Step It Up

That last post was a bit of a brain-spew. Sorry. 

What may (or may not) be of more interest is what's going on cancer-wise.

I had five sessions of SABR radiotherapy in Dublin, which involved a LOT of podcast-listening while commuting for six hours each time. It was just after the referendum, so I had a fair amount of eighth-related stuff to listen to, as well as a very entertaining GP podcast from Australia, and the first series of Serial. 

The radiotherapy was easy; lying, breathing, holding, holding, holding, breathing normally. Repeating x4. 

The children got a few extra grandparent-treats, the patients' appointments were adjusted slightly, and no one was particularly put out by the experience (except maybe the car, which is used to a maximum of 60 miles per week, and was beginning to look at me sideways when I approached it at 6:30am, AGAIN). 

I don't appear to have any side effects from the treatment, though the word Fatigue has been used once or twice, to gain sympathy and a license to nap. 

I will wait and see if the two tiny lung lesions are now even tinier. It will be an awful waste of diesel if they're not. 

In the meanwhilst, I signed up for Bowel Cancer UK's clever fitness initiative for the month of June, where people are asked to do 30 minutes of exercise every day for 30 days, and get other people to donate money. That sounds pretty simple I thought, and I was sure that I could clock up half an hour of activity without even thinking about it. But it turns out I'm a little bit lazier than I thought, and thirty minutes is actually quite long. Though the fact that it's time-based rather than distance-based makes it the perfect goal for someone with a short-legged child, as our one mile walk to school and back often takes at least that long. And there is something about the forbearance that is required to stop and look at every ladybird and jump over all the cracks that makes it seem even more virtuous. I have been throwing in a bit of kayaking and dancing and cartwheeling too, just to mix it up. I also did the Irish Cancer Society Colour Dash with my eldest daughter. Who knew that being pelted with different coloured powder while running/walking around a 5k course after four hours sleep and with a bit of a hangover could be so much fun? Not so sure that inhaling all those colours is necessarily the right thing to do after a load of lung radiotherapy though - they told me to watch out for funny-coloured sputum but I'm not sure what they'll say when I tell them it's bluey-pinky-purple...

The hangover was a result of another Doctors' Disco, which had slightly less dancing and more stout-drinking than previously, but was a lovely opportunity to meet old friends and remember an extra special one. 

So the thirty days of #stepupfor30 are drawing to a close, and I will try to continue the good habit. You'd hear them saying it, all the fit types, that exercise really does make you feel wonderful, but I was never really listening. Blah blah blah. Turns out that the little smuggers are right though. 

I didn't have any great ambitions for the sponsorship, other than reaching the £100 target that was needed to get a free tee-shirt (and Doug pretty much sorted that out straight away), but if you felt like throwing a tenner in their direction you can donate here. Please don't give any more than that, you know I will be back looking for something else off ye all very soon...

Work

It's a thorny one. The work issue. 

I spend a lot of my own work talking to other people about their work. Either they want to and can't, or they don't want to but can, or they're not sure and they want me to decide for them.

It is possibly the one area where I have become less sympathetic rather than more so,  since I've had my own experience of ill-health.

We know doctors don't do sickness, and a big part of that is not doing absenteeism. We simply aren't into it. It is not a neutral subject for us. We are not like, "eh, whatevs" about whether we go to work or not on any given day. We are defined by, nourished by, enraged-but-captivated-by our work. It is not a meh kind of job. It is horrific, excoriating, exhausting, illuminating, inspiring, breath-taking. 

So we are not best placed to make a judgment call about whether taking a few duvet days is a reasonable thing to do if you've had a bit of a cold, or whether a few extra weeks tacked on to the end of a gallbladder op recovery period is just what anyone would do in the same boat. Our boat is nothing like other people's boats. Ours is leaky, and carrying a lot of sick people who are glaring at us saying "C'mere, where are you going, Captain? We need you!" (Some of this is the usual "doctors-thinking-they're-gods" hyperbole. Some of this).

By dint of our stubborn pig-headed inflated-ego-driven work ethic, we are a useful study group for anyone trying to figure out if work is good for you when you are faced with a life-altering illness. Because whether it's good for us or not, we will work through pretty much every adverse condition you can throw at us. 

Sometimes that's not very wise. I do recall sitting in a consulting room the size of a wardrobe with a patient whose TB was so active he was actually wearing the mask they give infectious people (but never really expect them to wear). My white cell count was diddly-squat (making me very prone to life-threatening infections) but I just held my breath and nodded at him for the five minutes it took me to fill in his social welfare cert. 

In season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale (which is about a fictional dystopian world, Gilead, where women are fierce oppressed altogether), two women work together in secret because the man is too sick to fulfil his duties and they need to cover for him. They were both professionals in their former lives, but that right had been taken away from them. They enlist the help of another woman, who was formerly a neonatologist (and who can now cure the apparently-moribund-but-healthiest-looking 10-month old I've ever seen). The handmaid (who is about as shat-on as it is possible to be) isn't even allowed to own a pencil, in case she would go around inciting subversion (or making lists of jobs for the man to do). When the two women get the opportunity to use their skills again, to activate their long-dormant knowledge and experience, they are elated and, almost unheard of in Gilead, actually smiling (cue lingering close-up...)

There is worth to work that exceeds financial reward. Yet there is almost a universal assumption that when you are sick or injured, that you should not work. Of course you shouldn't work if you simply can't - I don't think I would have been on the top of my doctoring game if I saw a few patients while I was off my trolley on fentanyl in ICU - but I am talking more about long-term absences, particularly related to cancer. 

When I first asked my oncologist if I could work, he said why not? He had spent many years in the US, where patients had to go to work because the welfare system is so shite, and they needed to earn money to pay for their treatment. That doesn't sound like the ideal scenario for rehab and recovery. But in Ireland, I think more cancer patients could be supported and encouraged to explore the possibility of returning to work, perhaps in a reduced capacity or in a different role. The organisation Working With Cancer is a UK-based enterprise which aims to support both employers and employees in dealing with return to work after cancer diagnosis and treatment. I have not come across anything equivalent in Ireland.

In the past three and a half years, the times that I have been most down, most despondent, have been related to feeling that I have not been pulling my weight at work. I have realised, though, that I cannot commit myself entirely to one job, or one kind of work, as it quickly wears me down and wears me out. Instead, I have found that working on projects about which I am truly passionate has lifted me out of any tendency to wallow or ruminate. Taking on new challenges, trying things I have never done before, walking into a room of strangers and saying "hello" - these are all things that I shied away from in the past. It seemed that life would be so much easier if you just ride along with it, keeping your head down, doing the same old same old, day in day out. Using cliches like those and not even realising it. But that is what crushes you, makes you flat, makes you two-dimensional. 

Do something that makes you think you're great. It's a good feeling.