19
End of Treatment
Even though treatment is diffcult it at least provides the assurance of being in
regular contact with the hospital and taking action to treat the illness.
When Katie’s chemotherapy treatment was stopped, the plan was for her to have
a month away from treatment during which time we hoped she would recover
some of her strength. But her condition worsened and a further MRI scan showed
fuid on her brain. She had an operation to have a shunt ftted to drain this fuid
away.We were then informed that although the tumour had not grown it had not
reduced in size either so, because of Katie’s negative reaction to the chemotherapy
drug Temozolomide, our consultant advised no further treatment.
The consultant also asked us to consider Katie having a further operation to ft a
PEG, a feeding tube inserted into the abdomen.We were against this idea but felt
under pressure to make a decision until Katie was examined by an anaesthetist
who told us she had a one in four chance of not surviving this operation.This gave
us the confdence we needed to say ‘no’ to the PEG being ftted.
After Katie’s treatment ended we were desperate and felt that we had nowhere
else to turn so we started looking into alternative therapies.