Cancer 250

I always feel that certain milestone numbers should be celebrated. I am not sure why, but we do it in society generally so why not. Here we are, the 250th cancer blog. Do I have anything new to add? I am not sure. I will proably repeat myself, but you know that is how these blogs function, with honesty and openness for the moment. When there are so many moments (so many blogs) there is bound to be repetition, so here we go.

It is very bad at the moment. My stiff upper lip is wet and soggy, my resilience is disappearing, and my almost but not quite desire for it all to be over is increasing. I have gone rapidly downhill in the last few weeks. When I am reporting this it is difficult to know what is a decline, what is just a blip, and what is my depression. I accept it is all of them, but practically I am less able to do things I could do a while ago. I am struggling to stand up from my chair. I have to think about my actions. I fell today as my arm slipped as I was rising – fortunately I fell back on to the chair. I am finding it more difficult to climb the stairs, and avoiding doing it when I can. I generally need to stop on the way up, and both ways I cling on to the banister, fearing a fall. I am constantly cold, though people around me say the room is hot. I have a blanket over my knee and a hot water bottle, and it is still cold.

Two critical areas for me are food and driving. Yesterday we drove to Worksop to a Polish bakery/cafe recommended by a Tesco cafe staff member. It was, or shouold have been, great. A choice of breakfasts, many cakes and a wide rnge of breads. I ordered a small breakfsat of ham, cheese and bread. Small? It came with eight slices of bread, four slices of ham, four of chicken, two pots of jam, a wrapped soft cheese, and salad. In the past I would have happily eaten the lot. This time I gave a lot of it away and still left some. Food generally. I am having a small breakfast (eg cereal), followed by a reasonable sized lunch, and then nothing. I am now usually having nothing in the evening. Recently the wife has had chocolate sponge and custard and I have not even eaten that (those who know me will recognise the seriousness of that). At one meal the wife ate steak and I had pasta. At another she had steak and I had a baked potato with cheese and beans. That was a couple of weeks ago when I still ate in the evening.

To make matters worse I struggled with tiredness while driving home from Worksop. Not only am I uninterested in food, I am having difficulties driving even short distances. We are now cancelling activities that involve long distances. As for driving abroad, I don’t think that is going to happen again, ever.

I am having breathing difficulties. It is not clear what it is but a blood clot is ruled out after a CT scan. I am having an Echocardiogram which will indicate if my heart failure has returned. I have constantly thought myself lucky that my heart has kept going through this cancer nonsense (I was diagnosed with heart failure two years before the cancer diagnosis). Breathing difficulties make activities like walking even harder. A couple of weeks ago I bought some slabs with the view of slowly laying them in the garden. Now I wonder how I could even transport them up the garden. Apart from the pressure hose, I have not used any of my garden tools this season, leaving the mowing to a good friend, which keeps the garden looking reasonable. The wife is preparing plants in plant pots, which also helps. I am entirely useless in the garden.

I am struggling to work on my MA thesis, not because it is difficult, but because of the amount of work involved. Fortunatley I have done a little in the last couple of days. I must try and persevere. An article on Wingfield Manor has been accepted for publication in Battlefield magazine, but I need to sort out pictures for it and I can’t possibly walk up to the manor to take pictures. It is too far and too hilly.

I am still managing most of the medical stuff, the stoma and the drugs, which can get difficult at times, especially laying out my drugs for the week.

My hallucinations are increasing. They occur mainly at night. I might become aware of people nearby, or having a conversation with somone, or something nudging my ankles, but I do get them during the day, similar but not as frequent. A common one is where I think I have something in my hand, perhaps food, but when I try to eat it it is not there. I have always hallucinated, but not at the level I now experience them.

My chemotherapy has now been stopped for two weeks. I had hoped by now that my system would have cleared enough of the poisons to make me feel a little better, as has happened in the past, but no, not this time. If anything I am feeling increaingly worse.

Is this it? I know I have thought it before and then I have recovered to some extent. But I was told at the outset that the second line treatment would not work as well as the first, and while I am aware there are other treatments I suspect they are more placebos than anything with proven effectiveness. I have always tried to be positive but I am increasingly thinking that death is positive as, in my present state of health, I sometimes feel that I can;t go on, or that it is not worth it, that I should just tell the consultant I don’t want any more treatment, just painkillers.

But then I think I am still having some good times (I won’t say days) so isn’t life worth living for those moments? I don’t know any more. I don’t know what I think, I don’t know what is right, if there is any ‘right’. Am I just starting to live for others, when I know that in the end I have to be making the choices for myself? I know people want me alive, and that is fair enough, but inside, I don’t know what is right any more. I do know that if I start to get more selfish about my choices then I am likely to die earlier.

As for my 250th blog, it is a good number to finish on – but I have no intention of finishing just yet.