Dildoes on the NHS

Today's title is currently top of my list of phrases I never thought I'd type, but it's true. The National Health Service has provided me with a set of multi-sized sex toys.

They slot into one another like pornographic matryoshka dolls. And look! They even gave me a bottle of lube! Better still, they come in a discreet white case for convenient portability. Simply pop them in your handbag and head on out to the opera. Or a fetish club. ANYWHERE!

OK, OK, so officially they're "dilators" rather than dildoes, and they do serve a legitimate clinical purpose. Pelvic radiotherapy can leave you with scar tissue in the lady parts, making you less...what's the word? Stretchy? Accommodating? Anyway, the point is, if left unattended your front bottom may end up being unable to withstand anything wider than a small pipette. (No, I don't know why you'd insert a small pipette in there either. It was the first image that came to mind. Leave me alone.)

So, you start with the smallest of your State-provided plastic friends and send it into your pleasure garden for a bit of hokey cokey. Repeat until you're ready to move up to the next size. And so forth. In time, you should be able to resume a normal sex life, as well as (hopefully, if treatment worked) a normal toilet-going existence.

Luckily for me, my radiotherapy plan didn't involve zapping me from the front, so I shouldn't be too badly affected in the love tunnel department. I still reckon I should give my new toys a go. Even if (warning: over-sharing ahead) I couldn't cope with much more than a small pipette in the first place.

Sunburn where the sun don't shine

First things first: I'm now on morphine, so please lower any expectations you may have. The sole reason I still know my arse from my elbow is that only one of those things hurts. I'm currently spending my days getting zapped at the hospital, asleep, off my knockers on painkillers, or smearing various ointments on my undercarriage. So it's an exciting life.

The blister finally burst, but it's still giving me grief. Anyone who's ever had a popped blister (which, let's face it, is everyone) knows how raw those little sods can be. And mine was a size that - as an old buddy of mine said when she saw a picture of it - made it not so much a blister as a flotation device. 

The morphine is helping. I was alarmed, however, to see this warning on the packaging:

I'm hoping this message means "It doesn't, but our lawyers told us we had to say this", as opposed to "Take too much, and this will happen to you":

Wicked Witch GIF from Melting GIFs

Anyway, I'm very glad to have the pain relief, because the effects of radiotherapy are akin to having a nasty case of sunburn and I'm certainly feeling those effects now. I even looked in the mirror today to see how my poor little rear was faring. I shan't traumatise you by telling you how it looked. Also, for no particular reason, here is a picture of a baboon.

I have eight more sessions to go.

My response to this: Yay! Only eight more sessions!

My arse's response: Oh God. Eight more sessions *whimper*

The other day, The Independent ran a story about a jellyfish that has a transient anus. I wish, my friends. I wish.

About those non-existent blisters...

Last week began splendidly, with a gift from one of my cousins.

Yes, I know it needs a wipe

I enjoy drinking from this. It makes me feel like I'm some sort of hero simply for attending hospital and lying on a gurney with my junk on display.

By 3am on Saturday morning, however, I was acting like a proper ninja, crawling round my house on my forearms and knees, in the dark. Walking from the bedroom to the bathroom was too painful. Which brings me to the title of this blog post. Those blisters for which I searched fruitlessly the other week were, it would seem, not non-existent at all, just undergoing a slow teleportation from The Dimension of  Blisters. In the middle of last week, they arrived en masse. My favourite was this one:

It's actually grown since I took this photo. It's started to move up my ankle. My oncologist thinks this is because the pressure I put on it while walking is forcing the lymph upwards. I have a different theory: the blister has learned that, impressive as it is, there is a structure capable of holding legendary amounts of liquid just above the top of my leg, and it has decided to make a pilgrimage.

It was the combination of blisters and general foot pain that led to me slithering across the landing in the middle of the night.

I called the Cancer Centre's 24-hour hotline. They told me to stop taking the chemo tablets and invest in yet another cream.

I'm now able to hobble around with a single crutch. When I saw my oncologist today, she was pleased about this, but still classified me as having Grade 3 hand-foot syndrome. Apparently, Grade 3 is as high as it goes. I thought the oncologist said it went up to Grade 4, which made me gape.  GRADE 4? I pictured someone with water balloons for feet, bouncing down the road, praying for them not to pop.

