Cancer 229
Posted on January 31, 2026 Leave a Comment
It has been a while since my last blog. On Tuesday I will be starting my 49th round of chemo, the 6th using this treatment, which means I will presumably be able to take a break when I want to. I don’t want to, though everything has been through my mind in the last couple of weeks, from optimistic hopes regarding longevity to pessimistic horrors regarding givng up treatment and dying. As I have said before, my mood swings go from one extreme to the other. I don’t seem to be able to sit comfortably in the middle with a few gentle swings towards optimism and pessimism.
It doesn’t help that I am constantly terrribly tired. I am not sleeping. Nothing new there, except I am drifting off as I am writing, I am forgetting not only my next sentence, but this one. I am getting an hour’s sleep followed by most of the night awake, and then from c. 0500 I drift back to bed and try to sleep. I usually get another hour or two, adding up to anywhere between 2 and 4 hours a night.
Sorry, I am having to delete and rewrite all this simply because of my tiredness. I was going to write about my recent illness, but I think I will leave it for another time. I can’t stay awake.
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.
Dr Nigel Hunt 