Cancer 186
Posted on April 26, 2025 Leave a Comment
I hate nights. Sometimes thgey are worse than others, but rarely are they good. There are occasional nights where I manage to stay in bed all night, apart from venturing to the toilet numerous times. Normally, I am out of bed for several hours for three reasons.
First, my stoma needs changing. When this happens I tend to leave it open for a while. I have an old fashioned view that skin needs to breathe. The stoma bag is constantly glued to the area of skin around the opening so it is a relief to keep it open, though I have to take care as during this time it regularly does its business. Wet tissues are the order of the day.
Second, I just can;t sleep so instead of tossing and turning in bed I get up and either sit downstairs and read or possibly watch something. This can last hours.
Third, I am in some pain so I can’t sleep. This might be stoma pain, hernia problems, or the general malaise associated with cancer and its drugs – difficult to describe as unknown outside of the experience of cancer.
Or, it can be any combination of the three. I know that when I go to bed, usually around 2100, I am likely to be awake and up before midnight. I might then be up until 0500, getting another hour or so of sleep before morning, as I am usually up reasonably early, virtually never after 0800, usually long before.
At the moment it is not so good. I have felt ill for a week or more. I probably just have a cold, the sort of problem that pre-cancer I would have shrugged off, but now it dominates. I have a deep chesty cough, and when I cough I have to hold my abdomen over my hernia, as it is protruding and feels like it is fit to burst. Coughing hurts, sneezing hurts.
I am taking the day off today. I didn’t go downstairs until after midday. I have not been out of the house. I am reading Richards and Klein and watching Gods and Generals. I will still go to bed early, I will still be up before midnight. I need to be better by Monday because I have my scan and then I am being interviewed on the radio. On Tuesday I have treatment. If I am ill they may not treat.
Sometimes the experience of cancer is not exactly a barrel of laughs. Still, it could be worse. I haven’t lost my appetite.
Cancer 185
Posted on April 16, 2025 Leave a Comment
I made a discovery at the hospital yesterday. As usual I had time to kill so after having a tea in Costalot which was disturbed by a fake fire alarm where all we ill people were sent outside in the cold to get iller. I hung around right next to the door for some warmth – most of the staff carried on entering the building to go to work. Tough folks these health workers, literally fighting through fire to look after their patients (except for the ones forced outside). I thought I would have a look at the MacMillan centre and see what they do. I have been in once briefly to get a leaflet on travelling abroad but that is it – rubbish for nearly two and a half years of treatment when the place is on the same corridor as where I get treatment.
It took some nerve going in because in my head that is where all the people who are psychologically disturbed by their cancer go so staff can go ‘there there, it will be all right’ (when it won’t). Get a grip folks, it’s just cancer. Something has to kill you and why not have lots of attentive nurses and others being nice to you for a few months or years.
I was pleasantly surprised. No, I wasn’t surprised, I expected it to be lovely. I went in, had a word with the receptionist about just being nosy and not really needing anything (stand up straight, try to look well, try to look like a man ready to build a house if necessary. She doesn’t know I would struggle to pick up a brick in one hand and a trowel in the other!). She took me to some comfy seats and made me a cup of tea, asked me if I needed anything else, and told me it was fine to wait here away from the bustle of the hospital.
I sat down for some peace, and opened a recipe book about cooking for cancer (not eating the cancer itself which is what the title suggested), saw all the dishes were the sort of thing the wife tells me to eat and closed it again. There was not an ounce of bacon for breakfast. It was all fruit and stuff. Three more people turned up with a volunteer. They sat down at my table and we ended up having a good-humoured chat about this and that. Really friendly. It turns out one of them has just been diagnosed with breast cancer, but she was as cheerful as the others. was disappointed when I had to go to my appointment and leave them there.
The MacMillan centre is the ideal place for me to sit and wait for my appointment, away from all the other people in the hospital who don’t have real diseases (cancer is a winner in so many ways). The centre wasn’t an unhappy place. Everyone was cheerful and joking. The staff were great, Add free tea and I thoroughly recommend it.
Cancer 184
Posted on April 14, 2025 Leave a Comment
Well, I am healthy again, as far as healthy goes with my body. When I say healthy, I mean unhealthy, because my latest worry is my hernia. Nothing can be easily contained within my abdominal area (apart from cancer, so far), and that is increasingly true of my hernia.
My hernia is a result of the operation, where my abdomen was split from top to bottom to remove cancerous nasties and my lower colon, and from having a permanent abdominal hole that is my stoma.
