Cancer 18

I am having a bad night. It is 2am. I feel I have only weeks. At most levels I accept it, but sometimes the other side takes over. I have some pain and discomfort now, the vital signs are all over the place. I want a piss but I have a catheter so it drips into the bag continuously, frustratingly. My back is very itchy. I want to scratch wherever there is an IV in my body. They are on my hands and in my arm. There are drains from my wounds where I have been stapled and stiched back together. My stoma is a large hole just below my left ribs which tonight started farting. It was a shock. I have no control over it. No one will want to go to a restaurant with me. The bag only contains liquid so far but the nurse says faeces will gather tomorrow. I have started calling it a mangina because it is a front hole acting as a back hole but the image doesn’t work because the mangina is a sewer pipe, not a place of desire. Perhaps I should call it my front sewer, or perhaps a manhole. I have a needle in an artery and wires collecting heart information. I have a clip on my finger and my feet won’t stop dancing against the bed foot as I try to scratch my back with the mattress that is too small for me. I become more agitated. There is stereo snoring now across the way. I hate snoring. The alarms are continually beeping some coded signal that nobody responds to because they continually beep. The staff do respond to our personal beepers. The other people in the room atill snore, set off their alarms. The screen shows they have stopped breathing or have no heartbeat. No one does anything because the cause is a slipped clip, a tube blocked by a hand. Sleepers talk, wimper in their sleep, moan, and wake, sleep and moan, snore and are silent, like now, except me. I don’t like it. I want it to go away by the morning, or preferably sooner. It is now quiet, but not in my head. This bed is too short. A manhole cover, a better name for the stoma bag. Sewer, the hole itself. It is 2.09am. Time creeps when you are not having fun