Cancer 183
Posted on April 8, 2025 Leave a Comment
Well, that wasn’t fun. A night of wakefulness, abdominal pains, and the serious thought that I would phone the hospital and go in for help. It was a little frightening. Pressure had been building up around my abdomen for a day or so, but it didn’t really hit until last night. You know the feeling when you just want to eject things from front and back (or in my case front and front), but it just wouldn’t happen. It was perhaps the most uncomfortable I have been since recovering from the operation.
My instructions from the hospital are to phone them whenever I get symptoms, or when my temperature is high, obviously because I am vulnerable. Fortunately, my temperature was normal. I spent most of the night downstairs, and went up to bed about 0800 (getting upstairs was a struggle. Another thing to look forward to as I decay), managed to get a little sleep, and got up around 1200. I still feel pretty awful, but I have eaten some apple puree. There’s nothing wrong with baby food. I didn’t use a bib.
I had to get up as we have an ill cat. It ate something dodgy and has ulcers around its mouth. It was a bit touch and go yesterday. If its kidneys had failed then boom, that would be it. Its kidneys were fine, so it spent overnight at Rotherham being observed and the vet phoned this morning to say it could come home, so I have to convert myself from sick person to someone capable of driving to Rotherham – until yesterday, I had only been to Rotherham once in my life, cycling from Sheffield along the canal in 1996.
We had been planning to go away this week for a couple of nights to Suffolk, but that was cancelled because of the cat. So not only have we lost the price of the two nights (no one insures me), but there is also the mighty vet charge for cat treatment. There are more important things to worry about than money.
It’s ok, please feel free to ask about the health of the cat rather than me. I am used to it….
Cancer 182
Posted on April 1, 2025 Leave a Comment
What a day! Nothing interesting, Just a treatment day where I am unable to get things done. I have hardly read, I have hardly written. I have just eaten too much out of boredom, something I probably shouldn’t do as my weight is up again.
Today is the first time my new portacath has been used. There aren’t many people trained in its use here, so Marge Bronte came along to show a group of nurses how it should be done. All of them used, as usual, precise medical terminology such as ‘thingy’ or ‘whatsit’. Then the needle was jabbed into the centre of the bulge, the reservoir at the end of the heart tube, and that was it, it worked. The biggest problem seems to be stability. Imagine a needle pushed through your skin into a little space. It has nothing to hold on to, and so it is held in placeby a dressing. Unfortunately, I have a bad skin reaction to dressings – all of them. I am not sure either the needle of the dressing will hold. I have stood up to go to the toilet a couple of times and snagged the line. It feels as though it will easily pull out, which weould be a bit of a problem – it certainyl will be when I want to sleep. Perhaps I shouldn’t sleep for two days.
The worst thing about dressings is that when wearing them my skin starts to resemble that of a rhinocerous. It happens with all dressings. It happens quickly. My skin wasn’t bad on Friday when I was operated on, but by Monday it was hard and dry, no matter how much cream I put on.
It is going to be much better when I am not unsder treatment. I will be able to swim and shower. I won’t be worried that someone will catch my tubes and cause damage. I still have a lump in my chest from the portacath, but it will be watertight once the wound closes.
I set up the novel for writing, but I haven’t written anything. I suppose setting it up is a good start and perhaps I will get on with it tomorrow. I have read a few pages, but not many, I have chatted with nurses, which is always fun and never politically correct, the specialist subject today was touching patients.
I have also been looking at the life and works of Vasily Vereschagin, the Russian painter of the 19th Century. He was a realist painter. He painted what he saw, and got in trouble for it. He painted war scenes from his experiences in Turkmenistan and the Russo-Turkish war. Because the scenes were realistic, he was banned. Great pictures though, check him out. I could go on, but I won’t.
Well, the treatment is nearly finished now. I should get out within an hour, so I will leave you to it and try to do a bit of reading. Starting to feel a bit shit, so I must be relatively close to the end..
Cancer 181
Posted on March 28, 2025 Leave a Comment
Part A
I am rather nervous this morning. I am having my portacath fitted. The appointment is 0800, so my usual arrival time in order to get a parking space – 0730 – is for once appropriate. I am having tea at Costa Hell, with its unusable off centre saucers. I am surrounded by ill people, a common problem in hospitals.
I am not sure why I am nervous. The procedure is just about sticking a new tube up under my skin, piercing my jugular and poking the tube down through the vein to my heart. What could go wrong?
Perhaps I have just had enough of these procedures. It increasingly comes into my mind that I just might stop everything, the continual intrusiveness does get one down after a time. The problem is, so far these things are working, so I should stop feeling sorry for myself, realise that I am still having a pretty good life, and that others are far worse off than me. After all, I did eat pie and mash yesterday, followed by Bakewell pudding and custard.
Part B
My operation is complete but I am still abed under observation. The surgeon wasn’t aware that he had to remove the Hickman line as well as putting in the portacath, but after some discussion both happened.
