Update 8 - Hogmanay 2011 (January 31st for you Sassenachs!),

When Santa got stuck up the chimney he began to shout "you girls and boys won't get any toys unless you pull me out".  I am struck by the outrageous nature of this blatant piece of blackmail from a morbidly obese old man with a beard and a nasty acrylic red and white suit.  When one looks at the facts it is really quite shocking at the number of pieces of European and British legislation this contravenes.  Parking a sleigh on a roof (damaging the solar panels in the process), wedging himself into the confined space of a chimney, stamping soot throughout the house, creeping into little children's bedrooms with 'presents', Rudolf pooing on the front lawn .......frankly it is a disgrace.  However, Happy Christmas from all of us to all of you.  We do hope you have had a wonderful and happy time and that Santa did not get soot on his sack or become wedged in your wood burning stove.

Apologies once again for being rather slow off the mark.  I was rather overtaken by events leading up to Christmas and have just realised that I have not blogged since Emma's last 3 week chemo cycle (hooray) on Monday 19th December.  Emma then switches to weekly chemo and daily radiotherapy (Monday to Friday) starting on the 9th January for 5 weeks.  So basically the worst of the chemo is now over and Emma was firing on most cylinders by Christmas day and was pretty much on top form. This despite her husband suffering from multiple ailments (full blown manthrax, sore foot, deflating inflatable bed etc etc .....).  She has continued to stay well after Christmas and has found that a diet of constant grazing of canapes and sparkling wine seems to be the best way for her to avoid any tummy aches.  Marks and Spencer will be reporting increased profits after Christmas and I will be making Father Christmas look like an emaciated Dr Gillian Keith (skinny veggie food and diet expert for those beyond these shores).  We had a wonderful Christmas just up the road with Emma's brother James, his wife Michelle and their two little girls Rachael and Charlotte.  We were also joined by Emma's Mum and Dad which was lovely.  We now have my sister Belinda staying with the lovely Horace (spaniel!).  She is catering for us this evening and we are being rather spoilt which is lovely.

As you can see from the funny syrup photos below Emma's hair has now departed this parish, although the wig is so good you would struggle to know.  Rebecca is auditioning as the new lead singer for Bon Jovi and Hannah is delighted to be touring with Depeche Mode in the spring as a backing singer.

Predictably I just looked like a particularly scary bouncer (how come our actor friend and friend to the stars Mr Dinsmore looks so attractive with a wig on when in panto!!)

In true Emma fashion she was baking James a birthday cake on Boxing Day and the results are detailed below complete with the birthday boy freshly turned 7 on the 27th December.  

Anyway, I am going to fly now and I wish you all a very happy Christmas and a fantastic happy and healthy New Year (beginning to sound like the Queen's speech).  Love to you all and God Bless.  AK xx

Update 7 - 5th December 2011

One week on from Emma's first new chemo and she is emerging slowly from the after effects.  It has been a different experience this time with the side effects creeping up on Emma as the week progressed.  She has been struggling to sleep soundly and has had pretty painful legs.  However, she has not felt sick and is feeling ok this morning so hopefully the worst is now over for this cycle.  The next session is booked for the 19th December so we will need to make sure Emma has plenty of rest after that session to ensure an energy filled Christmas.  That is easier said than done with my wife as you all know - "I'll just do a couple of dozen cup cakes for the Christmas Fair" whilst feeling pretty wiped out.

The school and the children are gearing up for Christmas now with two Nativity plays this week.  James has been chosen to play Joseph which he is very chuffed about.  He will be appearing in an adapted Japanese man's dressing gown with a tea towel on his head.  Hannah is singing with the choir and Rebecca is playing - what else - an ANGEL!!  I am afraid the irony of this is lost on her - shame really. Actually that is a bit unfair as her behaviour has got a lot better recently.

We have been pretty sociable recently with some of our best and lowest maintenance friends coming to see us for the last two weekends.  The first weekend was particularly exciting as Pete, Ruth and Daniel brought their lovely Labrador Ebbie with them.  We went for a walk and Ebbie proceeded to wade into a very deep bog and get stuck, James then tried to help her and sank up to his knees, leaving a wellie behind in the mud.  However, don't worry, Andrew to the rescue.  Like a gazelle I leapt down the bank ran across the bog for about three steps and sank up to above the knees, immediately grinding to a halt.  I eventually managed to reach James and helped him out and then turned to help Ebbie who by this time was trotting up the opposite bank quite happy, if a little muddy.

