Cancer 175
Posted on February 27, 2025 Leave a Comment
It was the second anniversary of my sister’s death the other day. I hadn’t realised until I was reminded of it. She died of cancer while I was in the throes of learning that I had a cancer diagnosis and preparing for my operation. I didn’t have time to think or feel much about her death as I was contemplating my own.
Anniversaries are odd things. They play an important role in many ways, and sometimes they are seen as too important. In my work I was involved with the commemoration of war. I understand the need for that. A large group of people have a kind of shared experience. They went to war together. It was a national fight, a coming together if people in a common cause. It has its limitations, such as differing individual experiences, but it serves a purpose.
Failing to remember my sister’s anniversary made me wonder why. Apart from my cancer dealings at the time I wonder whether the differences among family members and roles means that such an anniversary may not be shared in the same way.
My sister was a mother, grandmother, wife, aunt and so on. She was seen in different ways by people. She and I were both close and distant. As adults we didn’t usually see that much of each other but when we did there was something indefinibly close between us, even if it didn’t often show.
You don’t choose your family but you do share a past. My relationship with her was unique to me. We had a shared childhood. We didn’t usually get on very well, but when I look back at my very happy childhood she was part of it, though we rarely played together. It is difficult to describe because at one level she did not contribute to my happiness – quite the opposite (with notable exceptions) – but at another she was an intrinsic part of it, and without her my childhood would have been different in ways I cannot know. She is irremovable from my memories, from my sense of self and identity, though I feel no need or desire to commemorate her. She will still always be there
Other people’s experience of my sister is unique to them and I can’t comment on those relationships and what they want or need. The point is I have no need of a shared anniversary, which is probably why I never gave it a thought until reminded.
Cancer 174
Posted on February 17, 2025 Leave a Comment
My treatment starts on Tuesday. My bloods are all fine, the cancer marker has increased slightly.
I still don’t know the outcome of my scan, but if it reflects the look and feelings of my abdomen and bowels then alarm bells will ring. My abdomen is even more misshapen than usual, my innards feel like they are being churned in a concrete mixer, even the urinary side is giving some gip (gyp, jyp, jip – there are some words I have never seen written down). I have had to take Tramadol. I don’t know if and how it all relates to the cancer but I suppose I will find out in a couple of weeks.
It is the middle of the night and I am watching On the Beach. Yes, there is an analogy between the time the characters have left and the growth of cancers.
Despite visiting the hospital three times last week I had a good writing week. I finished a draft of the history of Wingfield Manor. It is only short – very short – but it is difficult getting information from the 15th Century. I don’t have a publisher yet but we will see. I plan to finish the draft of the other non-fictiom book next week. Then it will be the turn of finishing the draft of the novel. I don’t have time to die just yet so let’s hope this abdomen sorts itself out.
Cancer 173
Posted on February 7, 2025 Leave a Comment
I am in hospital for my consultant meeting prior to restarting my chemotherapy. I have had six weeks off, six weeks where we have been away three times, attempting to take advantage of the time. We went to the Netherlands, Yorkshire and Shropshire. All good, but I am exhausted. Holidays are supposed to be restful. You are supposed to feel better after them, ready for the next stage. I just want to go to sleep. My legs ache, everything else aches. Of course, it might not be the holidays, it could be the treatment, lack of treatment, time of the month, how the hell should i know?
This is my third visit to hospital this week -just to add to the exhaustion. On Monday I had my CT scan – no results yet – at Ilkeston. They have a new scanner. It is more convenient for me. The route is a bit of a change and there is plenty of parking. It was bloods yesterday, here at Derby. Inevitably my Hickman Line is still blocked, or rather it is functioning one way, stuff goes in but won’t come out. I flushed the line as usual in the morning and then came to the unit for my bloods to be taken. I might have had it done elsewhere, but I wanted information, which I succeeded in getting. I want this Hickman Line removed and a portacath put in its place. The Hickman Line leaves tubes dangling from my chest. The portacath sits under the surface of the skin, no dangling lines, and I can shower, bath and go swimming, which would be a bit of a change to my lifestyle. I hope to discuss it today with the consultant.
Today I also get my blood tests and hopefully my CT scan results. It should be terrifying, learning whether the cancer is growing and whether my organs are still functioning sufficiently to enable chemotherapy, but as we find with operant conditioning, one cannot stay permanently anxious. I have become rather blase about my results. Fortunately in the past they have been generally boring, with everything functioning OK and the cancer under control. This will fail, but when?
At times I feel like a fraud. I have said this before. I was diagnosed with incurable cancer that is going to kill me, I tell everyone, and two years later I still haven’t died.
I am limited in so many things. I can’t walk far, I tire easily, and I struggle with socialising. I have so many aches and pains I dont want to describe them. I have a stoma that is at times troublesome and usually sore, and I have what seems to me multiple hernias throughout my abdomen, held together with a band around my abdomen that is permanently uncomfortable because in order to work at all it has to be tight.
