rather than 7. In this round of the attack, my strategy is to avoid the collateral damage of cycle 2 by four cunning ploys. These are (i) a reduced capecitabine dose, justified I think by my lower body mass compared with last year, (ii) uncle CC's recipe will be consumed as juice rather than slurry, made using a the very fine juicing machine we have bought. I have a suspicion that all that vegetable roughage on my empty stomach each morning may have stressed my bowel, (iii) more liquid. I have not been a good fellow here, and I have agreed to up my fluids intake and (vi) at the first sign of diarrhea I hit it hard with loperamide.

The crucial point is the attacks must go on just to see how far we can drive down the CEA levels. Once they plateau, to no further chemo advantage, we will probably stop the onslaught. The aim here is the "R" word, seldom mentioned by oncologists, but, given my remarkable two-factors-of-two response to the Avastin/Irinotecan/Capecitabine, now appearing in their latest vocabulary. Remission is not a cure. It is however an outward stretch of the time horizon. What more can one ask for!