Don't Mind That

Ah yeah. 

That was just me having too much time on my hands, and getting a bit carried away with the old poetic licence. 

Not helped by the fact that the second class homework last week was all about "more than, equals to and less than". Which I think is pretty advanced stuff. Though I've heard long division these days is ferociously complicated, so I guess they've upped the maths game since Figure It Out. 

But I would like to thank all of you who were concerned about my wellbeing after I posted that last bit of misery. You are all very kind. 

Lisa Lynch wrote on her blog about how cancer had exposed different layers in her "friendship hierarchy". I don't agree entirely with what she is saying, but I do think it's worth pointing out that some people are just very good at being supportive and some people aren't quite sure what's the right thing to do.

So in an effort to make these ramblings somewhat useful rather than just a brainvomit on a page, I would suggest the following:

• If in doubt about what to say to someone who has cancer/lost an eye/had a miscarriage/got divorced, just say hello.
• If they don't answer, try again in a month or so.
• If they tell you to get lost, do.
• If they ask you about your life, don't feel that you can't tell them good news in case that will remind them how much their life sucks - they know their life sucks at the moment but it's nice to be reminded that there are still good things happening in the world.
• Offering to help in the future is fantastic. 
• Actually helping without waiting to be asked is sublime. 
• Knowing instinctively what will help is Yoda-esque.

(See? Useful.)

It Takes it Out of You

There have been studies (not a hope I’ll go to the bother of finding the references) that show that heart surgery significantly increases your risk of developing the kind of pervasive low mood that us doctor-types tend to label as depression. As in, your heart is actually broken. It’s a real thing. 

I’ve been thinking about what the equivalent might be when your bowel gets surgically re-adjusted, and I think I’ve figured it out. 

You lose your guts. Your courage. Your bravery. 

I wept like I’d had seven vodkas the other night when I thought there was a rat in our house. I am convincing myself, despite all evidence to the contrary, that I am going to end up with some horrific complication of the surgery and find myself back inside Multi-Occupancy Hell with Nora and her cronies. 

I’ve lost my mojo. 

I said when I came home from hospital that I felt unfamiliar with the world. Now I kind of feel unfamiliar with me. I don’t know this scaredy-cat. She’d want to get herself sorted soon because we can’t be doing with a snivelling sap in our midst. 

I have been comparing this Major Abdominal Surgery with my three previous experiences of something similar, when my babies were cut out of me. I’ve been trying to work out why this seems much harder, but of course the reason is simple. I didn’t get a delicious-smelling tiny fleshbomb out of this, that needs to be cuddled and fed and looked after and looked at. I did suggest to the theatre nurse that they should swaddle the tumour in a towel and present it to me after the operation, but strangely she wasn’t too keen on the idea.

So I am left with just me, but less than me. My new name is <Sarah. 

Home Again Home Again Jiggety Jig

There's no place like home (cliché time again)

Being at home is the best place to be (paraphrase)

The sun is in the sky oh why oh why would I want to be anywhere else (meteorologically inaccurate)


You get the general idea though. I am really glad to be back in my own place. 

Hospitals are fine for what they do but home is so much better. 

Oh. By the way. It turns out a general anaesthetic is a sure-fire cure for the common cold. Not sure if the health economics of that would stand up, but it's a medical fact. Don't mind your echinacea and vitamin C, get yourself some major abdominal surgery the next time you have a sniffle. It'll do wonders. 

Semi-Private

I foolishly pointed out at 10:30pm last night that my insurance only covers me for semi-private accommodation, i.e. not for a fully private room. Loads of insurance providers have made it almost impossible to get cover for a fully private room in a public hospital, but if it so happens that the only room available is a private one then the hospital and the insurer call it quits and you don’t have to pay the difference. You can also get around it by having a medical reason for being all on your own, like if you might be a danger to others by being radioactive or infectious. (Pity that doesn’t extend to being a danger to others by being a racist snoring know-it-all pain in the ass, that would have nicely emptied my multi-occupancy room for me.) 

So when I told the night manager lady that I wasn’t covered, she could have winked and nodded and said ah sure we’ll sort that out for you, don’t worry your little head. Instead, however, she decided it would be best to scoop me out of my nice little cocoon and march me down the corridor to the manky ancient parquet-floored four-bedded hellhole that contained three eager little heads poking out of the tops of their blankets, delirious to be welcoming another poor sucker to their fold. 

Correction. I say three heads, when in fact I could only see two, with the third hidden behind a purple paper curtain, but as she kindly shouted from within, “I’m not being rude, I’m just using the commode!”

I think I’ll pay the €172 a night extra from now on. 

Done Deal

He's out now anyway, the little fella. 

I got to see him in glorious technicolour on Wednesday, when I had a sigmoidoscopy without sedation, meaning I had the surreal experience of having a camera wind its way up my bottom and getting to watch its journey through my bowel on the telly. 

Still better than Jeremy Kyle I guess. 

So I could see the little culprit once the surgeon had found it - it was so small he went past it the first time. The size of a small grape I’d say, and not a bit nasty-looking, just smooth and pink and looking a bit lost. He injected a load of india ink into it which turned it into a much more appropriately sinister-looking thing, and then we were done. I made my joke about fulfilling my mid-life crisis need for a tattoo, and he said well it will be gone tomorrow so there won’t be time to regret getting a dolphin instead of some wise Ogham runes or whatever. 