When we got back to the car I proceeded to take my shoes, socks and trousers off and we started to set-off home when Emma said, "can we just pop into Grayshott for some milk".  We drove in and parked up thinking it was quite busy for a Saturday evening.  Within 30 seconds of parking there was a knock on the window and our friend Sue and her children waved and stopped for a chat.  "Why are you wearing shorts?" enquired Sue.  I was in mid explanation, punctuated by Sue's guffaws of laughter when our friends Justin and Poppy stopped to say hello as well.  We ended up with quite a crowd of loudly laughing (at me not with me I hasten to add) friends gathered outside the car door which was nice.  The lesson of the day was don't go shopping in your boxer shorts on the day the Christmas lights get switched on in Grayshott.

I think that is most of our news now.  Apart from an explanation of the photo below - St Mary (Berry) came to talk in aid of the St Mary's Roof appeal - geddit!  She was fantastic and had 150 mainly ladies in the palm of her hand for an hour sharing stories, cooking tips and the fact the fact that she could only look at Jean Christophe Novelli's shoes or else she messed up her recipes.  Disappointingly, her eyes are not as blue as they are on the telly - you heard it here first!   I hope all your Christmas preparations are going well and we all send love in the meantime.  God Bless.  Andrew xx

Update 6 - 28th November, 2011

Well here we sit in the Guildford Nuffield, Treatment Room 5 with the click swish, click swish of the drug delivery machine - it is 3.30 p.m. and Emma is most of the way through her chemo and anti sickness cocktail and so far so good.  She had about 1 hour of sleep before lunch, a bowl of soup and some egg sandwiches.  A pretty good lunch for Emma.  New hospital for chemo, new nurses, new drugs, new consultant and generally a different regime.  It feels like we have had new broom sweep through and this can only be a good thing.  


Now we have arrived home and Emma is in pretty good form, if really tired.  It went well today with the worst side effect being 5 minutes of a tingly bottom!  Emma has a much smaller bag of anti sickness drugs than she had before and the oncology nurse thinks that Emma will tolerate this combination of drugs pretty well.  Even if there are any nasty side effects then there is 24/7 cover at the Nuffield - another improvement on the Mount Alvernia.  We will hope and pray that the lack of side effects continues.  Anyway I am going to fly now, but just to say thanks to everyone for their messages and practical delivery of support and for your prayers. We are so lucky to have you all.  With love.  God Bless.  Andrew xx    

Update 5 - 21st November, 2011

A point of clarification from my last blog.  I mentioned the R word (redundancy) in passing and realised that some of you will not know that my previously very supportive employers Smiths Detection made me redundant the week after Emma started her chemo.  I am currently on gardening leave until the end of January and then leave the business.  I have decided to set up an export sales consultancy business called IQexport, which is designed to help Small and Medium Sized (SMEs) businesses to export in a more strategic and systematic way.  We just need some customers now and more importantly some revenue.  In the meantime I have started working part-time (4 days per month) as Sales Manager for a friend of mine with a satcomms and camera business.  Thoroughly enjoying it, although the commute can be tricky - just over 1 mile!!!


Regarding our beautiful friend Emma (and wife of course in my case - lucky boy that I am!) we saw the new consultant Dr Illsley on Thursday, having navigated our way around her rather prickly secretary / guard dog.  She was very nice and seemed to be very thorough and knowledgeable.  The plan is as follows.  Emma is in hospital today for a liver function test which takes several hours.  This is just a precautionary check.  Then a week today she will go to the Guildford Nuffield to have the first of two three week long cycles of chemotherapy.  Dr Illsley has decided to use a different set of chemo drugs for obvious reasons and she hopes to minimise the side effects, although unfortunately Emma is likely to lose her hair again which is not ideal.  Once these two cycles are complete and they have hopefully beaten up the cancer cells a bit, then the chemo will switch to smaller weekly doses, accompanied by daily Monday to Friday radiotherapy sessions.  These will last for 5 weeks.  


All in all the complete treatment will last around 12 weeks.  The radiotherapy is in effect a powerful and highly focused x-ray which only takes a few minutes each day to administer.  Dr Illsley (disappointingly no nickname yet - but we are working on it) hopes that there will be minimal side effects (on the feeling sick front) except perhaps a bit more tiredness.  So it is a finite period of treatment which should be finished by the beginning of March which is good news.  The radiotherapy has the ability to kill the cancer cells, so we need to hope and pray that this is the outcome for Emma.  


The negative side of this treatment is that the radiotherapy will inflame the area of her oesophagus being treated, which as you may know is already quite constricted because of the cancer.  This will happen fairly quickly after the start of the radiotherapy and may take several months to calm down again.  So this will make eating solids tricky for a quite a while.  This means that the delicious Spanish omelette that I lovingly prepared for Emma on Friday night will be off the menu - it had the consistency of a house brick and Emma described it as "probably the most disgusting thing you have ever cooked me" so there may be few tears shed at the demise of the Spanish omelette from the radiotherapy menu.  I am better at soup - honestly, and do a lovely range of coffees.  


