Co-incidentley, Goldfinger’s famous quote to Bond was made in 1964, the year that I was born. Sean Connery’s Bond is strapped legs-akimbo* to a table as a steel-cutting laser slowly advances towards his gentleman’s department. Somehow, Bond escapes and saves the day. I have never understood why megalomaniac villains devise such complex demises for their adversaries? Too much time and money, perhaps?
I am now on day 8 of chemo-radiotherapy and, sadly, it is nowhere near as exciting as visiting Goldfinger’s laser. I do get left alone in a high-tech room as robotic machines whir quietly around me. But there the similarity ends. I was hoping for an actual visible cancer-death ray to be directed with precision at the evil empire that resides in my groin and rectum. And some smoke and sizzling noises would reassure me that effective action was underway. The only potential jeopardy? have I drunk enough or too much water in preparation, and can I hold on from needing a pee until the procedure is over? This can be quite a challenge if the appointment times are running late.
In ‘High Noon, again’, I related the failure of my three-month chemotherapy course and the proposed next stage being ‘long course radiotherapy’. I’m sure I won’t be alone among patients in sometimes not always taking in all the details? I had not appreciated or not heard fully that the next course I was signing up for was ‘chemo-radiotherapy.’ I grew to heartily dislike the chemotherapy, 4 cycles over three months battered me into a sickly, unfit wreck. A plus I took from this hard and disappointing experience was that I was done with chemotherapy.
I was wrong.
The doctors tell me that the radiotherapy is more effective when accompanied by chemotherapy. A ‘reduced dose’ of the same hateful tablets that I took as part of the previous treatment. Now, to me, a reduction is 50% or more, imagine the shop sales in the olden days – crowds of excited shoppers fighting to be first into Harrods on Boxing Day. My pill reduction is a mere 17%! Definitely, not worth sleeping on a cold pavement for or risking a pointy-elbow, early morning gold-rush. And I need to take these every day for 35 days straight. Which is the equivalent to two and half chemo cycles in one hit. When I realised this, my heart sunk. But I am not going to have the truly awful chemo drip – I could not face that again.
So, how am a doing on day 8/35?
So far, so OK(ish). The chemo pills do sit heavy in my stomach, and I have a quiet sit after taking them – 1500mg after breakfast and, again, after tea. But no actual nausea yet. Uncomfortable side effects from the radiation are not detectable, yet. But the fatigue has started to build. I’m 59 (60 very soon!) and an evening nodding off in front of the telly is not unusual. But this is in a different league. It’s like a powerful tide sweeping rapidly in; whoosh, I need a nap right now and right here – the kitchen counter will be just fine. At the moment, I am getting through the daylight hours and not being ambushed by fatigue until the late afternoon or early evening. However, I am assured that many side-effects will increase as the treatment progresses and I have my cohort of lovely drivers on speed dial for when the 50-mile daily round trip to hospital becomes too risky to drive.
The drugs are accompanied by 25 consecutive weekdays of radiotherapy at Musgrove Park’s Beacon Centre. Here I have met Pegasus, Orion and Phoenix. Don’t be misled by the names, these are not members of the recently revived ‘Gladiators’ TV show. They are three rather impressive radiotherapy machines. The patient lays on a bed and the machine rotates around the bed, presumably zapping the cancer from different angles. The machine is difficult to describe; it’s all white and quite quiet. It appears to consist of some small table-tennis tables, a large ping-pong ball and a huge shower head. The shower head is the actual ray- gun and I have no idea what the rest does; the table-tennis tables are folded away halfway through my treatment. All very high tech, unlike the kitchen roll…. more on that later.
Treatment starts with an ultrasound scan of my bladder. This needs to be full but not too full. My optimum bladder level is 380ml. The bladder helps ensure the other squishy bits inside my groin are in the correct position for the map of my body that the machines have been programmed with. Before Christmas, I was tattooed and these are used to position me correctly on the table, using the machines cameras. This can take a few minutes. Then a ‘bolus’ is placed over the target area; this is a rubber mat that helps keep some of the radiation near my skin surface, I guess, to zap the big visible lump? (I need to ask more questions!)
Once in position the team leave the room and I get my Bond experience. The machines first scan me to calibrate where to shoot, the table-tennis tables are folded away, and then the shower-head bombards the cancer with radiation.
Time on the table can vary from a very efficient 12 minutes to over 30 minutes. One part of the equipment can truly test the radiotherapists. It’s not Orion or the other space-age gladiators. It’s the Tesco value roll of kitchen paper…
I’m pretty sure the radiation can pass through my flimsy pants. But the positioning cameras and scanners can’t. So, flesh in the area needs to be exposed. And this is my groin…no dignity pants here, just a sheet of kitchen roll. And it needs to be very precisely placed! The balance between preserving my ‘dignity’ and a clear view for the machine is proving to be the team’s biggest challenge. Fortunately, I’m well beyond feeling sensitive about medical procedures now. And, as always, the staff are as sensitive as possible.
So far, chemo-radiotherapy is less unpleasant than chemotherapy. This opinion may well change as the days tick by!
*legs-akimbo; an expression sometimes heard in my childhood! Broadly meaning arms or legs spread out.