I put my mistaken belief / mishearing down to fatigue. Not that I'm getting muddled or anything, but when the receptionist asked for my surname today, it took me a good five seconds to remember.

No, don't tell me - I know this one

For now, they're keeping me off the chemo, which is just as well, because the radiotherapy is producing unpleasant effects of its own in the underwear department. I'll save that for next time.

  

Side effects!

When you embark on any kind of medical treatment, you run the risk of suffering side effects. It gets fun when the doctors prescribe you something to counteract the side effects, then you get side effects from that medication, so they give you something for those side effects, which also has side effects etc etc. This happened to me when my first transplant was failing: I went from high blood pressure to diarrhoea via water retention and gout. Good times.

So anyway, I wasn't surprised when I was told that both chemotherapy and radiotherapy have side effects. There are the obvious ones, like sickness and diarrhoea, but there are also some unexpected ones, like a craving for artichokes and a sudden passion for tiddlywinks. OK, I made those ones up. But I was told that the chemo I'm taking can cause soreness on the palms of your hands and soles of your feet.

When I heard this, a subconscious, non-rational part of my brain responded thus: I have never heard of this and it sounds implausible, therefore it definitely won't happen to me.

A few days ago, my feet were hurting. I searched them for non-existent blisters. Had I developed amnesia and forgotten about attending a fire-walking event that went horribly wrong? 

I didn't clock a thing.

It was only when this crevasse opened up on my thumb that I realised the thing that definitely wasn't going to happen to me definitely was happening to me.

Lesion caused by movements in the tectonic hand plates, which are definitely a Thing and not something I just made up

I'd asked one of the radiotherapy staff about managing soreness (albeit in a rather different part of my body) and he'd suggested "double bass". I asked if he meant Diprobase. No, he said, and repeated the name of the recommended cream: double bass.

I've met a double bass. I'm not smearing one of those things up my crack.

My Facebook friends have recommended Diprobase or red-top Neutrogena (ie the full-fat version, as opposed to the semi-skimmed blue-top variety I have in my bedside drawer). So they're on this week's shopping list. 

I shan't bore you by telling you all the side effects I'm experiencing, but I will say this: buy shares in Imodium now. 

Cancer treatment begins and I may be a world record holder

Treatment started on Wednesday with a syringeful of chemotherapy solution. It was this colour - 

- which was nice, because it matched my cardi. 

Seriously, though, when someone puts something that colour in your veins, you know it's toxic. You just hope it's killing the right bits of you.

Afterwards, I headed downstairs with a bagful of chemotherapy tablets, to have my first radiotherapy session. And this is where my proud moment occurred.

The team will only give you pelvic radiotherapy if you have around 200ml of liquid in your bladder, so they make your drink about half a litre of water 45 minutes before you're due to get zapped. Before switching the rays on, they take a scan of the area, to check everything's as it ought to be. 

I lay on the bed/table, surrounded by space-age machinery. They scanned me. I waited.

Then I waited some more, passing the time by imagining that said machinery was going to put me in stasis so I could carry out a very important space mission.

Eventually, the nurse came through. 'Your bladder is ginormous,' she informed me. 'Do you think you could fill two cups of wee and come back?'

I told her I could. I have not had children, so - to steal a Victoria Wood quote - I have a pelvic floor like a bulldog clip. Stopping mid-flow? Pah! Piece of piss (almost literally).

When I returned, they showed me the scan. The screen was entirely filled by my bladder. However, when they plonked an ultrasound wand on me to check how much liquid was left in there, I still had around 800ml. One-and-a-half cups later and I was ready to go.

This means that, when I initially hopped on the bed, I had around 1.5 litres in there. I have a 2 litre bottle of Pepsi in the kitchen. The idea that I can hold 3/4 of that in my bladder makes me feel both proud and disturbed. HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE? It occurs to me that what I thought were my breasts are in fact the rest of my organs, shoved into my chest by a land-grabbing bladder. Whatever - I feel I ought to contact whoever took over from the McWhirter twins at the Guinness Book of Records and ask to be included in the next edition. 

Computer says no. Well, it might do. We haven't looked at it.

I was meant to be at the Tears for Fears / Alison Moyet gig at the O2 this evening.

