Cancer 97
Posted on January 26, 2024 1 Comment
This is a two part piece, the first part is before meeting the consultant, the second is after. Are there differences between the two regarding the way.my mind is working?
Part One
I am sort of glad to be back to treatment, though it might be that treatment is not deemed appropriate due to bodily changes and that I just need to sit around waiting to die. If that happens then I don’t expect to just sit around. The world is my oyster and I am its pearl! It will be travel and write until I am unable to do so. Bedridden without hope of recovery seems a miserable existence so I might jump off High Tor instead, except I would be too much of a scaredy cat to do so.
Alternatively the treatment might be chamged to, for example, another form of chemotherapy. This might work well or the sude effects might be unbearable, in which case perhaps High Tor beckons again, or not.
I prefer the easy option that my bloods are fine, the last scan was fine, the cancer is being held at bay, and life will continue as it was last year, travelling around the country, trying to write my bloody book, and eating too much.
Yes, I am optimistic that the consultant will see me for a couple of minutes then tell me to clear off because I am boring.
A pearl is a sort of parasite, isn’t it?
Part Two
I am back at home. I thought cancer was supposed to be dead hard and lethal, like the Royal Marines, mine is more like the Italian army, 1939-45. Instead of just getting on with the job and killing me it is making very little effort. The biggest lump (peri-rectal) has, between my last two scans, gone from 2cm to just over 1cm, there is a 2mm lump in my lung that is unchanged (and may not be cancer, just an Italian civilian), and my blood marker is slightly up from 3.0 to 3.8, as is my white cell count, but it is suggested that I am recovering from an infection so that is normal. Finally, there are no further significant growths. A pathetic attempt at killing. Imagine if the German army was like that in WWII, they would have been beaten by Poland in a few weeks. We would never have had the Cold War, Israel would probably not exist, Churchill would not have been Prime Minister and the bouncing bomb may never have been developed.
I have been cleared to start treatment next week, so on Monday it is PICC line fitting (53cm as you are asking), and on Tuesday at 1000, the nurses started pumping me full of the same set of drugs as before. I was asked if I was ok with the same drugs. Yes I am, my side effects were not too bad, considering the stories you often hear.
I also have a hernia relating to my stoma. Perhaps it could be operated on, but I would rather not if it is not necessary. The disadvantages of having abnormal holes in the abdominal lining. Mine is more of a string vest than a nicely fitted shirt.
So, nothing to worry about then. I did remember to ask when I can take another break so we can book a foreign holiday – probably not Italy – I am waiting to find out the date. In the meantime, we have booked a short break in early February to celebrate my retirement.
Cancer 96
Posted on January 25, 2024 Leave a Comment
It has been a while since my last post, partly because I was still enjoying my holiday in France. I did manage to drive all the way to the Pyrenees and back, though I found it more tiring than I used to and had to stop by 3pm. My day seems to be shifting earlier. I get up ever earlier and fade in the evening by 8pm. If I keep going then I will be working the night shift and eventually get back to being able to have wild evenings at nightclubs – oh yes, I have never done that. I forgot.
The good news at the moment is that I am now retiring from The University of Nottingham at the end of January. It is of course quite exciting as it means I do not have to pander to the modern nonsenses expounded by our universities, though it has been rather badly organised. I only found out that I was retiring 11 days before I retire, and then only because I emailed the pension provider.
There will be no party at my retirement. My immense popularity at Nottingham means that I have tried to inform those I get on with best – count them on the fingers of one hand. If I have missed anyone who works there I blame chemobrain (my excuse for any failure from now on until my untimely death). In any case, what is a party if I don’t drink alcohol? It is just a conglameration of people having a better time than me.
People with cancer that is going to kill them tend to gradually close in on themselves and cease to have an interest in the world. Then they die. I may have already mentioned that I like to read long books so that I cannot die while I am in the middle of them. We have also just got two kittens, so I will need to look after them for the next 10-15 years (unless of course they get run over which is highly likely given what has happened to previous cats). These strategies of avoiding death should be taken up by the oncologists. I can teach them a thing or two about living with cancer. Read long books and have kittens are just two of them. Perhaps I should develop some CPD courses.
Anyway, retirement won’t really change my life as I have been off work for nearly a year. People talk about retirement being the start of a new adventure, being able to go places and do things that you couldn’t do when you were at work. In my case I have already been doing the things I want to, long before I became ill, so what I do is unlikely to change very much – apart from the cancer treatment and dying in agony of course (I must remember to stock up on morphine).
The treatment is beginning again after a good break. I am almost looking forward to it. It has been suggested that I am institutionalised, and that is probably right, but it helps me to deal with the routine that starts off ok but gradually gets more tedious over time. By my 13th treatment cycle in December I had certainly had enough of chemotherapy. I would have been ready to jump into a deep well filled with sulphuric acid had it not been for family, friends and the nurses – so social support does work. People are practical and says it like it is, which works for me.
