Cancer 164

I am awake – as usual – in the middle of the night. I had a good 2-3 hours sleep at the beginning, since then I have been reading and changing my stoma – multitasking, just like reading on the toilet but form the comfort of my settee. Christmas Day is over. This is the first time I have been on chemotherapy over the break. I was in hospital on Tuesday, on the chemo bottle until the afternoon of Boxing Day. Fortunately our Christmas is at the weekend when the kids come up, though the weekend after chemo can be a little unsettling. As you ask, my main meal on Christmas Day was ham, egg and chips. A fine combination. Pig and eggs go together so well, ham and egg, bacon and egg, sausage and egg. I am so glad I am not a vegan or a vegetarian.

After this treatment, ie once I disconnect the chemo bottle later today, I am on a treatment break for six weeks until the middle of February. This means, I hope, that my general symptoms will reduce, that I will get more energy, that I will be able to walk more. It won’t affect my diet as nothing seems to affect my diet apart from the one day a fortnight I am at hospital with chemo, and even then I seem to be getting a little better at eating in the evening. On the negative side, taking a break makes me fear the cancer will take the opportunity to grow. After all, it is meant to be an aggressive cancer, though so far it has been about as aggressive as the Italians in World War Two. I hope it doesn’t turn Japanese.

I have now had 30 rounds of chemotherapy, which sounds to me like rather a lot. I havre brecome very familiar with the hospital, the cancer day ward, and the nursing staff (lovely folk). My attitude when I go for treatment is that the day is wiped out. Whatever my appointment time (it varies from 0930 to 1130), I arrive about 0730 to get a parking space in the crip car park, sit in the awful restaurant until around half an hour before my appointment, go into the waiting room and generally get called through early. I sit patiently in the chair being fed my poisons, reading and writing, chatting to the staff and sometimes the patients, and don’t tend to get restless until the final stages when I am desparate to get home, wehich I attain at best around 1500 and at worst in the early evening.

I still drive to hospital, I still walk when I am at the hospital. I know I have deteriorated over time – it is a slow process but discernible. I do worry that there will be a time when I can’t drive, or I can’t walk, when I lose my independance. When I get to that stage then please feel free to come round, put a pillow over my face, and shoot me in the head – preferably cleanly. I think the wife might appreciate that too (shooting me I mean, not her).

When all this started life expectancy was given as two to two and a half years. The statistics are not reliable as every person’s cancer is different (different genes, different environment, etc). Still, I like numbers so this means that at some point sonn I will be passing the point at which around 50% of people with this cancer are dead. On the plus side, 50% as still alive, so I will take the glass half full please. I am surviving reasonably well so far, and I like being at the extremes of normal distribution curves so I am looking forward to getting into the last 5% of the curve, which means at least another three years of these blogs. Sorry.

It is not all good of course, I am thinking about flying for the first time since diagnosis, possibly to Greece to look at all the piled up rocks of ancient civilisations. As I have been thinking about it over the last couple of weeks I am getting nervous, more negative about flying. I will be out of control. Something mayu happen at the airport or in the plane, or at my destination, and given that I do feel I have deteriorated a little then I fear that loss of control. No decision has been made yet. Perhaps I will feel a bit better in a week or two (come on treatment break, work for me). If we don’t fly then the second choice is driving. Perhaps France – but then France is closed in January, they are very old-fashioned, and I don’t like having to wait until 1930 to eat in the evening. It is too late for me. So perhaps the Netherlands? We have talked about staying around Gouda and exploring the art connections – and there is a WWII concentration camp nearby, a museum of course, not still used.

This would be a third trip to the Netherlands within a year. It may seem an unusual choice but it is easy to get to (apart from crossing the sea, which is hell), good food, friendly people and a more sensible language than French. Or perhaps we will go away in England. Perhaps I shouold just get over this neurotic nervousness and get on a plane. I have been told I can take all my medicine supplies, carry extra bags, be transported to the gate, etc, so why don’t I get on with it? Perhaps around Easter when it is warmer.