Saturday 5 April 2008

Dr Etienne Callebout

On Friday Siobhan and I made our way to Harley Street and Met Dr Callebout, he was late and apparently this is normal. We were met by the Dr who showed us into his room and directed us to some chairs. He asked me to talk about the illness and when I first recalled having the symptoms. I told him it was 1994 when the scarring showed up on the lungs and 1996 when I was hospitalised for a suspected blood clot on the lungs which turned out to be the fluid again. I was offered a CT scan but this wasn't done as I was pregnant with my third child, Kieran. I consider that at this point, this saved my life as I would have had the scan and the Meso would have been detected and I would probably have had chemotherapy and may not have been here today.
I told Dr Callebout that I asked for an x-ray in 2006 as I fitted the criteria for Meso and I had just lost my dad who had worked with Asbestos.

Dr Callebout took a small amount of blood from my finger and analysed it under a microscope, I could see the cells on the screen with some little wriggly ones in between. He asked what I had for breakfast, not sure why, maybe the sugar from the cereal bar. Another thing mentioned was taking iron supplements. I am going to stop my immune defence tablets as they contain iron.I went to another clinic around the corner to get the blood test done and when Dr Callebout has the results he will be in touch with a regime. He also mentioned a Dr in Germany who was having great success with Mesothelioma, Professor Thomas Vogl. This is something I am going to follow up as there has to be something more than the procedures offered in this country.

Another thing is the T.V, it needs to be switched off between 7-8pm, to my surprise, my autistic son has taken this rule and enforced it. Well done Kieran.
After seeing Dr Callebout, I met up with my cousin, Justine, who I haven't seen for a while. It was good to see her. I will wait and see what the blood test shows up and hopefully get an insight into what I need to do to amend the cancer.