It is growing, poking out. It hurts when I cough. I cannot cough unexpectedly because I have to hold on to the hernia so it doesn’t explode, taking my guts with it. The hernia belt I use (thrupence from Amazon), does its best, and I replace it every few weeks, but as Scottie might have it, ‘I can’t hold her Jim, she’s breaking up’. The belts recommended by the hospital don’t work because they crush the stoma bag, leading to awful leaks. Not a good idea.
I don’t know if there is an operation I could have. Is it worth it for someone in my situation? What I need is to go to a vineyard, find a cooper, and get him to fit a metal belt. That would be a barrel of laughs….
Cancer 183
Posted on April 8, 2025 Leave a Comment
Well, that wasn’t fun. A night of wakefulness, abdominal pains, and the serious thought that I would phone the hospital and go in for help. It was a little frightening. Pressure had been building up around my abdomen for a day or so, but it didn’t really hit until last night. You know the feeling when you just want to eject things from front and back (or in my case front and front), but it just wouldn’t happen. It was perhaps the most uncomfortable I have been since recovering from the operation.
My instructions from the hospital are to phone them whenever I get symptoms, or when my temperature is high, obviously because I am vulnerable. Fortunately, my temperature was normal. I spent most of the night downstairs, and went up to bed about 0800 (getting upstairs was a struggle. Another thing to look forward to as I decay), managed to get a little sleep, and got up around 1200. I still feel pretty awful, but I have eaten some apple puree. There’s nothing wrong with baby food. I didn’t use a bib.
I had to get up as we have an ill cat. It ate something dodgy and has ulcers around its mouth. It was a bit touch and go yesterday. If its kidneys had failed then boom, that would be it. Its kidneys were fine, so it spent overnight at Rotherham being observed and the vet phoned this morning to say it could come home, so I have to convert myself from sick person to someone capable of driving to Rotherham – until yesterday, I had only been to Rotherham once in my life, cycling from Sheffield along the canal in 1996.
We had been planning to go away this week for a couple of nights to Suffolk, but that was cancelled because of the cat. So not only have we lost the price of the two nights (no one insures me), but there is also the mighty vet charge for cat treatment. There are more important things to worry about than money.
It’s ok, please feel free to ask about the health of the cat rather than me. I am used to it….
Cancer 182
Posted on April 1, 2025 Leave a Comment
What a day! Nothing interesting, Just a treatment day where I am unable to get things done. I have hardly read, I have hardly written. I have just eaten too much out of boredom, something I probably shouldn’t do as my weight is up again.
Today is the first time my new portacath has been used. There aren’t many people trained in its use here, so Marge Bronte came along to show a group of nurses how it should be done. All of them used, as usual, precise medical terminology such as ‘thingy’ or ‘whatsit’. Then the needle was jabbed into the centre of the bulge, the reservoir at the end of the heart tube, and that was it, it worked. The biggest problem seems to be stability. Imagine a needle pushed through your skin into a little space. It has nothing to hold on to, and so it is held in placeby a dressing. Unfortunately, I have a bad skin reaction to dressings – all of them. I am not sure either the needle of the dressing will hold. I have stood up to go to the toilet a couple of times and snagged the line. It feels as though it will easily pull out, which weould be a bit of a problem – it certainyl will be when I want to sleep. Perhaps I shouldn’t sleep for two days.
The worst thing about dressings is that when wearing them my skin starts to resemble that of a rhinocerous. It happens with all dressings. It happens quickly. My skin wasn’t bad on Friday when I was operated on, but by Monday it was hard and dry, no matter how much cream I put on.
It is going to be much better when I am not unsder treatment. I will be able to swim and shower. I won’t be worried that someone will catch my tubes and cause damage. I still have a lump in my chest from the portacath, but it will be watertight once the wound closes.
I set up the novel for writing, but I haven’t written anything. I suppose setting it up is a good start and perhaps I will get on with it tomorrow. I have read a few pages, but not many, I have chatted with nurses, which is always fun and never politically correct, the specialist subject today was touching patients.
I have also been looking at the life and works of Vasily Vereschagin, the Russian painter of the 19th Century. He was a realist painter. He painted what he saw, and got in trouble for it. He painted war scenes from his experiences in Turkmenistan and the Russo-Turkish war. Because the scenes were realistic, he was banned. Great pictures though, check him out. I could go on, but I won’t.
Well, the treatment is nearly finished now. I should get out within an hour, so I will leave you to it and try to do a bit of reading. Starting to feel a bit shit, so I must be relatively close to the end..
Dr Nigel Hunt 