Funny old thing, that cancer - yes, indeed, I see you all laughing already. Here I am with a tummy full of foreign bodies doing their best to mount a coup d'état against my internal organs, but a lot of the time I don't really feel all that bad. Then - of course - I feel like a terrible fraud and a hypochondriac and a Burden on the State and lord knows what-all else.
Then there are days like today when one just wants to beg for merciful death.
That may be a little over-dramatic. Not much, though. I've had pains in my stomach - worse pains than usual, that is - for the past couple of weeks, and have been spending a lot of time curled up on the sofa, clutching a hot-water bottle. It's quite like the old days, when Lady Pains used to make my life a misery at least once a month, and sometimes, if they were feeling particularly vicious, twice.
We figured that this was probably ascites building up again. I had a lot of ascites when I was first diagnosed - that was how I came to be diagnosed, in fact - but the chemotherapy pretty much knocked it on the head. I would say I'm glad it was good for something, but actually it was good for a lot of things, for eg, getting my CA125 levels down into triple figures. I'm due for major surgery in three weeks - she said carelessly, as though she were not pooing herself at the very thought - and was hoping I'd be able to hold out till then, there's a limit to how many holes I want people making in me after all, but 'twas not to be. Last weekend I reached the "I wonder if I should speak to the Macmillan nurse?" stage, and by Tuesday I actually went and up and did it. Then I wished I'd done it sooner, as she wasn't able to get back to me until this morning. Still: I was very relieved when she did.
So this morning I packed an overnight bag, just in case, and Judy drove me up to the Churchill. Where we waited. And waited. And waited some more. We were there for just under four hours, with a total of maybe a productive half-hour out of all of it. But, eh. Better'n nowt.
Today was a bit of a triple whammy, pain-wise: the ascites, which is bad enough on its own, plus *cough* poo problems, over which I shall draw a discreet veil; plus the waistband of my leggings was really digging into my much fatter than usual tummy! Owwwww ...
The doctor, once the Macmillan nurse had finally unearthed him, had a good old prod, and I amused myself by taking bets on how long it would be after he stopped poking that my flab would stop wobbling. Sometimes it was up to five minutes. (That's a fib, btw.) They reckon there's definitely fluid in there, which is good, really - it means I wasn't wasting their time, or making a fuss over nothing, and it also means they can sort it. They didn't keep me overnight, but I'm going in on Tuesday for a CT scan and a slow drain, which will entail an overnight stay. That works out okay: I didn't really want to go into hospital just before a bank holiday, and I can cope with an extra few days' pain if I know something's going to be done about it.
I quite neglected to tell you all about my lovely, albeit unplanned, trip to Oxford a couple of weekends ago - when I fell over and grazed my knees as though I were five, not 56 - or about Judy's graduation ceremony last Thursday - when I almost weed myself in the streets of Luton. Not that it would make much difference to the streets of Luton, which are pretty seedy, but I could do without these Tena Lady moments. I think perhaps I should stop going places. It's too hazardous.
On the insult to injury front: I have three, count 'em, three lovely Easter Eggs, one from Thorntons (it says 'Hilary' on it. Actually, the icing has smudged, so what it says is 'HilBLOBy', but, as you'll see from the above, that's perfectly accurate) and two from Hotel Chocolat. Can I eat any of them? No, I cannot. I can eat toast, omelettes, oven chips, and tinned soup, and very boring it is.
As soon as I have been drained, I intend to gorge. After which I shall again be the shape I am now, but for a much more enjoyable reason.
And now I am away, for I hear the Oramorph calling - which may imply that I have already taken more than enough. I see myself in future years rather like an 18th century poet, reposing on my fainting couch, up to my eyeballs in laudanum, composing dreary verse with which to torment future generations of schoolchildren and making impractical plans for a pantisocrital society. Which I believe means one in which everyone wears pants. And so I should think.
