Cancer 228
Posted on January 20, 2026 Leave a Comment
It is nearly 4am and today I am off to the hospital to start my 48th round of chemotherapy. Yesterday, when I realised it was time, I suppressed a sob. Do I want to do this? No. Do I need to do this? No. Why am I doing this? I don’t know. Am I doing this for myself, to stay alive as long as possible, or for my family, so they can have me around for as long as possible? I don’t know.
Every time it gets just perceptably harder. If I stop I will die sooner. This treatment isn’t going to be as effective as the last one, which worked for nearly 2.5 years. Perhaps this one will work for six months, perhaps not. So if I keep going I may get a few more months. Is it worth it? Today I will sit in the hospital with chemo drugs being pumped through my line while I distract myself with reading and writing, gradually feeling a little more ill as time goes on. Tonight I will feel awful. I won’t want to eat much or do much else with my time. Hopefully I will feel a little better tomorrow, though the side effects of these new drugs are much worse than the last lot, and I will probably be ill into next week. The week after it starts again.
It is relentless, and becomes more so over time. There is no let up. The treatment only ends when it fails. There is no sense of recovery after treatment. There is no hope.
There is only the life I have, and the quality of that life. I have always said that if my quality of life isn’t there then I will be ready to die. The problem is that my quality of life is gradually slipping away, and my judgement of that quality changes, so when do I start to think it should end?
Perhaps driving is a good indicator of quality of life for me. I used to drive to southern Spain, the Balkans, Crimea – long distances without any problem. I have driven in South America, North America, India, China. Since my diagnosis my driving has become more limited.
In the early days of treatment I drove to the Pyrenees and to the German Baltic coast at Rugen. Later it became more restricted to driving to the Netherlands. Now I may be restricted to the UK.
Soon perhaps I won’t drive beyond the boundaries of Derbyshire. And then…?
Cancer 227
Posted on January 15, 2026 Leave a Comment
I don’t like cats. They are so damned arrogant, self-centred, selfish and proud. When they want attention, they demand it, if you want their attention they ignore you. I have just had all three lying on the bed with me, wanting fuss. How lovely, they are paying attention to me. Yeah, right. They just wanted me to get up and let them out.
I wanted chickens. You can talk to chickens. You can hold a decent two way conversation with chickens. When we had chickens I would sit at the top of the garden, chicken on knee or next to me, qnd we would discuss philosophy, the meaning of life, and whether they were worried about the nearby foxes.
I also like dogs, but they are so emotionally demanding, like slightly perturbed children. Dogs understsnd human emotion and respond to it. They actively want you to like them.
The problem with my situation is that I can’t look after animals any more. I can’t clean out a chicken shed, let them out every morning, lock them up every evening, and so on. So we have cats. Easier to look after but poor conversationalists.
In reality it is great having the cats. There is something about having animals around, they are comforting for me. No, they don’t replace humans, they offer sonething additional. When I sit and fret about growing tumours or fear of pain, stroking an animal, even a cat, talking to it (not much talking with a cat) and just observing its behaviour, is – I don’t like the word therapeutic as it suggests I have a mental health condition. I don’t, this shit is real – somehow pleasant and helpful.
Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t gone soft or got a tumour in my amygdala, I would still happily kill the cats. When we had chickens I had no problem with the process of naming a chicken, eating its eggs, then killing and eating the chicken itself, but I won’t do so quite yet.
Though I really don’t like cats, selfish, self-centred….
Cancer 226
Posted on January 13, 2026 Leave a Comment
If I had written this yesterday it would probably have been entirely negative. I had one if the worst days since the weeks after my operation. It is said they use this treatment after the failure of the first because the side effects are so much worse. They are, and they hit later. As usual I was fine for the first few days post treatment, and then bam!
I found it hard to move, to think, to read, to talk, to eat. I am not right today but I feel better than yesterday. At the moment I have a nasty cold, both in my head and in my throat. I have had a horrid sore throat for a couple of days. Having a useless immune system is not fun.