Socialising takes more energy than we think. I have always liked talking to people and listening to people, and I still do, but I can only do it for so long. If I am good then I function well for a couple of hours or so, then I turn into a pumpkin. It is almost like there is a switch in my body. Once it is switched, and it is often quite sudden, that’s it. I want to go home, or I want the people to go home. EVen so, this only works duri g the day or the early evening. The switch automatically functions in the evening at around 8pm, sometimes a little later if I am lucky.
People still ask me how I am. I usually give the British answer that I am OK. If I was truthful the answer would take a lot longer, and break the bounds of social expectations. When you are asked how you are then ‘fair to middling’ (or its modern equivalent) is the right answer. What I would like to do is explain how I really feel. I know people don’t want the details – particularly after so much time – but if I did answer then there is a whole set of things I would say. Some of these things stay the same for months, others come and go.I am sure no one wants me to die but if I answered the question in full then they might change their minds. They don’t want to go through this, even vicariously. Vicariously it is boring.
Recently I have got on better with writing. I am using my shed again, which helps. I have finished a rough first draft of my Wingfield Manor book (very short), so next I will get my article on the Siege of Leiden finished. It is for Battlefield magazine. I am enjoying being a historian rather than a psychologist.
Cancer 172
Posted on February 3, 2025 Leave a Comment
I am continuously conscious of my limitations in life, my inability to do things I used to find easy, my slowness, my lack of energy, my failure to get up and do, how I look at a job that needs doing and don’t do it, how my lethargy ensures a lack of action. It is not just the physical work that needs doing, it is the mental work, in my case it is often writing, though it can even be a lack of motivation to read.
This does include what I mentioned just a short while ago, that I can’t walk as far as I could just a few months ago. It is an effort to get up and walk, and difficult once I am up to walk more than a few hundred metres. Everything begins to ache, to hurt. I become breathless – not in the normal sense (there is little normality any more), just a difficulty in breathing.
Even the little jobs at home don’t get done. I have been putting a door catch on my wardrobe for months. It is held shut by a scrap of paper, and the components to do the job are sitting on top of the wardrobe.
I can’t do anything outside. Partly because it is cold and I should not expose myself to the elements – good old dysfunctional immune system – and partly because I am not able to be bothered.
I think my body’s main effort now is in sitting and fighting the cancer. This means it is difficult to get any energy to do the everyday things in life. I just sit unless I make a real effort to do something. When I makethe effort I tire very quickly and need to sit down again.
It sounds pathetic – at least to me – and lazy, but honestly I am not being lazy, though I may look it. I sit in my comfy chair surrounded by necessary junk (books, computers, notebooks, pens, books, etc). If something falls on the floor it is an effort to pick it up. I have always been messy but this is silly. I am writing this in the middle of the night while changing my stoma. I can’t even be bothered to pick up my computer to write so I am doing this on my phone.
I fight it, naturally. I get up and do things. I go about my business and I think to people I am getting on with things. We go on holiday. We go out. We see people. I help make marmalade.
But underneath this exterior, this physical adonis, this mighty Hercules, doing the slightest thing is often an effort.
I can’t be bothered to write any more.
Cancer 171
Posted on January 29, 2025 Leave a Comment
As I blindly live my life, trying to be oblivious to what is going on inside my body, because I could not cope with reality, I sometimes see through the curtains to the real world and realise there are a lot fo changes occuring in my body, and they are not good ones. While away on holiday I wanted to take a short walk, a walk which a few months ago I could have done easily, if a little slowly. I managed to get a couple of hundred metres, perhaps a little more, and had to turn back, so I walked around half a kilometre. When this started I could walk 2-3 miles (yes, I have always mixed metric and imperial, it relates to the time I was brought up. We learned both). While that is not very far, it is good enough in most circumstances.
Today I walked around an abbey, a very nice abbey, Rievaulx, near Helmsley. Unfortunately I struggled to even walk around the site. I managed, after a fashion, but it seems not long ago that if I visited a ruin I would scramble everywhere, through every tunnel, up every step, around every corner. But not today. I did a sedate stroll up around and back.
I am deteriorating.
Also, as I have mentioned before, my abdomen area is a mess. Forget the stoma, it is the shape and size of the area. OK, I eat a little too much and – as demonstrated – I don’t get enough exercise, but prodding and poking can be quite painful, and a coughing fit (of which I have plenty as I am usually ill in some way – buggered immune system) causes quite a lot of problems, not least the feeling that I am going to explode. So far my skin is holding out, but at some point the walls are going to be covered with bits of me – at least that is what it feels like. And it is slowly (not slowly enough) getting worse.
I am even starting to think I should take painkillers regularly. After I mentioned painkillers before I was advised (if that is the right word) that I should be taking them regularly anwyay, in order that they can have maximum effect. I don’t like taking painkillers. I don’t like what they might be hiding.
I do understand that the continual drip of deterioration ends in a bad way, but I think now that I have mentioned it I will close the curtains and go and eat a special sausage roll, while watching The Searchers. We are going to have a phase of watching good films about 19th Century USA and its expansion. Any suggestions welcome.
Dr Nigel Hunt 