Cancer 156
Posted on November 26, 2024 Leave a Comment
Another day, another treatment. For the 28th time I am in the CDU being filled with the usual poisons. It is a nice day outside but I am not seeing any of it. I was in early but pharmacy had not sorted out my drugs, so there was a significant wait for treatment. Then the ward ran out of calcium follinate, so my second batch of drugs was delayed. Sometimes I wonder whether the NHS ought to introduce the concept of management, so the clinical staff can get on with their job and patients can get on with being treated. There are managers in other businesses and the NHS is fundamentally a business so it would benefit from similar treatment. If it introduced managers then they could organise the way the organisation works, enabling staff to work efficiently. It would even save money so more people could be treated with better kit and well paid staff. I know, it is an unrealistic fantasy.
In the scheme of things I have been feeling a little less well over the past few weeks. Inevitalby I fear it is my decline. Perhaps it is, we all know it is going to happen, and it is nearly two years since diagnosis. My bloods are fine, my CT scan showed little change, but there is more to it than that. There is the increased pain in my abdomen, perhaps partly related to my hernia, and there is the generic feeling of decay and unwellness which is probably unmeasurable. I am sick, both physically and sick of treatment. Chemotherapy makes me feel worse than it did, the negative effects last longer. I do understand how and why people say they have had enough and stop treatment, though it is a fatal decision. There is only so much a person can stand. Resilience is limited. The stiff upper lip becomes floppy, as does the grip.
What am I saying? I am not there yet. Most of the time I am having a good life, a good marriage, good food, good travel. I am reading a fair few books. Today I finished Nuclear War: A Scenario, which provided an excellent account of what might happen in a nuclear war – spoiler, everyone died. On the other hand, I read some crap, like this year’s Booker winner, Orbital.
On the other hand I am useless in the garden and at the general mending tasks around the house. When I complete a job I am pleased with myself. Yesterday I carried the winter tyres from the shed at the top of the garden, took the car in to get them changed, and then carried the summer tyres up to the shed. That is a big job now.
On balance my life is still very positive. I am not ready to finish things yet (though I am looking forward to the assisted dying act becoming law before I am ready for it) – it is just that the treatment can get difficult.
Cancer 155
Posted on November 19, 2024 Leave a Comment
It’s funny how good and bad can be held in the mind at any one point. We are away in the Yorkshire Dales, lovely hotel, lovely food, not much snow. I am sitting in front of a log fire on a large settee being lazy. Yesterday in Skipton Oxfam bookshop I found a copy of JB Priestley’s Good Companions, a book I have not read before but am rattling through. He tells a goods story. Last night we had an excellent meal. I had a starter of trout, a main course of beef and a pudding of chicken parfait (I don’t like modern puddings, another starter is usually the best idea). This morning I had a traditional breakfast, which included, heaven of heavens, fried bread rather than that ghastly hash brown US inedible nonsense. We then visited the best cheese shop in the known universe and went to the Grassington bookshop, where again books were bought.
Unfortunately, after breakfast, my abdomen started playing up. I felt and feel an immense pressure that was and is quite painful. I have had to take off my hernia belt. I don’t know what it is, but will try and look on the positive side and think that it is the breakdown of cancerous cells post-treatment, and the damn things are taking longer to disperse than usual. On the negative side it feels a little like the hours before I projectile vomitted after my operation last year. This morning I took Tramadil with little effect and have spent the day not quite in agony (it isn’t gout after all), but very uncomfortable. I walked around Grassington like a cripple, and horror of horrors was unable to eat anything in the cafe we visited. A cafe without food is like a pencil without lead – pointless (sorry Blackadder).
I am desparately hoping that I am fit to eat tonight, as I am looking forward to my brill followed by chicken followed by soup.
Having cancer can sometimes be really shit.
