Not A Sprint

Analogies. Marvellous things. 

A marathon is seen as an incredible triumph of the human spirit, taking your body to the extremes, breaking through the pain barrier, calling on every tiny grain of stamina in every fibre of your being, one of the greatest human achievements. 

Definitely sums up a lot of what I have been through in the past two and a bit years. 

But, alas, an analogy is just for those who don't have what it takes to do the real thing. 

So Mr Trusty Companion decides he's had enough of everyone saying how great I am, what a hero I am, how brave I am, what a fighter I am. (Do people say this? They flipping better.)

He's going to go and run the ridiculous-point-demented number of miles, and he's going to do it for a cancer charity. Way to outdo me there buddy.

The least I can do is be as supportive to him as he has been to me.

Washing the extra shorts/socks/t shirts. Entertaining the children every Saturday morning. Being woken at 6:30 by the sound of the running jacket being zipped up, shortly followed by the sound of rampaging hungry children. 

We'll be there at the sidelines with the bananas and Snickers. We will cheer loudly at the half-way point and try not to be disappointed when he doesn't see us in the crowd. We will barge our way through the seething masses to not-hug his sweaty and aching body.

On my first day in the chemo ward I was given a large pile of Macmillan information leaflets. I kept them next to my bed for the next three months, and other than one brief, terrifying internet search at 3am one morning, looked nowhere else for information about my treatment. Effects, side effects, what to do when various horrific nastinesses befell me. All of this was contained in the by now grubby well-worn photocopied sheets. 

This is what Macmillan did for us. A safety blanket for the bewildered. 

So that is why we will be cheering on the lunacy on April 9th. 

(And praying that he goes back to the half-marathons again. Far more civilised.)

And for once I really will be saying that it is him I feel sorry for.

(If you'd like to support him, or Macmillan, then here's the link. He's already got loads of sponsorhsip though, and if he gets much more he really will be outshining me. And we can't have that.)

Something Different

So I've bored you enough with my chat.


Here's what I was eating, watching, listening to, reading and looking at while having my SBRT.


It didn't take long for my phone to know where I was going. Creepy.

I listened to a lot of podcasts: 

Thinking Allowed - really interesting sociological stuff about all sorts of things - drinking cultures, the super rich, vertical cities, poverty

The Doctor Paradox - stories from doctors who do other things.

My friend Conor talking about the history of film - HUAC, silent movies, how terrible Les Mis was. Looking forward to the Star Wars episodes...

Lots of TEDTalks - this one about jails in the U.S was the most moving, but also parenting in war zones, the Columbine shooter's mother and data protection in the sexting era.


I ate some high-end hospital food:

There were motivational posters in the changing room. 

I read some advice on how to manage post-radiotherapy fatigue. I suspect these people do not have small children. 

The music selection while I lay in my clingfilm was pretty priceless:

Staying Alive - eh, irony, anyone?

Some club tunes to NOT dance to while embedded in the eggbox.

And this one, which I can only assume is for the blue-rinse ladies in the waiting room. 

(Warning to any blue-rinsers reading this - DO NOT WATCH THE VIDEO)

I listened to this myself on the way home, though it makes me cry a bit. 

I read a fantastic blog about poverty medicine, and watched the links to Oliver Sacks, Prof Graham Watt and Sir Harry Burns. Still not finished that one, going to go back to Lesson 5.

I finished it all off by attending a Self Harm Awareness Conference, but just missed my Trusty Companion doing his presentation. Got a few free sandwiches and a view of an empty rugby stadium though.

So it all went pretty smoothly, and I learned a lot. Including how exciting a filling station in Urlingford can be while you're sitting waiting for the tow truck...

And then I found a ghost in my footstool! Aaaaghh!

Two Tiers

I have moved up in the world in a few ways. 

I am up north, in the big smoke.

I have started my stereotactic body radiotherapy. I had to have two planning sessions a few weeks ago, where they trained me in and figured out if I was up to the challenge. 

Basically, in order for the super-duper-extra-lethal radiation dose to go to the right place e.g. cancer, and not the wrong place, e.g. vital blood vessels, I have to lie extremely still while they zap me. Being clever scientists, they do not rely on twitchy unreliable humans to lie that still, so they have found a way to immobilise patients without having to hit them over the head with a hurley. 
Clever scientists that they are, they have come up with all sorts of restraining techniques which apparently do not breach the UN charter of Human Rights (or maybe no one bothered to check). 

First, I lay down on a comfy enough but slightly plasticky mattress. Nice enough. Then, when my angles and bulges have made a decent imprint on the bed, they suck all the air out of the mattress and leave it like a personalised egg-box, with the shape of me forever indented upon it (think Han Solo). 
My head is wedged in a block and I have to raise my arms over my head and clutch a pair of handles to keep me there. Not a bit intimidating.
Then they cover my body in cellophane. Where the heck is this going, I think. 
Out comes the vacuum cleaner.
Right. 
The air gets sucked out from under my plastic coating, and hey presto, I'm ready to be sous-vided.

So I am pretty stuck. Not much wiggle-room here. But I can't complain if it means they will keep their zapping in the right spot. 
But what if I sneeze?
What if I hiccup?
Or fart? (I know, I know, girls don't fart).

They reassure me that the machine has an automatic cut-off if I move. 
So what's with the extreme incarceration then?

Anyway, they did a load of scans with me in the right position, and they did a load more the following week to make sure my body had suddenly morphed into an ostrich or something, and then the big day came when the zapping would begin. 

It all went swimmingly. No sneezing, no hiccuping...
I have to hold my breath on the out-breath and then "breathe normally" (that old chestnut again).
The first day I listened to the Bee Gees, then Boney M, then Buddy Holly from, presumably, The ABC Album of Safe 70s Music.
Yesterday I had a few minutes of Bach's something or other and then it all went silent, except for the sci-fi noises of the machine rotating and twisting and suddenly stopping, and the kind ladies saying "hold your breath" through the intercom. 
There is a round hole in the roof tile directly above my head, with a deep darkness beyond. I'm pretty sure there's a metaphor there.

Anyway, I have three more of these sessions to go, and then presumably someone will find out if it worked or not, and then someone will tell me. 

A familiar road. 

What I am not familiar with, though, is my environment here. 
I am in a different city, and in a different social mindset. 

The hospital where I am receiving treatment caters for those people in Ireland who can afford private health insurance, or who have wads of cash to throw over the counter. 
It is not the type of hospital that I am used to.
There are living plants in the lobby. There are no cigarette butts outside. The restaurant has quinoa salad and mushroom roulade. 
There is an air of calm around the place. You get the feeling that, most of the time, everything just works. 

I feel like an imposter, the same as I do when I set foot in Brown Thomas. I am hoping no one will notice that I am an intruder. The fact that I am having my treatment paid for by the HSE does little to alleviate that feeling. I have been upgraded to First Class on Singapore Airlines when I bought a Ryanair ticket to Benidorm. 

Even the suburbs around the hospital are swish. The roads are wide and heaving with impatient commuters. The houses are behind gates. The unfinished recession-victim apartment blocks still have faded signs promising modern sophisticated living. This is the actual name of a not-made-up, real-life shop.

I don't know why I am so uncomfortable with privilege. 
I have never suffered from Catholic guilt, but I have a desperate dose of the middle-class stuff. 

I was sitting in the restaurant of my (cheap) hotel this morning, and I could see the chimney tops of the large stately home where my mother grew up, which is now a rehab centre for those with enduring mental illness. 



Where's that Freud lad when you need him?








P.S Here's a great song about Cork people's attitude to Dublin. The quality isn't great but trust me it's a good one. (2 million people can't be wrong).