Cancer 142
Posted on September 13, 2024 Leave a Comment
I read all sorts of stuff, from the extremely interesting to the downright nonsensical. I sometimes get so confused I cannot separate the useful from the dross. I get caught up in those spirals of internet bollocks, where the truth is never as close as a bullet to Trump’s brain. I do read about death as it is something close to my heart (and lungs, and bowels, and abdomen).
Recently I read something about the four stages of dying. Please yourself regarding whether there is truth in this and where that truth might lie
- Slowing down (6 months before death). The person becomes tired and lethargic. They slow down, they are less social and they eat less. I am all those things apart from eating less. I try but I don’t succeed. I am always tired and lethargic, I can walk less, I am less social. These things are true but hae been since my diagnosis 20 months ago, so perhaps I am a slow learner.
- Declining strength (3 months before death). The person becomes debilitated, sleeps more, leave the house less, and again is eating less. Ignoring the eating, I sleep a lot less, 4-5 hours is a good night. As for leaving the house I am writing this from the Baltic coast in eastern Germany.
- Transitioning (1 month before death). The person has hallucinations, seeing dead family members and friends. This one is slightly weird. It is claimed that it might be about the dead letting the dying know that death is ok. I can understand halucinations, though the person suggested most people have them. Unlikely I think. This perhaps arises from the religious beliefs of some people, those who – it is hard to believe folks – genuinely think that there is life after death. They must be on the magic mushrooms.
- Actively dying (Days before death). This is when the person may be unconscious, eats no food, is incontinent, has breathing difficulties. There are metabolic changes, eg skin colour and body temperature. Eats no food? I will believe that when I see it.
It seems that I am on the first stage, but then I would be anyway. I have always been a miserable old fart who doesn’t like people.
There is a final stage, after death. Here there is the suggestion that the brain knows the heart has stopped, that it knows you are dead, perhaps for several seconds or even minutes. It would be good to test this properly but it would be difficult as no one returns from the dead, except perhaps Vincent Price. It fits with the anecdotal evidence that people who have been decapitated may move their eyes or their mouth. It does make sense. Why shoud the entire body should down at the same time? Imagine it though. You know you are dead . What do you think? Damn, I’ve had it now.
Last night, while eating at our excellent hotel here in Ahrenshoop, I saw a quotation that, if I was to have a headstone, might be a suitable epitaph. It is a quotation by Theodor Fontane, the Nineteenth Century realist German author
“…if one has the choice between Champagne and oysters – one usually chooses both.”
And therein lies the problem….
Cancer 141
Posted on September 11, 2024 Leave a Comment
I am abroad! After my 25th round of chemo I have taken a six week break, which means I am going to be poison free until towards the end of October. I have learned how to flush my lines so that I don’t need the district nurse for a few weeks. My medical bags are enormous, as I have to travel with heart drugs, stoma equipment, line flushing equipment (6 syringes each time), and miscellaneous drugs to keep me pain free, diarrhoea free and sickness free, etc.
It would all be a bit much for an aeroplane but I am thinking about that for the future.
The ferry from Harwich was horrible. I think my seasickness tablets might interact badly with the rest of them, as I have been struggling a little with food (a new concept for me). I cannot struggle with food in Germany, cuisine central of the world!
We are currently in a small town in Lower Saxony, planning to arrive at the coast tomorrow. Driving is much more tiring than it used to be, 200-250 miles a day seems to be my limit. Pathetic really, when my record is 1500 miles in 24 hours, from Sarajevo back, when also my brakes didn’t work. No one needed brakes in Bosnia then though.
We are away for three weeks, back at the beginning of September. This includes two weeks in a house on the island of Rugen, not far from Peenemunde….
Cancer 140
Posted on September 3, 2024 Leave a Comment
My common Tuesday, sitting in a chair that is too small in a room with lots of ill people being pumped full of poison. It is afternoon, so as usual, by this stage, I am starting to feel ill, but I try not to show it. I don’t want to endanger my treatment, particularly the pumping through of the poisons at the fastest rate possible. In any case, I will only feel rough tonight; by tomorrow, I should be fine.
The 25th round. We like to use numbers in an anniversarial (is that a word?) manner. Twenty-five is somehow more significant than 24 or 26. This is my last treatment until towards the end of October. I am having my break, we are getting away to Germany. We have just booked our accommodation – there is no real advanced booking now; my treatment is too unpredictable.
The consultant drew my death line on Friday. This was a piece of paper with a line bisected by a mark indicating when my first-line treatment will fail, which it will at some point. The next part of the line was my second-line treatment. When that fails, there is no more treatment, so that is it.