Cancer 154
Posted on November 17, 2024 Leave a Comment
It is a bit depressing again. I don’t know why. Apparently, Sundays after treatment are usually my low point, and today certainly is. I feel emotional. I haven’t felt well these last few days. My stoma has been playing up and there is this sicky but not sicky feeling I get in my abdomen (I am not in the mood to try and accurately describe the feelings associated with cancer treatment). I know there is a battle raging between cancerous cells and chemotherapy, and no doubt there are many civilian casualties among the normal cells, but it is an unpleasant feeling, being a continual battlefield. I can imagine the ruins lying around my abdomen, the fragments of flesh remaining every time the chemo chemicals launch an attack, the resultant casualties slimy and surreal, oozing through my tired passageways.
It might in part be psychological. My brother-in-law had his stag night last night, a formal stage in getting remarried after my sister died last year. I haven’t mourned my sister as I have been too busy trying to survive, but perhaps this is part of it. I am glad for my brother-in-law. He is happy, getting married again. He seems happier than I have ever seen him. Perhaps the stag do (I lasted until 8.30pm, pathetic I know. One ginger beer if you are asking) has reminded me of my sister, making me feel for her for perhaps the first time since she died. It is hard to tell. I also don’t know whether my brother-in-law should still be called my brother-in-law. He has been this person since I was a teenager, so I think the label will stick. Family structures can get awkward if they are thought about too much.
I also had an email from British Airways today. I have asked them about the assistance they provide for we poor cripples, and received a very positive answer, so I am thinking of flying again for the first time in several years. We are looking at going to Greece, so I am starting to reread The Odyssey. I like my history to be up to date. Emotions again, the thought that I can go on holiday by air, get somewhere faster and further than driving. In psychology, we have these theories of emotion, where the emotional response has to be linked to a cognitive component be given an emotional label. That link is not present for me, so I just feel an unnamed emotion.
I’ll feel better tomorrow. We are going away again, just for a couple of days.
Cancer 153
Posted on November 12, 2024 Leave a Comment
I am back in the hospital today for Chemo 27 (I think – I am losing track). When I entered the hospital in the past there was an alien nature to it, it was a place I didn’t want to be. It smelled strange and was in no way comforting. Today as I walked in there was a familiarity, a comfort. While I still don’t want to be here I have grown so used to it that it is almost pleasurable, certainly safe, to be here. The corridors no longer look forbidding, the lines of trolleys attractive, the signs to x-ray, haematology, etc provide the well-known map. I have now been in so many departments I feel I could write a Rough Guide to the hospital. Accommodation, like a 1980s hostel in Morocco. Food, generally a lower standard than British Rail in the 1980s. Staff, wonderful, except for some of the trolley drivers who provide a simiar experience to driving in Bangalore.
I am sitting in the virtually deserted restaurant at the top of the building, where they serve inedible breakfasts (even to me, the English breakfast lover), and where they have introduced the horrible smells of the doyen of fake foods, Subway. The smell permeates the whole restaurant. Among the few customers there is always the person who thinks it is acceptable to play noisy videos on their phone.
From here I will walk down the 12 flights of stairs (96 steps if you are asking) and go to the cancer room. I don’t walk up them, sionce being ill I have discovered lifts, but I still walk down, and am quite proud to do so. What a walker I am. I usually end up doing a few thousand steps while in hospital. They are big places. There are so many ill people.
Tonight I will go home and be ill. I am always ill when I am treated. Tomorrow morning I hope to wake up well, though still with my chemo bottle attached. I have been less well on the second day recently. I hope it is a blip. I don’t want to be ill.
My ambition is to take away the job of my district nurses. I flush my Hickman line every week (while the nurse sits playing with the cats or chatting). Last week I took my own blood samples. Now I just need to be able to do the chemo detach, ie removing the chemo bottle, then I will be fully independent – at least on a Thursday. It will also save the district nurses a job. They should train all their able-bodied ill people to do these tasks. Give us a bit of independence.
Cancer 152
Posted on November 8, 2024 Leave a Comment
Briefly, I have had the results of my scan and there is no significant change, meaning that there is nothing present in my chest, and only the nodules that were already present in my abdomen. My hernia has not got worse. My bloods are normal.
All is well.
I was fretting a little about this one.
Dr Nigel Hunt 