Cancer 153

I am back in the hospital today for Chemo 27 (I think – I am losing track). When I entered the hospital in the past there was an alien nature to it, it was a place I didn’t want to be. It smelled strange and was in no way comforting. Today as I walked in there was a familiarity, a comfort. While I still don’t want to be here I have grown so used to it that it is almost pleasurable, certainly safe, to be here. The corridors no longer look forbidding, the lines of trolleys attractive, the signs to x-ray, haematology, etc provide the well-known map. I have now been in so many departments I feel I could write a Rough Guide to the hospital. Accommodation, like a 1980s hostel in Morocco. Food, generally a lower standard than British Rail in the 1980s. Staff, wonderful, except for some of the trolley drivers who provide a simiar experience to driving in Bangalore.

I am sitting in the virtually deserted restaurant at the top of the building, where they serve inedible breakfasts (even to me, the English breakfast lover), and where they have introduced the horrible smells of the doyen of fake foods, Subway. The smell permeates the whole restaurant. Among the few customers there is always the person who thinks it is acceptable to play noisy videos on their phone.

From here I will walk down the 12 flights of stairs (96 steps if you are asking) and go to the cancer room. I don’t walk up them, sionce being ill I have discovered lifts, but I still walk down, and am quite proud to do so. What a walker I am. I usually end up doing a few thousand steps while in hospital. They are big places. There are so many ill people.

Tonight I will go home and be ill. I am always ill when I am treated. Tomorrow morning I hope to wake up well, though still with my chemo bottle attached. I have been less well on the second day recently. I hope it is a blip. I don’t want to be ill.

My ambition is to take away the job of my district nurses. I flush my Hickman line every week (while the nurse sits playing with the cats or chatting). Last week I took my own blood samples. Now I just need to be able to do the chemo detach, ie removing the chemo bottle, then I will be fully independent – at least on a Thursday. It will also save the district nurses a job. They should train all their able-bodied ill people to do these tasks. Give us a bit of independence.