This inflammation also means they cannot check on the effect of the two therapies until Emma's oesophagus has settled down.  So there will be a rather frustrating three month wait after the treatment finishes before we have the results.  


On the home front, the children are all well, with Rebecca still able remind us about the important things in life.  The choice of colour of pants in the morning, the vital school dress versus school skirt debate and of course not forgetting the life or death decision of a long sleeved shirt or not.  It is not easy being four years old you know.  These decisions can take up to 30 minutes to work through in the morning.  This is PRIOR to moving onto the hairstyle discussions, which clips will I wear, what kind of cereal will I eat, can I do up the car seat belt, will I wear my coat to school................. Children are always such a blessing.  

The mighty under 7s - James on the right picking his nose of course

Basically, they are all coping really well we think, with our wonderful network of friends helping us to keep the routine pretty much in tact.  James's football team (Headley YFC under 7s) are on real roll.  Unbeaten since the second game of the season and beginning to get a bit of reputation locally as the team to beat.  Very worryingly I think I might be starting to like football - oh no! A situation probably soon to be compounded by another dismal six nations campaign by Scotland.   

Hannah's 9th birthday tea with Poppy, Tiggs, James, Emma, Jules, Rebecca and Laura 

Hannah turned nine on 15th of November and she had a nice birthday tea party on the day complete with an Emma baked birthday cake and chinese lanterns (courtesy of Fi Morris).  Lots of lovely presents including what appears to be an entirely new wardrobe of clothes and some appallingly rubbish CDs (you're getting old Andrew).  We also had an amazing healing session last week with members of our church family which was a humbling and moving experience.

Anyway, if any of you are still awake after all that waffling I hope that brings you up to speed with Emma and the Kinniburgh Clan (Southern enclave) generally.  Love to all and God Bless in the meantime.  Andrew  xx

Two out of three of my beautiful girls (a slightly old photo but worth posting I think!)

Update 4 - 9th November, 2011

Emma's endoscopy a couple of weeks ago has made a big difference to her swallowing so she is able to eat pretty much normally again which is fantastic.  We even managed to get to an epic 40th bash in London the next day courtesy of the fine Mr Andy Oliver and his lovely wife Elsa.  We then followed that with a spectacular dinner the next weekend at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant named 'Gordon Ramsay' (original name that) with the delightful Downs and the marvellous Morrises for a belated 40th birthday blow out for Emma.  The food was exceptional, service outstanding and all in all an epic night - if a little extravagant for one just made redundant! There was even a man to open the toilet door - I was relieved to see he didn't follow me in and offer to hold or shake anything for me.  

Yesterday Emma saw Gazza the oncologist.  He reported on last week's PET scan and said that there had really been no change since the chemo started.  No better, but more importantly no worse, and no further spread.  So here is the deal.  The chemo has now stopped immediately because he does not think that it will do  anything more.  So he has now referred us to the radiologist and they are recommending a course of radiotherapy for Emma.  This will focus on blasting the disease in her oesphagus and then they will rescan and look again at the small hot spot in her lung which will not be affected by the radiotherapy.  They then may decide to operate on the lung area but that is a way down the road.

So the next stage in our journey is just beginning with the start of radiotherapy.  We know nothing about the treatment or the side effects so it will be a learning curve to start with.   But I am sure we will settle into routine of sorts pretty quickly.

Please will you pass this link on to anyone that you think might be interested.  I have sent several invites from the blog site but I am not convinced they are reaching everyone.  If people can't find it then try going into google and typing emma-kinniburgh blog.  Love to all in the meantime.  God Bless.  Andrew    

Update 3 - 26th October 2011

SORRY SORRY SORRY.  Blogs are great aren't they, if you keep them up to date. Sorry it has been a bit hectic over the last couple of weeks.  Emma had her 2nd (sorry I put 3rd by mistake) cycle of chemo last Wednesday and it seemed to go pretty smoothly again.  She has not been feeling too sickly but has been very tired this time - not surprising really.  She has also been having increasing trouble swallowing food and pills (of which she has about 25 per day at peak after the chemo). This is clearly a concern as it seems her oesophagus is up to its old tricks again which is frankly very irritating.  Emma is booked in for a endoscopy on Friday which will hopefully achieve the twin aims of seeing what is going on and also to hopefully give it a stretch and make it a bit more comfortable for her to eat and swallow.

