Cancer 243

If you are eating, then finish what you are doing before reading this.

Not long after my last blog, I had a bowel disaster, the worst one ever, and I have had a few. Imagine for a moment that I have removed the stoma bag, cleaned up and am sitting there giving the area some air before putting the new bag on. I do this regularly, whenever I change the bag at home, sitting in my chair, which I am glad is leather, and brown.

It will often activate when I am sitting there, but I will have a tissue ready to clean up, and I am pretty good at this task. Indeed, I had said as much to the wife only a day or two before. After a few minutes, this happened, a good amount, requiring a three tissue clean up. No problem.

Five minutes later, boom. It appeared that the whole of my insides became my outsides, spreading across my stomach, over my trousers and my shirt. It was more or less liquid, but with unusual lumps inside that didn’t reflect anything I had eaten in the previous 24 hours. I can only think that the chemo has managed to break down something of the tumour inside my stomach and decided to eject it with force. If I say this was awful, then it is not an exaggeration. If I say this was embarrassing and I just wanted to cry, this is not an exaggeration.

As you may know, the wife (who I am not allowed to talk about) is my carer, and this is one of those situations where the term is very true. I am sitting there, covered in pale brown stuff, unable to pick it up and bag it, wondering whether this is the right time to die. She comes along with endless towels, flannels and new clothes, comforts me, tells me all is well, calms me down. I did most of the actual clean up myself, certainly of my body, while she focused on putting everything through the washing machine over the next few hours – three loads – and disinfected the affect area afterwards.

It is intensely embarrassing. It is also the end of an idea that has been floating around for the last week or two, of flying to Riga. Imagine this happening in an aeroplane. You really wouldn’t want to be one of the other passengers.

It is strange, really. I find it incredibly embarrassing yet I am able to write about it here. I suppose I am just trying to do my duty of telling the whole story. Fortunately, I didn’t take a photograph.