cancer blog
The Story So Far
From finding the first lump through diagnosis, treatment, surgery and recover – the complete story in one place.
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The Tube Extraction
Very little happens for ages after treatment. The days all blur into the same crappy routine: sleep, take pills, walk a tiny bit further than yesterday (usually to the end of the street), watch Judge Judy, be sick, cough up things that look like they belong in a medical museum, spray fake saliva into your…
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The Big Sleep
Something they tell you, repeatedly, is that the effects don’t stop when treatment stops. That would be far too easy. Instead, you’re informed (with suspicious cheerfulness) that things will actually get worse for a few weeks afterwards. Such fun. Apparently, and I quote: “You’re still cooking for a few weeks.”. Personally, I’d have preferred to be medium…
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Ring The Bell
The Rock and I have very different study vibes. Mine is sleek, minimal, and 100% paperless. Apple Store chic. His, on the other hand, is a hoarder’s paradise; an ecosystem of papers and books living in what he optimistically calls “organised heaps.” I’m pretty sure if you carbon-dated one of his piles it would pre-date…
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The Tube
You get weighed every day in hospital. Temperature every four hours. Morphine on tap like some sort of dystopian cocktail bar. “You’re losing a lot of weight very fast,” they said. “Well,” I replied, “I am a fat bastard and could do with shifting a few kilos.” Medical banter at its finest. I told them…
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Bump In The Road Number 2
The next few weeks were, shockingly pretty uneventful. My days became a predictable little routine: wake up, take meds, lounge about like a Victorian lady with “nerves,” feel a bit crap but nothing dramatic. Then off to the radiotherapy spa for my daily mask-and-internal-screaming session. Home. Sleep. Repeat. Groundhog Day but with more pharmaceuticals. Then…
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Bump In The Road Number 1
Mama Bear is a genius. Truly. She had warned me I’d feel rough at the weekend and wow, she was not wrong. By Saturday morning I felt TERRIBLE. Capital T. The pain in my chest and back was so bad I tried every position in the yoga dictionary. Unfortunately, I have never done yoga, so…
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And they’re off…
And so it begins… Surprisingly, I didn’t sleep. At all. Today was Day One of Treatment, and apparently my brain decided the best way to prepare was to rehearse every possible disaster scenario between midnight and dawn. I got up at 05:30 to check my bag for the 47th time. Jammies? Check. Toiletry bag? Check.…
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Final Preparations and Blowout
So, I wrapped up work. I told the people who genuinely needed to know, set my out-of-office to something dramatic like “I may be some time”. Very Lawrence Oates, minus the snow, heroism, and tragic ending. The final few weeks at the office went by at lightning speed while I desperately attempted to get everything in…
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The Practice Run
The Rock came with me for the practice run, which meant he finally got to witness the whole “head clamped to the table” situation in all its glamorous glory. What I didn’t know, until after, was that when I panic, my feet apparently started doing that frantic little running motion dogs do when they’re dreaming…
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Back to School
Going back to Diagnosis Day (aka The Day of the Apocalypse); this was the day The Rock met The Oracle, that Macmillan nurse who somehow knows everything about cancer, treatments, emotions, and probably the correct way to fold a fitted sheet. If I’d asked her for the meaning of life, she’d have had a pamphlet.…