Cancer 182

What a day! Nothing interesting, Just a treatment day where I am unable to get things done. I have hardly read, I have hardly written. I have just eaten too much out of boredom, something I probably shouldn’t do as my weight is up again.

Today is the first time my new portacath has been used. There aren’t many people trained in its use here, so Marge Bronte came along to show a group of nurses how it should be done. All of them used, as usual, precise medical terminology such as ‘thingy’ or ‘whatsit’. Then the needle was jabbed into the centre of the bulge, the reservoir at the end of the heart tube, and that was it, it worked. The biggest problem seems to be stability. Imagine a needle pushed through your skin into a little space. It has nothing to hold on to, and so it is held in placeby a dressing. Unfortunately, I have a bad skin reaction to dressings – all of them. I am not sure either the needle of the dressing will hold. I have stood up to go to the toilet a couple of times and snagged the line. It feels as though it will easily pull out, which weould be a bit of a problem – it certainyl will be when I want to sleep. Perhaps I shouldn’t sleep for two days.

The worst thing about dressings is that when wearing them my skin starts to resemble that of a rhinocerous. It happens with all dressings. It happens quickly. My skin wasn’t bad on Friday when I was operated on, but by Monday it was hard and dry, no matter how much cream I put on.

It is going to be much better when I am not unsder treatment. I will be able to swim and shower. I won’t be worried that someone will catch my tubes and cause damage. I still have a lump in my chest from the portacath, but it will be watertight once the wound closes.

I set up the novel for writing, but I haven’t written anything. I suppose setting it up is a good start and perhaps I will get on with it tomorrow. I have read a few pages, but not many, I have chatted with nurses, which is always fun and never politically correct, the specialist subject today was touching patients.

I have also been looking at the life and works of Vasily Vereschagin, the Russian painter of the 19th Century. He was a realist painter. He painted what he saw, and got in trouble for it. He painted war scenes from his experiences in Turkmenistan and the Russo-Turkish war. Because the scenes were realistic, he was banned. Great pictures though, check him out. I could go on, but I won’t.

Well, the treatment is nearly finished now. I should get out within an hour, so I will leave you to it and try to do a bit of reading. Starting to feel a bit shit, so I must be relatively close to the end..