Cancer 56

“As the body becomes weaker, so the spirit grows stronger” – Cicely Saunders, early pioneer of the hospice movement.

I am not sure whether this is true, though I would like to think so. I think the relationship is more complex than that. Sometimes I feel like my body is growing weaker and my spirit is also struggling, though only yesterday someone suggested that I look weller than some people who are well. That is encouraging. I do have plenty of incentives to keep going.

Part of the problem is the regime of drugs that I am using. Here is an incomplete list, incomplete because I failed to take it all in during my first chemotherapy session. These include my heart drugs, my cancer treatment drugs, and the drugs to deal with my reactions to other drugs. I have no idea whata they are doing to my body in combination but I suspect it is not all good, though if they work at all in relation to whacking the cancer then I won’t complain too much.

Rivaraxaban

Furosemide

Ramipril

Bisoprolol

Allopurinol

Irinotecan

Fluorouricil

Folinic acid

Androstenol

Tramadol

Metoclopromide

Dexamethosone

It is now Sunday, the first Sunday after treatment started on Tuesday. For the first few days I did not experience any significant ill-effects, but in the last couple of days I have got very tired. I am not sleeping. Nothing new there, but it is becoming more difficult not to get to sleep, I am drifting off early in the evening, but to stay asleep. I get an aching back and aching shoulders. I do not know how much this is due to treatment, reaction to treatment, or something else entirely, but I have my suspicions. Last night I went to bed at 8pm and went almost straight to sleep. I was up before midnight, sitting downstairs reading about Northumbria (we have booked a cottage near the Wall for the end of the month). I changed my stoma (which is also unsettled), watched a few minutes of Threads (1984 film about nuclear war, well worth watching if you want a reminder of the fear we experienced during the Cold War), read a little Crime and Punishment, and went back to bed about 4am. I got some more sleep, so in the end I probably got 6 hours, which is a very good night for me at the best of times; but today I am still tired.

I did do quite a lot of exercise yesterday, over 10,000 steps, including sitting on a bench overlooking a pond with a fellow very old man discussing the meaning of life, death and planning my funeral, so I suppose I have an excuse for tiredness.

Today I have been to a couple of shops, bought a few books and, perhaps most significantly, I have just finished indexing my book. For those who have never indexed a book, you don’t know what you are missing. At least it is one more stage towards the completion of a book that I really would like to see when it is published. Book launch party anyone?