Cancer 124
Posted on May 31, 2024 Leave a Comment
I am writing this while in hospital, waiting for my Hickman line to be inserted. I have signed my consent form and been given information about the procedure. I love the bits that can go wrong. The best two are that they could puncture a lung or an artery. Even without mistakes they slice open my jugular. I am so looking forward to it, but if this is my last blog, you know why.
I had my consultant meeting earlier. My latest blood tests are fine, mostly normal, a couple nearly normal. Chemotherapy is authorised for next week. I will get a scan sometime soon to see what is happening down there.
Despite medical staff going for my jugular later, I am feeling very positivw. A few weeks free of chemo drugs does help my optimism. I might not be able to beat this cancer. It will get me in the end. But I can hold the bastard down for a good while.
Cancer 123
Posted on May 27, 2024 Leave a Comment
I am in the last week before my treatment restarts, and I feel physically better than I have felt since it started last year, nearly a year ago. Today I walked further than I have walked since my operation. It was under two miles, but it was hilly. I am absolutely knackered now, with even my finger joints aching, though I didn’t walk on my hands. For the third time in a week I have achieved 10,000 steps – a meaningless statistic I know, but something I ahve not achieved in a long while.
Inevitably my situation puts me in two minds. Do I restart the treatment or do I not bother and enjoy the good health while I have it? Inevitably there is a part of me that says, sod it, enjoy the moment, but the dominant part is still on having the treatment, so look forward to me being a miserable bugger next week.
It is Monday. I have my bloods taken on Thursday. I have my Hickman line inserted on Friday. My treatment starts the following Tuesday. I am already looking forward to three months time when I can hopefully take another break. Roll on September.
Cance 122
Posted on May 17, 2024 Leave a Comment
It hasn’t been a good day, either practically or psychologically. In practical terms, we were off to see the kids and only got as far as Birmingham before we had to turn back due to car trouble. My first new car. I thought they were supposed to be reliable. It seems overcomplicated to me. Perhaps I should go back to having a Morris Minor or an old Land Rover, vehicles that can be cared for with a lump hammer and an adjustable spanner, rather than these new-fangled electronic devices.
It upset me because I was looking forward to seeing the kids, and also because it was going to be our last break before I get my Hickman Line fitted, the line that if it works is likely to remain sticking out of my chest until the end of treatment, until the treatment no longer works and all I have left is deterioration and death. Don’t ask why this upset me, why it should matter that I have a last break without looking like a defective android. Still, it isn’t to be.
After a pointless 120 mile trip I started fretting about the Hickman line, whether it will work or go the way of the last three PICC lines. I then started fretting about whether I really want to go on with treatment. It is such a hassle. I have enjoyed the last few weeks without being pulled, prodded and poisoned. I have almost felt normal. I have not taken any voluntary drugs (eg for pain, diarrhoea, constipation, skin, gout), not even any antibiotics (that is rare); and I have more or less stopped applying the various creams to my arms, as they seem to have more or less recovered from the PICC infections. It has been great. The only problems have been the usual stoma and hernia problems.
Do I really want to go back to the never-ending regime of chemotherapy and its adjuncts?
Later this afternoon it became more real. I was woken by the phone ringing (I was up five hours last night because I couldn’t sleep). It was the hospital, setting the appointment for the fitting of the Hickman Line, Friday 31 May. The day before I will be providing blood for testing – and so it starts again.
Do I really want to bother. I am in one of those Orwellian situations where I can hold two views at the same time. I want the treatment because it is likely to give me more time before the inevitably snuffing of the light. I don’t want the treatment because I am sick of going to the hospital, being filled with poisons, being tired, being in pain, and being cheerful so everyone thinks I am all right (which I am a lot of the time – but am I just saying that?).
I have said that I want to achieve more, that I want to finish my novel (novels actually) and my book about Wingfield Manor. On the other hand I am finding it difficult to work, difficult to write. I did restart the novel yesterday but I have done nothing today. I sit and read or do online jigsaws. If my remaining life is going to be worth anything I wonder whether online jigsaws are enough, or whether I can get back to proper writing.
There, that feels better. Do as I say, not as I do, and writing about one’s woes is very useful. I feel better now than I did ten minutes ago! Perhaps the remaining part of the day will be better.
Cancer 121
Posted on May 13, 2024 Leave a Comment
Tomorrow we will be home from our latest holiday. I wonder why I haven’t lived in Scotland. The scenery is spectacular, the food is British untainted by the Mediterranean influence so common in the south, the cost of living is lower and the people are friendly and generous. There are downsides of course, tartan, kilts, and bagpipes must ruin the ears and eyes of many people. Nevertheless, if I wasn’t in constant need of the health service I would like to spend a significant part of my retirement in Scotland. I might even learn to sail a boat in the lochs.
