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!)