The hospital called me yesterday, telling me I had to go in at 12.30 today to pick up my chemo tablets. It absolutely had to be today, they told me, because there were no other free appointments before I start radiotherapy. (You can’t just pick up your tablets. No, you have to have an appointment where you’re lectured for an hour on how to take them.)

I have very low energy to start with, so was concerned this might affect my ability to get to the gig. Also, I have to get up and go to the hospital tomorrow morning for 4 hours of blood tests. But I accepted the appointment. Of course I did.

I turned up at 12.30. My appointment was at 13.30.

I waited.

There were no tablets for me to pick up because the doctor hadn‘t written the prescription. And the reason for that is because they won’t know what dose to prescribe until I‘ve had the tests tomorrow WHICH THEY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN I WASN’T GOING TO HAVE UNTIL TOMORROW BECAUSE THAT INFORMATION WILL BE ON THEIR SYSTEM.

So I’m at home, instead of having a joyous time with musicians I loved back in the 80s.

Fuck cancer. And administrative incompetence.

And you'd like that tattoo where, Madam?

I knew I was going to have a tattoo before I started radiotherapy, so that the people with the ray guns would know where to attack.

Given where the cancer is, I thought the tattoo was going to be in a place that meant I would only be able to show it off if I:

1. learned to twerk in downward dog pose;
2. went clubbing;
3. with my pants off,

and that the tattooing process was going to be eye-watering.

It turned out that none of this was true. I am relieved and yet saddened by this loss of anticipated comic material. I have a tattoo at the top of each thigh and one, um, about half way between the two, on my [insert euphemism of choice]. They're not even interesting tattoos. I was hoping for Japanese symbols that I thought meant "serenity" but actually meant "wanker". They're just dots.

So, apart from the palaver of trying to get a cannula into me - nurse #1 failed and nurse #2 entered the room to find me furiously doing press-ups in an attempt to make my veins pop up - my CT scan and tattooing were unremarkable.

Radiotherapy starts on 13 February. It's all starting to feel a bit real now.

Close encounters with the oncologist

...of the nitrile-gloved kind. (At least she had short fingernails.)

So - I've had my first consultation with the oncologist. Apparently, my tumour is fairly small. Mr Botty-Slicer of St Thomas's Hospital cut most of it out last December, so there's just a 2cm thing left in there. That makes it a Stage II squamous cell carcinoma. Get me with the lingo, eh?

The oncologist is, I think, eastern European. I could be wrong, but judging from her accent and the fact that I can neither spell nor pronounce her name, that's what I'm going with.

She is lovely.

She spent ages showing me my scans and explaining treatment options to me. My body contains enough kidneys to feed a family of five, so they won't be able to use the standard radiotherapy / chemotherapy treatment on me. It might kill off the only one of those kidneys that I actually need. (I'd be quite happy for someone to take the other ones away and keep them in the freezer. Seriously - they're just taking up space.)

The doc explained that, instead of the usual cocktail of chemotherapies and radiation blasts, I can only have very focused blasts and probably only one of the chemotherapy types (and possibly not have any chemo at all). The usual treatment has a 90% success rate. It's difficult to say how much my chances will be affected by the less severe treatment plan I'll need.

The alternative, I was told, is to have more surgery, which would result in me needing a colostomy bag. I considered that option for a good 12 milliseconds before saying "Dear God, no - are you barmy?'

The colostomy option awaits me if radiotherapy is unsuccessful. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. I don't need that as a new party piece - not least because I never go to parties.

We ended the consultation with her examining me, because no consultation about this condition is complete until someone's poked you in the chocolate starfish. Like I say, at least she had short fingernails.

I hope this doctor is going to use antibacterial hand-wash before seeing the next patient  

Next stop: CT scan on Friday, when they will be tattooing the place they need to point their ray guns at.

New year, NEW DIAGNOSIS!

Hmm. It seems I didn't write a single blog post last year. Not to worry - I have a new subject, bursting with enough humour for a series of posts. WARNING: may also contain trauma. Hopefully the latter will be short-lived (and I'll be long-lived.)

I've got anal cancer. I'm seeing the oncologists this Thursday, who will - I hope - give me some indication of when I'll be starting radiotherapy. I'm looking at five weeks of butthole irradiation, accompanied by a low-dose chemotherapy pill. Apparently, this won't cause my hair to drop out. Which is good, because (a) it's winter and I need head coverage, and (b) I don't have the cheekbones for bald. 

