I've been hearing how NHS cancer patients can't get the opiates they need, which is all very Bad and Wrong indeed. But I have to admit to having apparently won the postcode lottery here; my doctors love giving me drugs. I have Zoomorph, which sounds to me like a collection of animals all changing shape, and then I had something they thought was better than that - only I didn't have it on scrip, and the hospital stole it (apparently; I'm not entirely sure what happened there), so now I'm back on Zoomorph again, and I have Oramorph too. And left-over codeine. It's all good. Well, all but the necessity for all of this.
Also not good is the fact that all these drugs leave me inhabiting a twilight world all of my own most of the time. I've been in hospital for the best part of three days and had two lots of chemo since I last updated, but damned if I can remember a thing about any of it.
Judy - who was there - tells me that the Churchill was as slow, disorganised and generally hopeless as ever, and that even taking my brother along for moral support (he being a Tall Man) didn't help. But I did have a stomach drain - eventually; it didn't go according to schedule because they sent us to the wrong place. And I did have my first chemo on the ward - again, eventually, this time because I was too ill to be given it when I went down in the morning and had to have a couple of bags of fluids, an antibiotic, and the BIGGEST VOMIT IN THE WORLD, EVER before I was well enough.
Side note: I owe not only Judy and Tim an apology for making them spend all that long, boring time by my bedside, I also have to apologise to the poor Gentleman Caller, who was expecting a nice evening with Judy but only saw her for about five minutes when she drove home to let him in, and, further, got stuck in a freezing cold house because we'd turned the heating off the night before.
God knows what happened between Chemo #1 and Chemo #2. That's pretty much a blur. Chemo #2 was another masterclass in hospital efficiency - we were there for something like six hours just to get one dose of poxytaxel - but there is always someone worse off than oneself, and in this case it was the woman next to us, who was hearing-impaired - and every one of the nurses talked to her father in a "does she take sugar?" sort of way - had so many physical problems that I lost count, and I don't think ever did get her treatment.
My next chemo is this coming Tuesday, and that ought to be interesting. The appointment isn't until mid-afternoon. Given present form, I'm expecting that we'll get home sometime in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
I'm suffering from the heat at present, like everyone, but am lucky enough to have a beautiful garden where I can sit - with a garden bench (in the shade, it's okay) to languish on. Getting any sleep at night is more of a problem; I've had to sleep in the sitting room once this week already, which is all well and good but very disorienting when you wake up.
As for that bad BoyCat - remember I told you how, with immaculate timing, he'd come home with a big bite on his bum? Well, Judy managed to get him to the vet to have it looked at, but there was no way we could get near him for his follow-up appointment. He does seem okay, but I'm afraid he may end up with a permanent bald spot to mar his beauty.
All the cats have gone semi-feral in the heat, and are treating the house merely as a convenient snack bar. I suppose I don't blame them. If I thought that sleeping under the rhubarb would cool me off, I'd do it.
How do I feel? It's hard to say. Not as bad as I did before the drain; not as good as I would like to feel. Somewhere in that hinterland you will find me. Mostly what I am doing is trying very hard to eat properly. Or, you know. At all.
But I am still one of the luckiest cancer patients you will find - for values of 'lucky' and 'cancer'. See what my former colleagues/customers in the USA did for me:
Many spoons! I had to break off several times when I was reading the messages, I kept getting something in my eye.
At the moment, the only blot on the horizon is that it doesn't look as if we'll be able to change my Bruce ticket for a disabled one. I'm going to write a pleading and heartfelt email to the stadium, but I don't hold out much hope. I'll just have to hope that I feel well enough to go. It would be ironic if I couldn't, Bruce being one of the things I've been determinedly staying alive for, but we shall just have to see.
