Cancer 155
Posted on November 19, 2024 Leave a Comment
It’s funny how good and bad can be held in the mind at any one point. We are away in the Yorkshire Dales, lovely hotel, lovely food, not much snow. I am sitting in front of a log fire on a large settee being lazy. Yesterday in Skipton Oxfam bookshop I found a copy of JB Priestley’s Good Companions, a book I have not read before but am rattling through. He tells a goods story. Last night we had an excellent meal. I had a starter of trout, a main course of beef and a pudding of chicken parfait (I don’t like modern puddings, another starter is usually the best idea). This morning I had a traditional breakfast, which included, heaven of heavens, fried bread rather than that ghastly hash brown US inedible nonsense. We then visited the best cheese shop in the known universe and went to the Grassington bookshop, where again books were bought.
Unfortunately, after breakfast, my abdomen started playing up. I felt and feel an immense pressure that was and is quite painful. I have had to take off my hernia belt. I don’t know what it is, but will try and look on the positive side and think that it is the breakdown of cancerous cells post-treatment, and the damn things are taking longer to disperse than usual. On the negative side it feels a little like the hours before I projectile vomitted after my operation last year. This morning I took Tramadil with little effect and have spent the day not quite in agony (it isn’t gout after all), but very uncomfortable. I walked around Grassington like a cripple, and horror of horrors was unable to eat anything in the cafe we visited. A cafe without food is like a pencil without lead – pointless (sorry Blackadder).
I am desparately hoping that I am fit to eat tonight, as I am looking forward to my brill followed by chicken followed by soup.
Having cancer can sometimes be really shit.
Cancer 154
Posted on November 17, 2024 Leave a Comment
It is a bit depressing again. I don’t know why. Apparently, Sundays after treatment are usually my low point, and today certainly is. I feel emotional. I haven’t felt well these last few days. My stoma has been playing up and there is this sicky but not sicky feeling I get in my abdomen (I am not in the mood to try and accurately describe the feelings associated with cancer treatment). I know there is a battle raging between cancerous cells and chemotherapy, and no doubt there are many civilian casualties among the normal cells, but it is an unpleasant feeling, being a continual battlefield. I can imagine the ruins lying around my abdomen, the fragments of flesh remaining every time the chemo chemicals launch an attack, the resultant casualties slimy and surreal, oozing through my tired passageways.
It might in part be psychological. My brother-in-law had his stag night last night, a formal stage in getting remarried after my sister died last year. I haven’t mourned my sister as I have been too busy trying to survive, but perhaps this is part of it. I am glad for my brother-in-law. He is happy, getting married again. He seems happier than I have ever seen him. Perhaps the stag do (I lasted until 8.30pm, pathetic I know. One ginger beer if you are asking) has reminded me of my sister, making me feel for her for perhaps the first time since she died. It is hard to tell. I also don’t know whether my brother-in-law should still be called my brother-in-law. He has been this person since I was a teenager, so I think the label will stick. Family structures can get awkward if they are thought about too much.
I also had an email from British Airways today. I have asked them about the assistance they provide for we poor cripples, and received a very positive answer, so I am thinking of flying again for the first time in several years. We are looking at going to Greece, so I am starting to reread The Odyssey. I like my history to be up to date. Emotions again, the thought that I can go on holiday by air, get somewhere faster and further than driving. In psychology, we have these theories of emotion, where the emotional response has to be linked to a cognitive component be given an emotional label. That link is not present for me, so I just feel an unnamed emotion.
I’ll feel better tomorrow. We are going away again, just for a couple of days.
Cancer 153
Posted on November 12, 2024 Leave a Comment
I am back in the hospital today for Chemo 27 (I think – I am losing track). When I entered the hospital in the past there was an alien nature to it, it was a place I didn’t want to be. It smelled strange and was in no way comforting. Today as I walked in there was a familiarity, a comfort. While I still don’t want to be here I have grown so used to it that it is almost pleasurable, certainly safe, to be here. The corridors no longer look forbidding, the lines of trolleys attractive, the signs to x-ray, haematology, etc provide the well-known map. I have now been in so many departments I feel I could write a Rough Guide to the hospital. Accommodation, like a 1980s hostel in Morocco. Food, generally a lower standard than British Rail in the 1980s. Staff, wonderful, except for some of the trolley drivers who provide a simiar experience to driving in Bangalore.