It is a bit of a shame really. I have been feeling better for the last few months, which has made me want to live. I sometimes feel so well (this is relative remember) that I forget I have cancer until I undo my shirt and see all the bits and pieces hanging off and out. It disappoints me. While I remain unafraid of death I don’t want to die. I am enjoying my life and would like it to continue as long as possible, at least while I feel well.
When I say I feel well I am excluding the constant tiredness but inability to sleep, the straining hernia, the sore stoma, the itchy skin, the inability to walk far and so on, but I have lived with these for so long I have forgotten what good health means.
It is all a bit odd really. As we get older we all know that we are going to die (perhaps deluded religious people don’t worry because they think their existence will continue in their heaven), but we don’t know when. Even with my cancer, though I am aware I should die in the next few months (statistically Jan to June next year) or a bit longer (optimistically), I do not know exactly when, but I feel that it has a profound effect on my life, as though I am waiting to die, when I am not, I think….
Cancer 139
Posted on August 29, 2024 Leave a Comment
I am the last of my childhood nuclear family. We were two parents, one son and one daughter; it was pretty traditional. My parents died old, my dad at 93, my mum at 85, so no complaints there, but my sister Helen died last year of cancer at 63. When you are in your 60s, 63 is not very old; it is a premature death. Coping with my own diagnosis of cancer and operation, I failed to mourn the loss of my sister, who died at the same time. I have wondered why but put it down to my own troubles. Recently, I have found myself grieving a little, I don’t think it is because of Helen but the loss of my original nuclear family as a whole.
The family was the core of my existence for the first 20 years of my life. We lived together, ate together, went on holiday together, and watched telly together. Like most people, I gradually extended my life outside with friends and eventually moved out to develop my own relationships, and so on. All perfectly normal and nothing to shout about, so why only now am I grieving for the loss of this nuclear family? Have I only just realised its importance, its centrality to growing up, to me being who I am? I had a happy childhood, idyllic in memory. I have never thought otherwise. So what has changed?
Perhaps it is me. I have developed through the course of my illness. While at the start, I could only focus on my death, it has now gone on so long (sorry for boring you with so many blogs over so long a time) that my mind has naturally started to reflect on other things. I generally feel reasonably well, so I can look backwards in new ways, I can risk the potential psychological dangers of reflection.
Perhaps the bigger question is why I am not grieving my sister and instead grieving my nuclear family. Is it the relationship (or lack of) that I had with her? Is it the timing? Is it her dying of that dreaded disease cancer? I don’t know, but the mind works in complicated ways.
I am due to meet the consultant tomorrow, the actual consultant. A rare experience. I am hoping for two things, that I am well enough to have treatment next week – my 25th as you are asking. I should celebrate and perhaps get a badge, as you do when donating blood – and that I can then take a break from treatment to go on holiday to Germany. The main problem is that my skin infection is back. It was severe enough to delay treatment a few months ago. I am busy scrubbing my face and applying udder cream to improve my look and hope no one notices. It is not as bad as it was, but it is worse because large parts of my body itch terribly, and inevitably, I can’t stop scratching. I don’t like delays in my treatment.
Cancer 138
Posted on August 20, 2024 Leave a Comment
I had dreams last night about both my PhD supervisor, Ian, and my sister, Helen. Both are dead. Ian had some sort of super space age weapon and was using it. Helen was involved in something about a route that kept closing. Dreams are generally meaningless to those who are told about them, but meaningful to the dreamer at the time. I know they were detailed, long and fascinating while I was dreaming, but I have already forgotten most of the details, so they don’t have much meaning. In the past I often had long film-like vivid dreams, complex stories, ones that I could often influence as I lay asleep. Sometimes I could wake up, go to the toilet, go back to bed and restart the same dream. It was cheaper entertainment than Amazon Prime.
It all stopped when I had my operation. Having your guts chopped up does wonders for sleep. I had heard that having an anaesthetic could significantly impact sleep for a long period, but I didn’t realise it would destroy my dreams for more than a year. It is only recently that I have started to have my vivid dreams again, the long and – to me – interesting stories about different things. Unfortunately, I am not remembering them well. This facility is starting to come back to me, so I am hopeful for the future.
Hopeful for the future. Hmm. I have been feeling quite well recently, and quite optimistic about the world. Then I took my shirt off and noted the hole in my chest with a tube coming out of it, the hole where my colon ended, covered by a bag, and the elastic tube around my ‘waist’ holding my hernia together and realised I should not have removed my shirt!
Dr Nigel Hunt 