The first part of the holiday was tainted a little by illness. Not only was I tired from the long (in modern terms) drive, but the toothache was, literally, a pain. It still is, but I am managing now without painkillers. I just need to avoid cold drinks and ice cream. While here I have been asking for warm – ie not fridge cold) lemonade. I am seen as a bit of an oddity wanting a warm drink. I use the toothache excuse but in reality I rarely enjoy fridge cold drinks. The chill takes the taste away, which is presumably why some people can consume lager and not roll around on the floor in agony. The temperature of white wine, though I don’t drink it now, is a constant refrain. A certain someone thinks that all white wine should be chilled within an inch of its life, whereas the best serving temperature depends on the wine. Cheap wine needs to be chilled – again it is to remove the taste – but something like a Chablis should be served relatively warm. I think I will add the temperature of drinks to my portfolio of annoying cafe, restaurant and pub owners, along with the desire to eat off plates not slates, and for the banning of sticky toffee pudding – among other things, but this is not the place to whinge.
Not only have I cut out painkillers, at least for the moment, I am using less cream on my arms. My skin is managing to repair itself. Instead of the rhinoceros skin I had on both my upper arms due to the dodgy PICC lines, I now have a slightly softer version, albeit pockmarked from over-scratching, which is also true not just for my arms but for most of my body. I try to stop scratching but you know how it is.
Tomorrow we get home from Scotland and then it is almost immediately down to the other end of the country to see family, and then down to Cornwall – yet more long drives, I will probably need a long rest after that, but immediately on returning home I will be having my Hickman Line inserted, ie the line which enters my chest and terminates just outside my heart. Hopefully, it will be more effective than the PICC lines but we will see. I am not looking forward to returning to treatment after a) the disasters of the last few rounds, and b) getting away from it all for a few weeks. Getting away from it all means that in some ways I start to think like a normal person again – until I remember.
My other problems at the moment are aches all over my body. I can find it difficult to get up from a sitting position. It is painful to move my arm backwards. My walking is more restricted that it was even fairly recently. It feels like a decline, a slow breaking down of my body I know, but I can’t help thinking these thoughts. After all, it is happening!
Cancer 120
Posted on May 6, 2024 2 Comments
I have complained about various illnesses and troubles recently. I might as well continue with the theme. I have toothache. At the best of times, toothache is a pain, a severe pain. When added to my list of failing biological systems it is more than a pain. I dread going to the dentist. I am of the era when there was no local anaesthetic for fillings, and so my fear of dentists is very strong. It doesn’t matter that now they are nicer, kinder, and most importantly use anaesthesia – childhood memories dominate.
Still, we are on holiday so I can’t let a little matter like being unable to eat ice cream or drink cold drinks dominate. We are far north in Scotland, in a Manse in a small village by Loch Ewe. For those who are interested, Loch Ewe was one of the bases from which the Arctic Convoys sailed in WWII. While the ships are long gone, there is still concrete evidence of the wartime role the loch played, so we – sorry I – have been exploring various gun platforms, radar sites, heavy and light AA sites, and so on. The loch is still home to a NATO refueling base, though you wouldn’t know it with the apparent lack of security. Don’t tell anyone, we don’t want the wrong people to know about it.
There is also an Arctic Convoy museum. It is fairly new and needs some organisation, but it is full of model ships and aeroplanes, many of which I constructed in my childhood, eg the planes Catalina, Lancaster, Spitfire, Mosquito and Hurricane, and the ships Tirpitz, Hood and Sheffield. It made me want to start purchasing from Airfix again. I wonder if I could make them without getting glue all over the place? I doubt it. I never could. There were lots of stories from men who sailed in the convoys. A rotten job. People whinge now about being upset by ‘hate’ speech (which usually has nothing to do with hate) or whether someone uses the right pronouns (quick guide: if it has a penis or ever had a penis it is he, if it has a vagina or ever had a vagina it is a she). I think our forefathers would be tut-tutting and shaking their heads in dismay.
We have a week here and then a slow three-day journey home. It was about 550 miles from home to here and nowadays that is a long journey. I was very tired on arrival. It is not like the good old days such as driving to Crimea (3,000 miles) in one week or getting from Sarajevo to Thiepval (on the Somme) in 24 hours (1500 miles). And yes, I did all the driving then and I do all the driving now. I don’t think I will be getting to Spain again or do the half-planned trip to Sicily. What? Get a plane? You must be joking. What with my stoma, my hernia, my dodgy heart and my cancer I don’t think any reasonable airline would let me board, even if I wanted to. One of the great advantages of my condition is that I never have to face airports again.
I have just started reading Don Delillo’s Underworld. I enjoyed White Noise. The first chapter is all about US rounders. I didn’t understand a word of it. Has anyone read it? If so, does he stop going on about rounders? I hope so because I like his writing. It is another very long book because as I have said before, I can’t die in the middle of a long book. The trouble is, I am only reading long books….
After this holiday, and then a few days in the South West seeing the kiddies, I will be back to treatment in early June, which means I get fiddled with in the last week of May. I wonder when I can have another treatment break?
Dr Nigel Hunt 