I had also had the pleasure that day of meeting the stoma nurse, who was as whisperingly tactful as any hospice nun, even closing her eyes intermittently and muttering to herself about placement and positioning and contours. She is a woman immersed in her job and not inclined to be too flippant about it, which is really just as well. She drew four purple circles in an x around my belly button, and covered them over meticulously with gauze and tape. I decided not to look at them for the rest of the day. 

I met two anaesthetists, one who came for a social visit which was very welcome in a day full of business, and both helped to reassure me that my bunged-up headcold head probably wouldn’t postpone the surgery. Though quite a big part of me was kind of hoping that it would. My temperature was okay, mostly due to the fact that, in general, people are terrible at taking other people’s temperatures. (The yokey goes into the ear canal, peeps. I would suggest that they get patients to do it themselves.) My white cell count came back normal so that would keep them all happy. 

I trotted home to do the laundry, pack my bag, make the dinner, read the stories and go to bed. 

Woke up with sinuses jam-packed full of, well, greenish jam. Had a sneaky Lemsip (dear god I’ll be in trouble when the doctors find out). Narky and snippy with the children I adore and would miss like hell for the next few days. Remembering, then forgetting, about the car insurance and ballet fees and bus money. 

Back to the same ward, different nurses. Same questions answered over and over. Peed into another bottle. More enemas. (I think I’ll leave the enema stories out of this. The jokes are too easy. Shooting fish in a barrel.) I had snuck in my own thermometer. Their readings were out by about 0.8 degrees all morning. Grand by me. If mine went over 38 degrees I’d say something, otherwise we’d just get this show on the road. 

Lovely anaesthetist who wasn’t too perturbed by my bunged-up head, or my morphine sensitivity. “We’ll give you lots of anti-itch medication, you’ll be fine.”

Into the theatre, the usual controlled and amiable hubbub, ladies counting things in the corner, men slapping my hand to get the veins up. “Just a little something in the vein now to put you to slee….”

AND out. 

Itchy itchy itchy nose. Can’t scratch it because of the oxygen mask. Hands feel like two balloons. With gloves on. Words coming out funny. Hands on tummy. Don’t feel anything that might feel like a colostomy bag would feel. I think. 

Lady next to me in a bed. Then a man. He’s snoring. Or is it me?

Itchy itchy itchy everywhere. Tubes in lots of places.

Words and brain clearing a bit. What time is it? 8:30 pm. It’s busier now than it was at lunchtime. Coming and going, coming and going. 

Bed moving, porter at one end, nurse at the other. Banter. Banging off lift door. 

“Here you are now!”

The lovely familiar face of the man who has been waiting four hours to know if he’s ever getting his wife back. 

Blood pressure, heart rate, temperature (these ladies were good at it). All go all night. You won’t die of sepsis but you might die from lack of sleep. 

Surgeon was in at 10:30pm and shows up again bright as a button at 7am. Now I get it, sleep is for wimps. I need to be blowing harder into my lung exerciser thingy, I need to get out of bed and walk down the corridor, eat this but not too much of it, keep the tubes in until your body can be trusted to work all by itself. 

Dietician comes to tell me to break every rule in her own book and it’s killing her, I can tell. I am to eat no fibre whatsoever for 3 weeks. White bread, white rice, white boiled vegetables. I am nauseated just by the thought of it. It’ll be like living in a really bad nursing home. Including the revolting nutritional drinks that make me want to cry. 

My children will be disgusted - how come I get to eat cornflakes and white bread and no vegetables?? Not fair mummy. 

Slowly but surely the tubes and lines and drips and drains have been removed and I am almost back to myself. My hair is washed and my body has remarkably few new holes in it. I’m tired though. Nodding off. Might be the drugs or just the effort. Snooze before rugby I think. Zzzzzzz.

The Knives are Out

They’re going to take out my primary. 

Not my primary school, or my primary reason for living, or my primary degree. 

My little Initiator, the source of all ills. The bowel cancer bit. 

It’s been sitting there happily for ten months (plus however long it was there before I knew about it.) It’s been doing its thing, which, as far as I can see, is not much. It doesn’t do anything very impressive in terms of symptoms, or bleeding, or expanding. It’s just there. In fact it’s a bit smaller than it was before, because it didn’t like the old chemo and shrivelled away a bit from it. It only glowed a little bit on my PET scan. It’s trying to fight a good fight, but it’s a bit puny. And now the boyos are going to scoop it out with their little camera-assisted cauterising pronger thingies. Heh heh. Seeya buddy.

Surgeon A is going to do that part. Surgeon B is going to pop in while I’m panned out and slice a corner off my liver, just the part that’s handy like. 

The thing about keyhole surgery is that I’ve never been able to figure out how they get the big thing out of the small hole. (You can tell I’ve only ever delivered by C-section.) And I’ve seen it done - gallbladders full of stones being squezzed through a 1cm opening. But I still find it hard to believe that our bodies are so stretchy. 

Anyway. 

Once they cut out these bits and pieces, they are going to zap me again with chemo, to try and blast the last few stubborn bits in my liver. Another PET-glower is sitting next to some hepatic artery or other. The rest of the “deposits” (if only it were a bank) are shadows of their former selves, quiet, cold, calcified, but still potentially scheming away in the background to regroup and fire up again. So we have to powerhose their ambitions with fluorouracil and oxaliplatin and god knows what else. 

Where I’m at now is about a billion times better than where I was a year ago. Not a single person really believed that I would have this much less cancer now than I did back then. They all - we all - thought sure we’ll have an ol’ go at fixing this but let’s face it chaps, it is a fair mountain to climb. 

Ha.