I have discovered one reason why general anaesthetic is a good idea (I had local). When unconscious you don’t hear the surgeon using words like ‘hopefully’, ‘probably’ or phrases such as ‘this doesn’t normally happen’. He was a good chap though, I had full confidence and trust, which is important when you are being chopped up (his hands were very bloody when I saw them. Apparently I bled a bit more than normal).
Melzack and Wall were right about the psychological aspect of pain. I was anaesthetised around the working area so the pain was deferred to my opposite side, and at one point I felt the tube enter my heart which was painful – and also impossible as there are no pain receptors there! Neuroticism is very effective.
Hopefully I will get away soon. I am just waiting on the consultant, another set of obs and that is it. My bp does need to come down. One measure was 172 over 110, quite a bit higher than my usual.
Fish pie for tea tonight.
Cancer 180
Posted on March 24, 2025 Leave a Comment
Part One
It is a special day today. I am in London. I woke up this morning as though prepared to do battle, as there is nothing more frightening than the thought of going to London (ok, I know it is nothing like battle – I just wanted to make a point). What do I fear? Public transport, as apparently you have to share with other, unknown people, who all wear headphones which go kerching kerching and are really annoying. These people sit near you, eat smelly nonfoods, and wear strange clothes. When walking in London everybody runs into you, which isn’t good when you have tubes coming out of your chest and a big shithole in your belly. I have my walking stick, with lead weights for bashing and a sharpened point for stabbing.
We have arrived fairly safely in the middle of London, and I am still alive. I had the brainy idea of getting a taxi, which meant avoiding the crush on the tube. The chap wouldn’t let me drive, so I was not in control, but at least we weren’t sharing with the public. As we are too early for the gallery (Courtaulds, From Goya to Impressionism) we are in a cafe. Fortunately there are no other customers.
Part Two
We have been round the exhibition and it was excellent. I know little about art – I am not only ignorant but also colourblind – but there were some very good and well known paintings. While it included Manet, Monet, van Gogh, Courbet, and so on, the star was of course Cezanne, just about my favourite painter, along with Vereshchagin (I love everything Russian).
Part Three
Shockingly, we have made it home. I used trains twice, went into a busy gallery, used two taxis, walked around a bit of London, ate London food, and survived! I only used my stick on one piece of baggage. I wonder if it is like childbirth, eventually you forget the worst of it and become prepared to do it again?
Cancer 179
Posted on March 19, 2025 Leave a Comment
I am up in the middle of the night as usual. The pattern at the moment is to go to bed early, wake up around 1100 (yes, I now get up in the evening rather than the morning. It is rather odd), then go back to bed around 0500, getting up around 0700-0800. While in bed, I am asleep more than awake, so that is something. Part of my being up in the night at the moment is pain in my right shoulder/chest. I think it is muscular, but it makes it difficult to lie down. I am generally anti-painkillers, but I am taking my Tramadol, which eases it a little, particularly when taken in conjunction with paracetamol.
My other problem at the moment is my fingertips and fingernails. My fingertips are very sore, which makes things like typing somewhat painful. My fingernails are a total mess. Whenever I catch them, they break, they often bleed, and chunks fall off. They aren’t the best to look at either. The sensitivity of my fingertips and the uselessness of my fingernails means peeling an orange is difficult. I really struggle to unclip my watch. It is surprising how many normal activities rely on one’s fingertips, even turning the pages of a book. I have learned to use the sides of my fingers where I would normally use the tips.
Is this decline? This is the question I ask myself every time I have a problem, a new problem, or a problem that is or appears to be getting worse.
My treatment was cancelled this week, not because I have any problems (ha ha), but because the consultant thought it best not to risk the fitting of my portacath next week. The portacath is an internal line from under the skin on my chest, into my jugular vein, and down to my heart, basically the same path as my current Hickman Line, but with the advantage that, for the first time since June 2023, I will not have a plastic tube dangling out of my chest or my arm. The feeding end of the portacath is a small chamber that sits under the skin and is used for inputting chemo drugs and extracting blood. The advantage is that I can shower and go swimming, and not having a tube dangling from my body means I will be more comfortable. The disadvantage is that I cannot take my blood samples or clean the line. I will have to go to the hospital instead. At the moment, I go to the hospital once or twice every fortnight. I will be going in two or three times in the future, so it is not so bad.
Again on the positive side, I am getting into my new role as historian rather than psychologist. I do wish I could have had the chance to start this earlier and perhaps not have life-shortening cancer at the same time. My digging around re the history of Wingfield Manor is sending me off in all sorts of directions in relation to the people who lived there. I am currently – yes currently, in the middle of the night – reading a PhD thesis from 1974 which is the most detailed biography of Ralph Lord Cromwell. I am hoping to write an article about him, a fascinating figure who played a key role for two kings, got immensely rich, and about whom we know nothing psychologically, all we can do is imply what he might have been like from the records that exist. The problem is, records from the 15th Century don’t really talk about character and personality.
I should pause my reading as I have been commissioned to write an article about the siege of Leiden. Focus, focus.
All this activity is keeping my brain working to some extent. It is a shame about my body.
Dr Nigel Hunt 