Cancer 198
Posted on June 24, 2025 Leave a Comment
I am not going to provide detail with this one, suffice to say that yesterday started well and ended badly. I was at hospital again in the morning. That is Thurs, Fri, Mon, Tues, Fri, Mon, with the two off days being chemo bottle days.
After the hospital it was a walk with the kids. Dropping them off was when it started, serious stoma bag leak with diarrhoea. All my clothes. Mess. Later, it happens again, worse.
I feel physically a little better today. Anti diarrhoea tablets work if you take enough of them. It is just the sense of humiliation, the psychological strain, a reminder.
It is not surprising that many people with this kind of problem don’t want to go out. In private it is bad enough, in public it is unbearable.
Cancer 197
Posted on June 21, 2025 Leave a Comment
I have read quite a lot of Holocaust literature. The subject fascinates me, as it reveals some of the worst and best aspects of human behaviour. Currently, I am reading Jozcef Debreczeni’s Cold Crematorium. Written just after the war by a Hungarian journalist who lived in Vojvodina, now part of Serbia. The book was largely unknown in the UK until it was recently published by Vintage Classics. It provides a detailed picture of the author’s experiences in various work camps, including a brief account of Auschwitz, but mainly within the Gross-Rosen group of camps, in the south of Poland.
Debreczeni was a journalist with an eye for detail. His descriptions of the suffering of the slaves are consummate. He describes the work, the beatings, the trading in the little food available, the constant deaths from violence and starvation, the illnesses, and so on.
What relevance does this have? For me, now, Holocaust literature is helpful. Some people wonder how I can read about pain and death like this, but it is helpful. I may have an illness that is slowly killing me, but at the moment, I have a generally good life. I may spend too much time going to hospital (6 out of 8 working days at the moment, in a couple of weeks it will be every day for radiotherapy), but on the other hand no one is beating me, no one is starving me, no one is making me spend twelve hours a day digging a tunnel in bare feet, no one is threatening me with instant death if I don’t take my cap off and stand to attention, or likely to shoot me at a whim. I sit in my garden with a glass of lemonade, sheltered from the sun under a canopy of trees, I have family and friends around me, I have the freedom to get in my car and visit places, even go on holiday (when I can get away from the hospital for long enough).
It is a simple comparison. There are always people who are worse off than you. The people in the camps were men, women, and children of all ages. At least I have lived most of a normal lifespan. During the Holocaust, they were killed as babies, children, and young people. It is an extreme example, but perhaps I need one.
Cancer 196
Posted on June 17, 2025 Leave a Comment
I never did like roller coasters. Not that I have been on a real one, only the physical and emotional one that I am living through right now. Things have changed since my last post. Instead of moving on to the new (and final) treatment I am remaining on the original treatment, as the cancer growth was not determined large enough to make the change. Wahay! So I am back in hospital for my 37th round of chemotherapy today – assuming that my line is still working. I have little faith in the lines paced in my body. Not one of the 5 or 6 has worked properly. The current one, supposedly the best, failed at removing blood samples immediately because it is slightly wrongly placed and has myelinated. As it has not been used in a month or so I wonder whether anything can be put in. We will see in a couple of hours. The other problem is that I am having some abdomenal pain, but I won’t tell them that, will I? Just in case they refuse treatment. It is affecting my eating, which can only be a good thing.
Hospitals. I this is my fourth working day in a row. On Thursday it was Ilkeston for blood sampling, on Friday Derby for the consultant, Monday the radiotherapy consultant, and today Derby for chemotherapy. To say I am sick of it would be rather an understatement, but I put that against a faster termination of life and I keep on coming.
I am now awaiting a scan for the radiotherapy. They need to check the location of my bowel and my cancers. After that I will get one week, Monday to Friday, of radiotherapy to try and reduce the lump that is by the side of my stoma – and causing a bit of jip. That will be a fun week, Derby hospital five days in a row.
Oh well, at least the hospital has an excellent restaurant. Oh, sorry, that was my positive outlook on life on overdrive. The restaurant is terrible. Poor quality unhealthy food (I like my unhealthy food to be of good quality), though the tea is OK.
That roller coaster, as Ronan Keating said, we just have to ride it.
Cancer 195
Posted on June 13, 2025 Leave a Comment
I have decided that, assuming this is the final phase, that I should see it as an adventure, the last adventure. Why should dying not be an adventure? Lots of big adventures end with death, though usually they are not inevitable, so exploring the process of bodily decay and shutdown is my adventure.
Today I am back on the merry go round. I am in hospital to see the consultant, who will determine whether I should start the new treatment next week. If so, I have no idea whether it will affect me more than the last two years of treatment have affected me.
On Monday I see the radiotherapy consultant for the first time. This will determine whether I will get radiotherapy for the lump on my stoma. This lump is a bit of a problem both because it makes it difficult for the stoma bags to glue to my skin properly with attendant leaks. Sorry for the smell folks, it is my cancerous lump, and because it hurts like hell when it gets knocked, which is too common, eg against tables or doorways or when there are too many people.
I am hoping, though it is probably not realistic, that the radiotherapy might be used against my bag of marbles, ie the rapidly growing set of cancerous lumps in my abdomen. The optimist might say that the chemotherapy will have an effect, and I am an optimist, so….
Cancer 194
Posted on June 9, 2025 1 Comment
It isn’t looking good. It is getting worse by the week. The bastards are growing inside me.
This is the last day of our holiday. I am writing from a Swedish cafe in Grasmere. I have a blood test on Thursday, usual consultant on Friday and radiotherapy consultant on Monday. Perhaps a combination of drugs and radiation will knock the bastards back a bit, but I am not optimistic. They have grown significantly.
There are times when I wish fairy stories could be true. Wouldn’t it be good if the religious fairy stories about the continuation of life in an after life were true? If we could just say ‘See you in a bit’ to our friends and families when we die, knowing they will join us when they pop their clogs? Religion is a great invention. Not only does it help people deal with fear of death, it also serves to keep the masses under control.
It is a shame it is a load of bollocks. Not once through this damned illness have I wondered, ‘What if it is true?’ That is like thinking that Snow White really exists and Hansel and Gretel really had some trouble with a witch in the forest. No one believes these fairy stories so why do they believe the religious fairy stories, which are just as incredible, with the parting of the Red Sea or the raising of the dead?
It is simple. If you are told something is true when you are very young, and consistently told the same thing throughout childhood, and you are told these stories by people you trust, parents and teachers, then it becomes harder to question it.
Add to that the genuine fear of death people have because they can’t accept that life is a short flit through the world with no existence before or after then faith becomes understandable.
The problem is that much of the time we just don’t question things. Some people don’t appear to question anything.
The closer I get to death, nothing changes. It would be absurd in a Sartrean fashion to change now. It would undermine everything I believe.
That doesn’t mean I am not a) terrified of the dying process, pain etc, and b) upset that I will be missing out on perhaps a couple of decades of active life. I am both terrified and upset, just not about non-existence.
Anyway, who wants to play a harp on a cloud with a crossdressing angel, or have to deal with 72 virgins with all their issues about sexuality – and what happens when they stop being virgins? Do you get another set?
If I am repeating myself then tough. It is what is going through my head at the moment. This isn’t a well-structured book, it is a badly structured blog….
Dr Nigel Hunt 