At the moment I have no idea how many cycles I will have before I get another break; indeed, I don’t know if I will last through another full set of treatment, either I could fall under a bus (unlikely as I don’t go near public transport), the treatment might stop working, or the Conservative Government might abolish the NHS, but I prefer to plan ahead (another CPD strategy), so once I get dates we will be planning where to go. In the meantime, I will have my 6 day gaps in treatment and no doubt we will be off to the Lake District (already booked), Northumberland, Scotland, etc. If anyone has any good ideas of where to go for a 6 day break let me know – obviously excluding Wales. I don’t think I could get a visa.
Right, I am hungry so I am going to try and eat salad. They weigh me every time I go for treatment and the scales go further out of kilter each time, recording my weight as increasing (a good thing for cancer patients? Another CPD course, eat lots), so I am going to try and eat healthily. The problem with this statement is that it is always future biased, ‘I am going to’ rather than ‘I am’. Also, these bloody kittens are being very annoying. I’d send a picture but just look on the Internet at any cat photos, they all look alike. I much prefer dogs and chickens.
Cancer 95
Posted on January 9, 2024 Leave a Comment
The non-existence of god. As I sit here and feel the immediacy of dying, my views about death have still not changed. I have talked about this in my earlier blogs, but I am allowed to be repetitious. It’ll stop soon. I have had my diagnosis of cancer for a year this month (congratulations!) and my terminal diagnosis for 10 months, this should be long enough for me to have made adjustments to the way I think about death and dying, but there have been no real changes. I am pleased that since the age of 7 I have essentially thought the same way about god, death, and the non-existent afterlife.
I often wonder how, in the modern world, there are still people who genuinely believe that there is a god and some form of continued existence after death. There are several problems with this kind of belief, and we can turn to Descartes, a good god-fearing chap, to examine them briefly. We first need to embrace two important scientific ideas, doubt and evidence.
One problem with the concept of god is biological. Assuming god is linked to some idea of soul, which it often is, there is no rational biological argument for – there is certainly no evidence for – a soul that is separate from our bodies. I have only written this because Descartes made the absurd claim that the linkage between the mind soul and the body was via the pineal gland. He just made that up.
Descartes was a classic anti-scientific god-fearing philosopher, which leads us to another problem with the concept of god. Descartes rightly described the need for doubt, and ended up doubting everything except god. He doubted his senses, the existence of others, and so on. He did not doubt the existence of god because, he claimed, if god doesn’t exist then the world cannot exist. So from the basis that god must exist, Descartes reconstructed the universe. If god exists then why would he con me into believing there is a world when there isn’t? So there must be a world. If god exists then why would he con me into believing that people exist when they don’t? So people exist, and in this way Descartes rebuilt the world and everything in it.
Why we still think highly of Descartes I have no idea. To doubt, to challenge, to question, is a good thing. Without it science would not exist, but to doubt every single thing except the existence of god demonstrates an incredible naivety. If you are going to have doubt, which you should, then you have to doubt god. Put this with another pillar of science, the need for evidence relating to knowledge, as there is not a shred of evidence for the existence of any god then our doubt about god’s existence is, under current knowledge, not only possible, but necessary, which suggests that we should not be living our lives as though a god exists.
While my scientific mind must doubt my understanding of the world, I base the way I function on the available evidence, and also recognising my own limitations regarding understanding the world. If I lived as though god exists then I would – like many religious people – live a very strange and inauthentic life.
I know some may disagree….
Cancer 94
Posted on January 6, 2024 Leave a Comment
This notion of dying is still lingering in me, partly perhaps due to this immense feeling of tiredness, and partly due to having a cold, which with a hardly functioning immune system is manflu++. I have my aches and pains, common enough but to my neurotic mind, increasing in intensity. I have visual problems, particularly in the early morning and the evening, to the extent that it can be difficult to read.
To change the subject, we are still in the sunshine of southern France, with new overnight snowfall on the mountains nearby. We have toured around, exploring the local Mediterranean areas of France and Spain, and seen a few fortresses, mainly Vauban’s. Living in this climate would probably have real health benefits, especially as I am eating more fish, in obedience to ‘local’ advice.
We are in Roussillon, which is northern Catalonia, ie Catalonia without all the nationalistic fuss of the Spanish Catalans. Here we go again, with my recent media experience of the Welsh and their ‘language’ still vivid in my head, I am again in an area where they have some signs with two languages on them – not as many as in Wales, so it is not such a problem. I do not know how many people speak Catalan in Roussillon, but I imagine it is far fewer than Catalan speakers in Spain. Visit any museum or public place in Spanish Catalonia and the first language is usually Catalan, which is useless for nearly all tourists. Language is primarily about communication, so the Catalonians are doing themselves a serious disservice by alienating tourists who can’t understand a word of their unintelligible language. I only found out the other day that Franco didn’t have a total ban on the use of Catalan – perhaps that was a mistake because by now it might have more or less disappeared like other dead and dying languages.