Those of you scooting over from my Facebook page will know most of this already. In fact, these posts will primarily be for those of my Facebook friends who asked me to write updates.

I won't have anything to say until after I've seen the oncologist. In the meantime, here's a picture of me, indicating the location of the mutant cells.

They're in there somewhere, the little buggers.

I dream of being somewhere as chichi as Fawlty Towers

Tomorrow morning, I was planning to donate a small piece of my uterus to the NHS. This would have required me to leave home at an hour that is not so much godforsaken as one that God has shunned and is really rather sorry he ever invented. To ease the pain of this early start, I booked a hotel room close to the hospital.

Unfortunately, the operation had to be postponed.

After I explained to the nurses that I'd already made a (non-refundable) hotel booking, they managed to get me a pre-surgery appointment for tomorrow morning, so that I wouldn't lose the money I'd forked out for the room.

So, tonight I am in a hotel near Paddington station.

Good points about the hotel:

1. The receptionist. He is the only reason I haven't fled this foretaste of eternal torment to seek out the comfort of a damp bench.
2. The wifi. It's free and pretty fast. Which is just as well, because the TV reception blinks in and out (and nobody wants that during David Attenborough).
3. The bed. It hasn't broken. Yet.

Now for the bad stuff.

The aforementioned receptionist informed me that I was on the fourth floor. Naturally, there is no lift, just a winding series of narrow stairways. The receptionist kindly offered to carry my bags for me. I am not proud. I said yes.

The first thing I noticed about the room was that the bed takes up about 75% of the floor space - and not because the bed is big.

The second thing I noticed was that it was a bit noisy and a lot cold. On further investigation, I discovered that this was because the sash window cannot be closed, due to it missing the fastener that allows you to shut it properly. You know, insofar as sash windows are capable of shutting properly. There was just a lonely-looking screw sitting there, helpless to prevent the force of gravity from pulling the upper pane open.

As a bonus, someone had left a half-eaten cake in a sandwich bag on the ledge outside the window.

I looked into the en suite bathroom. It is, to be blunt, a cupboard.

You may notice that a certain piece of bathroom furniture is missing from this cupboard. I know I did. I panicked. WHERE, FOR THE LOVE OF ZEUS, WAS THE BOGATORY?

The answer, it turned out, was "In another cupboard across the landing". There was a bonus here too: the last person to use the toilet appeared to have eaten a lamb dhansak and neglected to inform the staff that they hadn't cleaned up after themselves. Probably because there was no toilet brush. Probably because there wasn't enough room for one.

I told the receptionist about the window. He apologetically explained that he wouldn't be able to fix it but promised to put a heater in the room for me. This he duly did, schlepping back up to the fourth floor while I went out for a stroll.

I returned to a toasty room. Feeling mildly cheered, I decided to take a shower and have an early night.

I rapidly changed my mind after I started running the shower. As soon as I turned the controller away from the "cold enough to preserve a mastodon" setting, the water slowed to a sad dribble. If this place has a water pump, it is incapable of getting hot water to the fourth floor. Perhaps it feels too old and knackered for such crap.

Well, me too pal. Me too. Some people (read: masochists) may find a cold shower deliciously bracing, but I wasn't one of them even before I got all middle-aged. Besides, who wants bracing at 9.30pm on a Sunday?

I ran my greasy hair under a "probably about right for keeping your milk fresh" setting and decided to have a cup of coffee from the grubby tray on the bedside table that was not at the bedside. It was next to the door. (In fairness, that is quite close to the bed, but only because it is impossible for anything in this room not to be.)

I looked behind the not-at-the-bedside table for plug sockets.

Nothing.

There are only two plug sockets in this room, semi-concealed behind the wardrobe. I ended up boiling water with the kettle balanced precariously on the duvet. Like so.

I have now drunk my instant coffee, got the window as close to shut as I can, and am preparing to bed down. 

I tend to need several bathroom breaks during the night. Naturally, I did not bring a dressing gown, because I was expecting a fully-equipped en suite.

I don't know if the people in the next room have similar bathroom habits.

If they do, I hope they don't mind seeing me in my pants.