Cancer 27
Posted on March 20, 2023 Leave a Comment
It has been a while since I blogged. This mainly because I have not had a functioning brain for the last few days. This illness has rather taken over in the last few days but I am hoping for a little respite from the worst of it, though I am likely to be here for many days yet. I do feel a spark of strength and positivity at the moment.
I have read nothing, listened to nothing, and my existence consists of myself, this part of the hospital, and those around me, both physically and across the ether. What is important to me now is whether I can make myself more comfortable in bed, whether the new chap across the way snores (he does, very loudly), and how I am going to get through this period of no eating. It is now Monday evening. I have not eaten anything since Thursday evening, and it is likely to be several days at least before I can have this tube out of my stomach and eat something. It is not as though I want a bacon sandwich or a roast dinner, I am looking forward to a simple biscuit – though not too much as I can’t become obsessed with food.
I get to hear the stories of others, whether they mean me to or not. One chap was asking me for advice on his sex life with his wife. Apparently he had slowed a little due to his four heart attacks. No idea why he asked me. Perhaps after his first question he thought I was the fount of wisdom – his first question was how to spell ‘bored’. He then got dressed and ran away. Another chap is telling his health stories continually over the phone. The snorer, when not sleeping, just sits. He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t play on his phone. The Polish chap could speak little English. He kept getting up and walking away. He kept bottles of pickles on his shelf to improve his hospital diet. On a quiet evening he started playing loud Polish music on his phone. It was quite good really.
It is also difficult having these tubes in various places on and in my body, but there is no point in worrying about it because they are going to be there for days.
Hospitals teach patience in a way it is not learned elsewhere. A prison may be similar. You put up with things because you have to. You become the ultimate stoic.
Cancer 26
Posted on March 18, 2023 Leave a Comment
Well, that didn’t last long. I am now back in hospital with tubes sticking out of me. I am typing with one thumb. I had one good full day at home. The following morning I felt intemse pain coming on and spent the early morning hours struggling through witb Sue and Conor. The pain was unbearable. At one point it was coming through in waves. I just wanted to die. If this all I have to look forward to then it is better to be dead.
In the morning our nurse friend Jude came round and recommended hospital. We phoned the stoma nurse who also recommended hospital. We phoned 999.
The ambulance came quickly. I was reassured by the first chap round the door as he looked tall, strong and fit. I was worried two slight girls would not be able to shift me after my sister had a similar experience, and she was half my size.
They were very efficient, checking my vitals, asking the right questions and, jointly with the stoma nurse, bypassing A & E to get me straight into hospital. At hospital I was in a lot of pain. I went through usual rigmarole, including 4 attempts to get an IV into my arm. I have had 2 CT scans. I had hoped my problem was a blockage of the stoma, which still hasn’t functioned properly, but my abdomen is instead full of a blood-like substance, which may mean another operation. I hope not. The aftermath of this one is bad enough.
I am being fed antibiotics, nourishment and painkillers through my IV. I am drinking water and eating no food since the day before yesterday.
I am here for assessment. I don’t know how long that will take. Then there is treatment. I really hope that is not an operation. I don’t know if I can cope with that. It would be better to die now.
Cancer 25
Posted on March 16, 2023 2 Comments
“Well, I’m going home
Back to the place where I belong
And where your love has always been enough for me”
They are going to set me free, hopefully today. My mood has gone from Despair to hope. I just need to convince all the right people that I am fit enough to be set free.
It is not that I dislike the people. They are (generally) great, but the atmosphere of a hospital is stifling, the noise consistent, the sense of illness overpowering.
Later
They are going to set me free. It is confirmed. For much of the day I have been waiting on the word of the stoma nurse, which I was fairly sure I would get. I had to pass the test of being able to change my stoma bag, which I nervously did. That gave me the go away. Then it was the endless hospital waiting, while they put in my prescriptions, lost them at the pharmacy and chased them up. The consultants were easy to convince. Many were still working as junior doctors because of the strike and so didn’t know what they were doing.
Actually, I spent the day being a good psychologist, putting the idea that they wanted to release me into their heads.
Later
I am free! I am sitting in my chair at 0140, unable to sleep any longer on the horizontal bed. It clogs my chest. The atmosphere at home is impossible to describe in terms of comparison with hospital. While the hospital was necessary the immediate aftermath of the operation, one I was taking all my drugs by mouth and detached from all lines there is no need to be there.