The French are not as flexible as other countries regarding the use of minority languages within the state. It is assumed everyone speaks French and uses French for all official business. There is none of this nonsense about wasting money putting everything into a minority language as we do with Welsh even though there are relatively few Welsh speakers in Wales (under 20% of the Welsh population as you are asking) and almost none outside Wales. The French just assume – rightly – that everyone will use the main language of the country rather than pander to noisy but misguided minorities (remember Brexit?) who insist on making life more difficult for everyone.
I might have said this before (allow my chemo-fuzzed brain its many failures) but I like to relate languages to the various football leagues. We have the top Premiership languages such as English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, and Mandarin, which are widely spoken around the world and are currently in no danger of dying out. We then have the Championship languages such as German, French (yes, you can argue both of those are Premiership, but leagues have promotion and relegation), Italian, and so on. Then we have the League One languages such as Greek, Serbo-Croat (come on, they are the same language despite the 1990s), Dutch, Danish, and so on. Then we move to the League Two languages that are surviving but may be in danger of leaving the league such as Finnish, Swedish, Czech, and so on, languages that are still ‘proper’ languages but may die out as the population starts speaking more English or another of the Premiership languages. Then we have the effectively dead non-league languages such as Welsh or Catalan, that are effectively moribund and only held together with a bit of old baling twine and lots of government money.
With globalisation there is an inevitable drift towards fewer languages because, as I already said, language is primarily about communication. English is still the dominant cross-country language in the EU despite our leaving because it is the most common second language in Europe. Languages will drift down the league tables and become effectively moribund or extinct as the big boys take over. Whatever the linguistic culturalists might desire, there are going to be fewer and fewer languages. This is not to say English will be the final dominant language, though at the moment it looks that way. It depends to some extent on political and cultural power and, as we have seen throughout history, that can change at any point. In Europe it is not long since French was dominant, and before that Latin.
I make no apologies for being Eurocentric. First, I am European, second, the world is Eurocentric.
Anyway, it makes a change from talking about cancer, though I am very tired….
Cancer 93
Posted on December 24, 2023 Leave a Comment
I had a terrible dream last night, one of those that takes over your whole self, even when you have woken up. Probably fortunately I don’t remember it in detail though I did for the first minutes after waking, but it was about having cancer, and I was bleeding heavily around the lower abdomen and groin area. I had to cycle while bleeding. I tried to soak up the blood with a cloth but it didn’t work. It was quite a long dream and shifted from being a fairly sensible one about doing research about cancer to a terrible one about cancer, blood and dying. I didn’t return immediately to bed as I may have returned to the dream. I stayed up for a few hours to rid myself of it.
I feel I have learned something about dying over the last few days, not only because of the dream but because of the immense tiredness I feel as a result of driving 1400km to this villa we are spending Christmas and the New Year at in Ceret, in the far south of France, in the Pyrenees, near the border with Spain.
In the past, when I have been ill, I have always expected to recover fully and live normally. Even with my heart failure, I felt I was living with it rather than dying from it. With my cancer, it is very different. I am clearly dying from it, the key question is how long it will take to die. I have mentioned figures before, ie no one can tell how long they will last, the doctors cannot predict with any certainty, but the mean is around 2 to 2.5 years from diagnosis. I have now survived – lived – nearly one year from diagnosis (It is my cancer birthday next month so I expect lots of presents!). I have known this all along but it is only in these last few days that I have got a real feeling of dying. I have pains in my abdomen, soreness around my stoma, itchiness on my head and arm, general weakness and an inability to walk very far. I have difficulties getting up from a sitting position, and sometimes feel dizzy when I do so. My eyes are affected. I get blurred vision at times, they are weepy and sore. My body aches. My fingertips are tender. The soles of my feet are tender, particularly when walking barefoot. The list of aches and pains, soreness and tenderness is endless, and I have a strong feeling that they are all signs of the general decay, that they will not go away, they will just get worse until they finish me off. At times I am taking painkillers but I want to avoid them, it feels like giving up to give in to pain. I am taking a generalised antibiotic, with a prescription for 50 days – that wouldn’t be handed out to just anybody. It feels that the health service will ply me with any drugs that will make my life just that little bit better. I have a bag full of drugs with me that serve a variety of purposes. My stoma kit consists of three big bags. I am back to chemotherapy towards the end of January. I am expensive to maintain – but for how much longer?
The feeling throughout life that it is normal to recover from an illness is hard to lose, but I am losing it. I still hope that many of these problems will, at least temporarily, go away, though I must admit I am not fully convinced. That is what I mean by having a sense of dying, that idea that these multiple bodily problems are building up, that I am not recovering from them, that eventually they are going to finish me off.
Yet I remain positive. It is probably wrong to say that I have hope, because there is no hope, not in the normal sense. There is only hope that there will be a temporary cessation or diminution of these symptoms, that the cancer will spread slowly rather than quickly, and that I will have years rather than months to live. Bad dreams do not help matters.
But don’t worry. I still have a positive frame of mind, though at times it might not sound like it. Back to enjoying the holiday….
Dr Nigel Hunt 