Cancer 236

I am writing this deliberately before I see the consultant tomorrow, when I expet to find out the awful truth. So Long folks, and thanks for not giving me the fish.

It feels like I am dying now. I know I have been on this track for a long time (not long enough), but this feels different. The tumours in my abdomen feel like they are growing by the day. At the start of all this we were told it was an aggressive cancer. Up until recently it has been a bit of a wuss. It now feels like lumps in my abdomen, lumps that stop me eating properly – there is a tumour in my stomach – that stop me breathing properly; it feels like the tumours are pushing against my abdomen. It makes it difficult to walk any distance. I often have to stop halfway up the stairs, or go very slowly. The shed at the top of the garden is miles away.

I am taking increasing amounts of morphine between my regular morning and evening doses, not more than I have been prescribed, not yet anyway (though I did swig it today instead of measuring it. There wasn’t much in the bottle). I hope I don’t get addicted! Fortunately I am still only on morphine and paracetamol. I have mentioned before about how much I hate painkillers, but I am going to have to talk to someone about getting this changed.

I am also falling asleep too easily. Being someone who has always hated sleep, and I have spent most of this illness being awake for much of the night, dropping off to sleep at all hours of the day and night is horrible. Last night I came downstairs around midnight. I started reading, and then I looked at the time it was 0330. I had slept on and off all that time. I still struggled to wake up. I had to go for a blood test at 0710 so I didn’t bother going back to bed.

I was alone today, looking forward to a few hours concentrating on my MA thesis. It didn’t work. I have done perhaps one hour’s work, and then I was getting sleepy. At one point I rested my head on the desk. Never been known before. For the last few days/weeks I have been dropping off sitting in my chair. This is what dying people do.

Given the rapid change it feels like I have weeks rather than months left. IT is making us a bit miserable, but I suppose that is understandable; but I don’t want to spend the next weeks sitting in my chair sleeping. I have things to do!

OK, that is how I feel before the consultant meeting tomorrow. Tomorrow I suspect I will be off cancer treatment and on palliative care. I might be wrong, and I have no problem with being wrong, but at the moment I don’t feel like I am wrong.