The worst part of the day was when they removed the final drain. This is a substantial tube going into my belly. I had no idea it went 11-12 inches in! When it was first pulled I experienced a painful yank in my groin and let out a yelp. I wanted to faint when I saw the length of it, ok I didn’t. This isn’t a 19th Century novel.
Cancer 24
Posted on March 15, 2023 2 Comments
Yesterday was my sister’s funeral. She was 63 and died of cancer. The funeral was at Markeaton Crematorium and I was allowed out of hospital for the ceremony.
There had been massive organising behind the scenes (behind my scenes anyway) between members of the family, NHS staff and funeral organisers to put in place the possibility of me watching a live stream of the funeral. Everybody was so kind and helpful. Fortunately I could attend.
Sue, Jack and Sarah picked me up from the hospital and drove me to the crematorium. The service was – and this is where no words represent the truth – good, with Sally at the helm. She has now done the funerals of three members of my childhood nuclear family. I told her I would be next.
I did not like being the cripple at the event. People were nice to me, shared a few words and so on, but it was from within me. I was seething at the situation. Helen dying, then I will die. It is not about injustice. It just is, but I would rather it was something else. It confused the situation, the service. Here I was, to grieve for my sister, but I couldn’t, because I was too caught up in myself, the pain, the lack of control. The lack of future.
I managed to reflect on our shared childhood, but at the time it was more like parallel play. We rarely played together, partly because of the age gap, partly because we we the opposite sex, but we spent a lot of time together in the car, in the evenings, often bickering.
In the ceremony it was suggested that she had a stricter upbringing than me. I don’t think that was the case. Girls and boys did get treated differently, particularly when teenagers. My Dad picked Helen up from the pub. He never picked me up, but that was a sense of chivalry rather than getting her home on time. I had to walk several miles in all weathers.
It was the most – and here I am at a loss for words – stimulating, important, central – funeral I have attended. She was my sister. Whether we got on or not is irrelevent. She was the closest person to me. We came out of the same womb, shared genes, shared a childhood that was to the exclusion of everyone else at the funeral. I knew her as a small child. It is odd that she is dead.
Cancer 23
Posted on March 14, 2023 Leave a Comment
Sleepless nights on uncomfortable hospital beds (too narrow, too short) does mean that I potentially have a lot of time for thinking. On the other hand the pain, the tiredness, the beeping of monitors, the noise of other patients and the movements of nurses are less conducive to thinking.
One thought that pops up, perhaps because it ia a cultural norm, is that of fear of death. We think that the dying fear death; many people say they fear death, so do I fear death? The simple answer is that it is the wrong question. I have no reason to fear death. There is no bearded fairy or fork-tongued demon waiting to determine whether I should spend eternity in the clouds or in a pit of fire. That is just daft, and is partly why I have no respect for religion or religious practice.
Mark Twain made a good point: ‘I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.’
A religious person might argue this is flawed as we may begin to exist at the point of birth (or conception) and then continue for eternity, but really? What is the logic behind a soul not existing before birth (or conception) and then continuing after death? It is death! End. Completion. Finshed. Done with. Over. Kaput. Muerte.
I think the real question, for me at least, is not around death itself but missing out. Of course once I am dead I am not missing anything, but now, before I am dead I can and do think about what I will miss out on, such as having more happily married years, especially post-retirement, just doing things together. It doesn’t matter what we do, it is missing out on being together. Perhaps I am greedy as I have had nearly 30 very happily married years. I am also missing out on children growing up. Some I have met, but some have not yet been born.
I am missing out on the books I wanted to write, particularly novels. I will never know whether I can write a good one. I probably won’t even see my current book, Applied Narrative Psychology, come out, though it is almost finished. I should get on with it instead of scribbling blogs!
These are just a few of the personal things I will miss. There are more, but in a more general sense will I see another winter? Will I see snow? Will I ever go abroad again? I certainly won’t see the UK take its rightful place in the EU. But these things don’t matter (apart perhaps from rejoining the EU) neither do any of those ‘places to see before you die’ ideas. I don’t understand them. I’ve seen places. I’ve not seen others. So what?
If I ask myself the question, what do I want to do if I get another 6 healthy months, I don’t know the answer. I suppose it is a sign that I am happy that I don’t really want to do anything different to what I have already been doing. Yes it would be nice to do certain things but if they don’t happen then I don’t really care.
Presumably this is the good life – but that can be a question for another day.
Dr Nigel Hunt 