Dr Nigel Hunt

Cancer 151

Posted on November 4, 2024     3 Comments

I am a little depressed. It is an odd feeling, given that I am reasonably well, I have a social life, I am doing some work, and we are managing to get away on holidays and visits. I have no real reason to be down, but it is something to do with still being alive.

When I got this diagnosis I assumed I would rattle around for a while, gradually deteriorating, and eventually succumb to my cancer. I was told I might have two or two and a half years, and I am just coming up to two years, it has gone on a long time, perhaps too long?

I didn’t think I would be living with the stoma, the tubes, the drugs, the chemo visits (26) for so long. While I have the habit of them, and I try to make the best of it, it is all rather unpleasant. In a way I am living a half life, in the waiting room for death, unable to live normally, unable to do many of the things I liked doing.

I can’t help thinking others have had enough of it. At the start getting cancer is big news, but it can’t stay that way over the long term. People get on with their lives, while I change my stoma and spend time in hospital, trying not to be unhappy. Why should people continue to pay attention to my plight? I am old news.

Whenever I start thinking about depression I realise how selfish it is, even to think of imposing my thoughts on others in this way. Ignore me, my grip loosened for a moment, my upper lip unstiffened, but I am all right now.

It is good to talk.

Cancer 150

Posted on October 25, 2024     Leave a Comment

150 posts. It is rather a lot, many more than I thought I would be writing, particularly just after my operation when I really thought I didn’t have long left. Some people might be wishing I didn’t have time for all these ramblings. I don’t blame you. There is only so much to say about death.

The last few days have brought it home to me again. After the fever the other day last night I found it difficult to lie down, with much of my body aching. I did the foolish thing of playing with the internet. I usually avoid it for my situation. I am not a medic and my interpretations of.papers may be wrong.

Last night I found out that my bad lower back is a sign of cancerous growth, and also that my problem with my left arm is cancer that has spread to the bones. I stayed up most of the night, very uncomfortable, but also stoking my neuroticism. Knowing that I can get neurotic I usually try to avoid the overthinking that leads to such problems.

Last night was an exception. It is still a little troubling, so I am listening to Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures for a little uplift, or a reality check. It works. I am in a low mood, so I listen to something that generates a low mood. They match and I start to feel better. I wasn’t a psychologist for nothing.

Back to reality, my bloods are normal except for low calcium clearly dairy products don’t help as I live on milk, butter, yoghurt and cheese. I will get more pills for this. I am still waiting for the results of my latest CT scan

My 26th round of treatment starts on Tuesday after a six week break. Here we go again.

I wonder if and when I will decide to stop the treatment and get on with dying? Not yet, anyway. I have Joy Division to cheer me up when I am feeling down!

Cancer 149

Posted on October 22, 2024     Leave a Comment

When you read about people who are dying, as I sometimes do, they often have bucket lists, even people who are not dying have bucket lists, lists of things that they want to do before they die. I don’t have a bucket list. I have done some stuff and I have not done some stuff. It might have been nice to do some of the things I haven’t done but I haven’t done them so I don’t know what I am missing, The stuff I have done has varied. Some of it has been fun, some of it good, some of it bad (not telling), and probably most of it inconsequential, particularly to other people. Like many people I am quite content with what I have achieved and not disappointed about what I have not achieved.

I saw a comedian on a video the other day. I can;t remember his name. He didnit do a bucket list. He didn’t have a list of things he was planning to do. Instead he had a Fuck it list, a list of things he was not going to do. I quite like that idea. Some of the things I can put on my Fuck it list include:

• Eating rice pudding. I love rice in all its forms except rice pudding, which to me is the same as the vomit of a child, particularly myself when I was a child, both in look and smell.
• Climbing a bigger mountain than I have already climbed. My lungs won’t take it. Actually, on a good day they won’t take more than a mile or two on the flat, so forget long slopes. My highest mountain by the way is Mulhacen in Spain at 3500 metres. I have been higher, such as in the Andes, but not by foot.
• Going to China. I have been twice. While the people are lovely I do not want any further experiences of someone gutting a fish on the road very near to a small child pissing on the same road.
• Being religious,. I believe (sic) that I became an atheist at the age of 3 when I had to be taken out of church because I was crying. I hated (and hate) being in church. I definitely became an atheist as I walked through a field to primary school sometime between 7 and 9 years and consciously realised there is no god. I haven’t deviated since, and looming death makes no difference at all.
• Swimming,. With my Hickman Line I can’t go swimming, whether in the sea, a river or the swimming baths. Never mind, I always preferred cycling for keeping fit, now keeping fit is a matter of walking a few hundred metres.
• Drinking coffee. I gave it up definitively when I developed heart problems. Prior to that I would drink it occasionally, more often in foreign lands where tea was unavailable or too disgusting to drink. I always disliked the smell. Now when I am on chemo I can’t stand being near it. I really dislike coffee shops that smell of coffee.
• Building a brick wall. I might have left the building trade in the early 1980s but I always got pleasure from small building jobs. I still have my original trowel from my apprenticeship days but I will build no more walls. Both breathlessness and a stoma make it impossible
• Going to the USA. Just before my diagnosis we planned a visit to the Rockies to further our experience of US RV holidays but imagine getting insurance to the USA with terminal cancer. It is not going to happen. I am happy to travel to Europe without insurance because they have civilised hospitals if I have an emergency, but third world countries like the USA are impossible.
• Re-reading Jane Eyre. It took me three months to read Jane Eyre for my A level English. It was painful and put me off 19th Century women novellists forever (except Mary Shelley of course). I did try Pride and Prejudice once but it was so dull. Some women novellists are evidence that women are a separate species, bu tthat is a topic for another day.
• Writing Fuck it lists. It is just as pointless as bucket lists, but it is the middle of the night and my brain can’t engage fully. It is 0510 and I have been up since 0200. I will go back to reading Evelyn Waugh. Great author.

Cancer 148

Posted on October 19, 2024     Leave a Comment

I am back to normal now after a scary few days. I don’t like being ill. While it is usually just a little illness I worry that it is something much worse. In any case, I have a compromised immune system so who knows what the consequences of a tiny bug will be?

My frustration today is not being able to walk. The wife was going out with a friend, and I offered advice on where to walk. As I did so, I realised that I may never see some of these places again, even though they are very close to home. I struggle to walk any distance. Half a mile is often an achievement, though occasionally I manage more. We are visiting Castle Howard on Monday, and I wonder whether I will get around the house, let alone the gardens. As an ex-footpath officer for the parish council (ahem), it is difficult. I think back to the days when I decided not to go for a walk because it was raining or muddy or I just couldn’t be bothered. Thoughts like this are dangerous. They might lead to regret, and I regret nothing. Choices are made in life, and you live (or die) by them. We all make mistakes in our choices, but there is no going back and changing them. Regret is the consequence of focusing on decisions made in the past and is negative and so undesirable. Like many people, I like to think that I learn from mistakes, though I am not convinced I do.

I decided I too would go for a walk, alone so I don’t limit their walking, but realised that as I am just recovering from a fever and it is wet and miserable that might not be a good idea. Instead I decided to write this blog. This afternoon we are off to buy a toilet seat as I broke it while mending the plug in the sink. One step forward, one step back.