I am sitting in the virtually deserted restaurant at the top of the building, where they serve inedible breakfasts (even to me, the English breakfast lover), and where they have introduced the horrible smells of the doyen of fake foods, Subway. The smell permeates the whole restaurant. Among the few customers there is always the person who thinks it is acceptable to play noisy videos on their phone.
From here I will walk down the 12 flights of stairs (96 steps if you are asking) and go to the cancer room. I don’t walk up them, sionce being ill I have discovered lifts, but I still walk down, and am quite proud to do so. What a walker I am. I usually end up doing a few thousand steps while in hospital. They are big places. There are so many ill people.
Tonight I will go home and be ill. I am always ill when I am treated. Tomorrow morning I hope to wake up well, though still with my chemo bottle attached. I have been less well on the second day recently. I hope it is a blip. I don’t want to be ill.
My ambition is to take away the job of my district nurses. I flush my Hickman line every week (while the nurse sits playing with the cats or chatting). Last week I took my own blood samples. Now I just need to be able to do the chemo detach, ie removing the chemo bottle, then I will be fully independent – at least on a Thursday. It will also save the district nurses a job. They should train all their able-bodied ill people to do these tasks. Give us a bit of independence.
Cancer 152
Posted on November 8, 2024 Leave a Comment
Briefly, I have had the results of my scan and there is no significant change, meaning that there is nothing present in my chest, and only the nodules that were already present in my abdomen. My hernia has not got worse. My bloods are normal.
All is well.
I was fretting a little about this one.
Cancer 152
Posted on November 8, 2024 1 Comment
I get my latest scan results today. For some reason I am not as optimistic as usual. At some point the chemotherapy will stop working and the cancer will grow. I have had a somewhat rough time of it in the last few weeks re diarrhoea, possible Covid, temperature probably relating to the flu and Covid jobs I had at the beginning of this week. I went out for a meal last night and left some food! This is unheard of. I must be ill.
My last blog generated a little discussion of assisted dying, highly pertinent as parliament is going to discuss a draft bill (https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3741). I naturally support this bill as I am terrified of the potential pain in the last stages of life. The debate ranges around the safeguards for those who are choosing to die. There are always going to be problems where people are encouraged to make use of the facility, perhaps because the family sees the individual as a burden.
There is, to my mind, a false assumption regarding the importance of life, and the need to ensure that the individual has a free choice about when to die. We all die. Those of us who are terminally ill just know that we are going to die earlier than we thought. It came up in the discussion on my previous blog about the rationale for choosing death, and that perhaps it is a duty of the terminally ill to accept assisted dying. This is an interesting idea, recognising the emotional content of the topic, but attempting to rationalise it through a duty or necessity of dying.
I like to think that when I get to the terminal phase, where I am bed bound and in pain, where the doctors are saying that I am unlikely to have any more worthwhile life, that I will pop the pill with my family around me and experience a good death. I like to think that the decision will be made by me, though if I can’t make it then it should be a consensus among key family members. We are all reasonably intelligent people. We have discussed this. We all agree that assisted dying is fundamentally a good idea. I don’t think we will get caught up in the emotional claptrap.
Perhaps that is not the case for many people. Those who are vulnerable may agree to die because of family pressure, but is this necessarily a bad thing? Only those who are terminally ill and have little hope of any more good life should be able to be killed in this way, so I am not convinced that there is a problem. The final decision will presumably be made by medical personnel, after listening to the individual and their family. If there is a hint of pressure then presumably they can refuse to agree to assisted dying?
In the end, what is the fuss all about? If life is shit and not getting better then bang, wipe it out.
Dr Nigel Hunt 