It is difficult to describe how I feel, how it feels with the side effects. It is nothing like any normal (non-cancer) feeling. It permeates my whole body. Standing up and walking is difficult. I am dizzy, tired, and feel sick. My stoma churns out awful diarrhoea that I have to deal with when feeling awful. It doesn’t go down the toilet on its own, you know!
On these days I understand why people give up treatment. If I have to live like this is it worth it? It is getting harder to fight. I want to cry, I do cry. It is a permanent pain of the soul. It is chipping away at me, eating me, until I think I can’t go on.
And then.
I have to go on. You only get one go at this. Once you give up it is over. Man up, stiffen that lip, and crack on with life!
Cancer 225
Posted on January 9, 2026 Leave a Comment
It is the middle of the night (0347), it has been snowing, and we are supposed to be going on holiday to the Lake District today for few days – that 6 day period I get between hospital visits every fortnight. I am not sure yet whether we will be able to leave in the morning. I find that with cancer I am not as adventurous when driving. In the past I didn’t mind getting caught in snow and ice. As long as there was suitable kit in the car. I have cleared snow and ice with shovels, sand bags, big lumps of stone, sand, gravel, pushing, etc – not now though. If the road isn’t going to be clear then I am not going on it. Perhaps I have just learned to be sensible in my old(er) age. I am the same off road, no risky hills, bumps or mud. Boring I know, but there we are.
A heavy fall of snow used to be exciting. Snowballs, sledging, walking and getting wet and miserable, and ending up in the pub with everyone else from the village who was unable to get to work. Wellies at the pub door, socks on the pub floor, beer in the belly, pissed up against the wall. Joyous days of old!
We had a long weekend in Yorkshire last weekend. A nice hotel we have been to several times. The food is excellent, but I find that I can’t keep eating richer food all the time. Three days was too long. It is also difficult just eating at meal times. I prefer to eat little and often, when I am hungry (I have just eaten a bowl of cereal with slightly warm milk – I am not allowed cold things, another side effect from treatment is a nasty reaction to anything cold.
I am also worried about my bowel. The tumour around my bowel, at the entrance to the stoma, is expanding and starting to close up the bowel, OK, it has been doing this for ages but I like to keep my head in the sand. I really need to phone the hospital, but what will happen? I will go into hospital and they will say (a) we can;t do anything about it so it is time to die, or (b) we can operate but it is very risky and you may well die on the operatinv theatre – and we will have to stop the chemotherapy so you will die anyway. Actually, these are not the options I have been told about, they are the options I have devised in my head during my endless sleepless nights. They are probably pretty accurate though, because what else could they do? I have already been told that they won’t operate on the tumours. So it means I worry about eating because I worry about not having an exit strategy for my waste.
The other problem I need to ring up about is that my central line is failing. It was originally positioned wrongly so I have never been able to draw blood from it. When it was placed early last year (May time?) I was told it could either be left where it was as it will work for the chemo for some time before failing, or it could be changed with a lot of hassle. I opted to leave it. Nothing unusual there. I like to leave things as they are whenever I can as it means I don’t get to go into hospital every single day of my life. I know I am bad, but I just don’t want to be in hospital even if it does mean I am doing my health no good.
The other option is that I don’t like phones, so I don’t like to ring the rapid response line (yes, as cancer fold we get a special fast phone line to the hospital) nor the consultant, or anyone else. I ahave always been frightened of phones – I am not sure if that is the right word but I hate ringing people,. I am not too bad with people I know, but I am hopeless when it comes to ringing officialdom or anyone else I don’t know. Ringing call centres is awful, particularly when everyone has accents I have difficulty understanding. Why can’t I just send an email?
Still, hating phones helps my head stay firmly in the sand.
I hope the snow does go away.
If it does, I am still left with another problem. I have had constipation so I have taken several constipation remedies and they are just starting to work. Imagine emptying my stoma several times while travelling up the motorway. Problems, problems. Life is so many problems. At least I still have my own teeth.
