Cancer 269
Posted on August 7, 2026 2 Comments
Why doesn’t this bloody body of mine just accept defeat instead f dragging myself and everyone else along this ever-diminishing path to nowhere? I spend most of my time either sitting in the chair or lying in the bed – day or night makes little difference – doing very little except hopig that my bladder will work at least to some extent the next time I go. At night this is getting increasingly difficult. Then I hope that my bowel will work at least to some extent. i spend a long time taking various drugs that vary in their effectiveness. It is a rare moment that I am not in some sort of pain, usually sharp in the abdomen, but often dull backache from moving too little.
My main exercise is to get up and walk to the toilet (the next room) and try to stay upright while I try to go.
I am eating very little. I thought you died if you didn’t eat. Perhaps. I shouldn’t have had that boiled egg earlier.
I have always said that the last of my ‘pleasures’ to go would be driving. And that is so. I still get outside to the car, ‘jump’ in, and we go for a drive around the Peak District. We did c. 60 miles today. That happens a couple of times a week.
The future? It seems it will ast until the bowel is blocked, the urinary pathway is blocked, or starvation is successful.
Cancer 268
Posted on July 27, 2026 Leave a Comment
If this isn’t my death bed I don’t know what is. I haven’t moved beyond chair, bed and toilet in days, and have no great inclination to do so. My bowel hardly works, and neither does the urinary system, the latter particularlyat night, and si there is great oressure and pain in the abdomen. I am not eating much. I have cut down even by the standards of my current diet. Neither am I drinking much – which probably doesn’t help with the urinary system. I feel a bit of a Bobby Sands.
I am supposed to be receiving more paiative support, which for me means more and stronger drugs. Apparently these are accessibe from hospital and GP. I hope we mean the same thing by more and stronger.
Anyway, I find it difficult to produce this, so I will sign off. Whethere there are more will depend on the drugs. If they make life manageable for a period then there may be more blogs, if they finsh me off, well then, that is it.
Cancer 267
Posted on July 15, 2026 Leave a Comment
Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse we get the experience of A & E. Before I go any further I must say the staff were brilliant, as they always are at the NHS – it is the patients that are the problem.
Last night I had problems passing water. This has been a problem for a few days but came to a head last night. I felt I was about to explode so I dd something I am supposed to do whenever I feel ill, but have actually only done once in the last three years, I phoned the cancer rapid reaction line. Top tip, don’t phone them at 0230. I explained the situation and they said the only thing I could do was go to A & E. The wife and I set off -me driving myself to A & E as everyone does – and arrived to [name your battle zone]. It was Tuesday night. It is supposed to be quiet on Tuesday night. No it wasn’t. We sat and waited. I was in increasing pain so I managed to jump the queue. My bladder was scanned and it turns out that it wasn’t full, just compressed by tumours. My blood was tested, and I was left on a drip – for ages. To cut a long story short we found out that the waiting time to see the doctor was 14 hours, yes fourteen hours, so we decided to leave. I had found out enough information and my bladder has sort of started to work, so I got detached and we came home – spending most of the day sleeping. That is the short form of the story.
So my bowels and my bladder are both constricted by the tumours. This can only end painfully.
Talkig of ending, I would like people’s views on an idea. As I am now expected to live 5-6 months, give or take a few months (top tip, I think I will last a shorter time rather than a longer time), I thought a sweepstake to make money for cancer research would be in order. I am getting mixed views at the moment, but I thought people pay £20 to predict a date I will die. At the end, the person nearest wins half the pot if they are right or a third if they are nearest. The rest goes to cancer research. The winner is declared at my funeral. What do you think? Some agree, some say they will just give the money to research (which takes all the fun out of it).
I can’t see myself lasting until Christmas. I am getting to the point where I want it over. I don’t have good days any more, though I have good moments. I can do less and less for myself and, whatever they may say, I feel like a burden. I know people will say I shouldn’t think like that I can’t help it, I am a burden. It is also painful, and the more the painkillers are increased, the less my body will function. I had a new experience today. My fingers feel like water. When I pick something up it feels like I am picking it up with water. No, I can’t explain it. I will leave you with that, especially as my watery fingers have had enough typing.
Cancer 266
Posted on July 8, 2026 Leave a Comment
As expected, the meeting with the consultant ended with the decision being no more treatment. The prognosis, such as it is, ie it is impossible to be precise about how long I will live, is an average of 5-6 months; so I might last a month, I might last 9 months. Worryingly, I might see another Christmas, but given how I feel, I doubt it.
I started this morning thinking I wouldn’t even get to the hospital today, I felt so bad. I had another stoma bleed last night, and I was sick this morning. It took a great effort to wash and change my clothes.
The mornings are getting more difficult. Apart from the above, I am sleepier than ever and it is an effort to go out, even into the garden. I have more abdomenal pain, quite sharp pain, that isn’t fully controlled by the drugs. I also get aches and pains all over my body, as though it is conking out. My arms don’t work properly. I struggle to lift properly, and my coordination is slipping. I have to make conscious decisions regarding normally automatic processes such as grasping things and picking them up. I have been known to miss my mouth with a mug of tea.
Eating is limited. I have said before about my diet. I do get hungry, but when I eat a little something I can get over full quickly. If I eat too much, like last night’s wife made curry, then I can get all sorts of abdomenal disruption, which is uncomfortable.
Oh well, we will see. I am now mainly under the palliative care consultant, who should look after the pain, and also coordinate what happens to enable me to continue living at home.
Cancer 265
Posted on July 5, 2026 Leave a Comment
“How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far From it.”
Cormac McCarthy, Suttree
It has been suggested to me that I am frightened of death. But I am not. As I have repeated, I am frightened of dying. I had a foretaste this morning (though in reality I live with it constantly). My bowels were not working, and hadn’t for two days. When my bowels block up, probably because of the presence of a tumour, that will be – according to what I read – the agonising part. It terrifies me. It terrifies me because now it feels so close. The bowel has worked a little since this morning, but it is even more liquidy than before; suggesting to me that the channel is narrowing. I don’t know the biology of it. I only know how I feel, and I feel the encroaching tumours, and the struggle of the bowel as it attempts to let waste through.
I think the diet does help. I probably haven’t had more than 1,000 calories in weeks, and it shows. I am thinning out. I should soon be in the clothes that fitted me when I was a teenage bricklayer, but I will lack the strength. The days are gone when I could carry two one hundredweight bags of cement up a ladder to the top of the scaffolding. OK I was stupid as well as strong, but my main trick was to bend and break six inch nails with my bare hands. I tried it a few years ago and couldn’t even bend the nail.
I am not sure about sleeping in the hospital bed. I have to get out every few hours to urinate. This is a pallaver. It takes a long time to throw off the covers (no strength, remember?), twist to a sitting position, heave myself up using the zimmer frame, and so on. Sometimes I also have to throw off cats, and they don’t like that. The bed was extended due to my height, but the extension was added at the head end, which is useless. I need it at the foot end. It is a bendy bed so I can’t adjust my position when I have the head end lifted. The trivia of life at the end of life. I could go on.
Imagine if Cormack McCarthy is wrong and all the heaven lovers are right. I have always had a problem with the members of heaven. For instance, if a chap has a happy marriage, the wife dies, he marries again, has another happy marriage and eventually they die, which wife does he have in heaven? Both might be a bit much and the wives might not be happy about it, which could ruin their heaven. It is probably best not to think about it too much. My sense of post-death nothingness is probably the same as McCarthy’s. Be rid of the complications of life.
Dr Nigel Hunt 