On the home front Emma and the children are in Tunbridge Wells at the moment on half term holidays.  I managed a walk around the Devil's Punchbowl at the weekend with the children which was lovely and so quiet with no A3 roaring in the background - photo below.  Rebecca got caught a little short and she was just having her 'picnic wee' when a very friendly couple of border terriers appeared out of nowhere with their owners.  Much amusement all round and a good motivator for Rebecca to get a move on, with a couple of terriers scampering around her nether regions.  This was followed by an excellent pine cone fight and an ice cream at the cafe - well it was above 0 degrees therefore perfect weather for an ice cream according to James!

Having dropped Emma and the kids in TW I have come back home to do some work in the meantime.  Has anyone tried to leave a comment recently - it seems to be impossible?  Any tips much appreciated.  Also please forward this link to anyone who might interested.

Love to all in the meantime.  God Bless.

Andrew

Update 2 - 2nd October, 2011

Sorry I have been off line for little while.  It has been a pretty busy few days since Emma had her first chemotherapy session on Wednesday and I have to say that it has been an amazing contrast to Emma's first chemo experience in 2008.  Some of you will remember Emma had a really extreme reaction last time and this coupled with Rebecca being so young and various other things made it a pretty challenging time.  Emma was pretty much bed ridden for between 6 and 10 days after each cycle. 

Here we are on day four and we all managed to get to the Harvest Festival this morning and Emma has been doing magnificently well.  Even her tingly feet and hands have not been so extreme.  Helped in part by the hospital issuing her with some rather fetching orange knitted padded gloves which are half coated in blue rubber.  This avoids Emma feeling like she has been electrocuted every time she puts her hand in the fridge.  I am searching for a matching pair of socks and perhaps a hat for the winter which I think would complete the look.

We have finally admitted to each other on our coping strategies for dealing with the current situation. For me it is top quality late night TV such as Mighty Ships and Night Cops.  For Emma there is the appearance of new 'essentials' like two new flowery mugs because "sometimes I like a smaller mug of tea" - my suggestion to not fill the existing ones quite so full was not well received.   The kids seem to be coping well, with absolutely no sign of any extra help or lack of arguing from them - life continues for them unabated.  I suppose this must be viewed as success of some sort.

Sorry some of you have been struggling to get onto this blog. In true technophobe fashion I am ok when everything works fine.  When it goes wrong then I am quickly at sea and totally lost.  Anyway better stop now as it is a school night and I am still recovering from a difficult weekend of rugby results!! Georgia - where were you when we needed you.  

God Bless. 

Andrew    

Update 1 21.09.11

In a vain attempt to "get with the programme and down wit da kids innit" I am posting a blog for the first time.   I plan to use this instead of email to keep everyone appraised of Emma's progress with her latest batch of treatment.  I hope this works for everyone.  I would appreciate any feedback that anyone has and if a blog is a rubbish idea and you would prefer to get traditional email.     


For those who have not heard I regret to report that Emma has some more small pockets of active cancer cells in her oesophagus and lung.  They have been caught very early via a PET scan and the same fantastic team of surgeon Shaun Preston and oncologist Gary Middleton are on the case.   We saw Gary yesterday (Tuesday) and he plans to put Emma back on a similar chemotherapy regime as before, excluding the evil red epyrubison which should hopefully mean Emma's barnett remains in place.  Gary's comment was that if you look hard enough you will find hotspots in most people's bodies. So these really are tiny bits but they need to be dealt with quickly and severely.  We have the greatest confidence in these two doctors - they are fine fellows and at the top of their game - we are very lucky to be in their jurisdiction.


The treatment will start next Wednesday and is likely to continue for multiple three week cycles with a PET scan after two cycles to see if it has beaten up the cancer cells as a guide to the next steps.  At least we know what to expect from the chemo and can prepare for the onslaught by buying 40 quid jars of honey, dodgy nettle and moth teas and a few other bits that we know that help with the chemo sickness.  


As ever there has been the odd lighter note such as when we sat the children down to tell them that Mummy wasn't well again and would need to have some more treatment.  We were being very serious and grown up and explained that Mummy would be going to the hospital more often and that this would make her ill for time.  This might mean they would need to go to friends houses a bit more often (yessss!) and that they would need to help more around the house (nooooo!).  I then asked them very solomnly if any of them had any questions.  Rebecca piped up with "will I ever be able to eat peanuts again Daddy?".  A very important question of course but not quite what I had in mind.  


Anyway you have the latest news.  I hope the blog works and please keep the prayers and good wishes flowing.  We need everything we can get.  


Love to all and God Bless.  


Andrew