Cancer 224
Posted on January 2, 2026 Leave a Comment
This is the point where everyone says Happy New Year. I have never been comfortable with those kinds of phrases. Beyond a certain good manners, their words are not meant to convey any real meaning. I am not convinced this is going to be a happy new year for me. The growths in my abdomen are rapidly increasing in size and soon they will no doubt cut off some essential bodily service or other, whether concerned with input or waste. I assume it won’t be pleasant. Then I die or go through some horrid procedure. In the meantime, I will carry on.
I have completed a form which lets health professionals know my views towards treatment. Basically, if something goes wrong relating to treatment I am currently receiving then try and sort it out. If there is a choice between treatment and comfort, then comfort please. And no resuscitation ever. If quality of life goes, then it is time to die. I can cope with a lowered physical activity, but if the old mental element goes then it is time to leave the stage (exit, chased by a bear).
It took a while, but finally we are going for our first holiday of the year today – 2nd January. We are off to North Yorkshire, to one of our favourite country house hotels. It has good food, so I hope I can eat it, it is comfortable, and the staff are friendly. The only problem, and it seems to be a problem with many hotels, is that the lighting is not good enough to read by. There is a very nice lounge, with lots of settees and chairs, and even reading material, but wherever you sit it is too dark. These hotels assume their guests are not readers. I comment, but nothing changes. I suppose we are meant to be staring at screens. I will take my book light. It might look odd in a public space but I will not only be able to read, I will be making a point. The new year protests begin. Some might worry about Palestine, I need to read.
But what to read? I am in the middle of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, and a strange kindle book about the Earth’s rotation speeding up. I probably won’t finish the latter. Instead I am starting The House by the Lake, by Thomas Harding,, which is unsurprisingly about a house that is by a lake. It is in Berlin and it is the story of the five families who lived there through the 20th Century. Apparently a few interesting things happened in Berlin during that period so it should be good.
I am persisting in writing. I have drafted a siege of Wingfield Manor article that will be submitted next week, and also a draft about the Battle of Sedan (1870), drawing on Zola’s La Debacle as the key historical (literary) source. The more I read history the more I think of it as historical literature without the fictional characters. Go back any distance in time and the evidence relating to events and people is often limited, yet historians still manage to extract a book from these few sources. I thought I would write an article that is explicitly trying to understand an event (the battle) from the perspective of literature (Zola’s novel). OK, I did a chapter on it in one of my books (Landscapes of Trauma), so it wasn’t difficult to draft. It was just a matter of turning around 12,000 words into about 2,500 words. I always seem to spend more writing time trying to lose words instead of gaining them. Writing is easy, revising and editing can be hell.
I am increasingly reverting to paper and pen for revising and editing. It is perhaps my age and upbringing, but it is much easier to edit with a pen in my hand – a proper pen, not one of these touch screen jobbies. My practice now is to draft, print, scribble on printout, and redraft. I am doing something similar with the MA thesis. I have written too much about parts of it, and will need to do serious editing. Instead of an MA, perhaps I should have gone straight for the PhD, which has many more words. The only problem is that it would take too long. I suspect that if I was not lll I might do a history PhD. Why not? I am not sure about the topic though.There are too many topics running around my head.
Anyway, it is holiday time, and I won’t be writing. I will be revising and editing, and I will be reading, because I am not much use for walking in the hills any more.
A new experience for me this evening. Tinnitus. I have discovered that this is yet another side effect of chemotherapy. I heard this low ringing in my ears, a low, constant buzz. I was trying to get to sleep and it disturbed me a little. It has gone away now but for how long? The side effects are building up, and hitting at different times. It is pretty shit really, and again it helps me understand why people give up on chemotherapy even though it is keeping them alive. But not yet. My blood results were pretty good yesterday, just high on white blood count, suggesting infection – there is always infection. I am no good at keeping away from all you sick people – so there should be no problem receiving chemotherapy next week,round 4 of the new regime, round 47 overall. This treatment is the more serious and hurty regime.
Happy New Year!
Dr Nigel Hunt 