The Demise of Roland Ratso: Chapter seven

Got back home and a very apologetic radiographer phoned up – could she change my appointment? Not a problem – she offered me a choice of three. It appears that LINAC 2 is still out of action. Irene says I must have broke it proper! Can’t find anything about toothache and radio and chemo but you can’t have any dentistry work done while you are on chemo because an infection can be devastating – chemo interferes with white blood cells and lowers resistance to infection but I had 2 crowns replaced just before I started chemo and my jaw is aching where they were both replaced – first one and then the other – after I started radiotherapy. Might be nothing to do with the treatment. Bloody Quality Street toffees at Christmas and seventy quid to get them glued back in! Just sussed it. The pain in my gob is the reaction to the chemo they all talked about. Here’s me thinking that it is a tooth problem and now I have realised it is a chemo reaction. I was expecting mouth ulcers and the like – been dowsing myself with salt water for a month! Bloody hell! Went on the usual Morrison’s trip on Saturday with Jonathan – another son and got three parts of the way round when the weight was on. Not trusting my anal sphincter any longer I rushed into the toilets – well rushed was an exaggeration – Irene says I haven’t got a rush in me – but trying to get past all the old grannies with their trolleys was a nightmare. Anyway I got there before the next contraction and dropped my britches and got my arse on the pan only to find it was a false alarm. Just a bugle call and not even a couple of rabbit droppings for my trouble. But after the other night when my clacker couldn’t hold I am still reluctant to trust it. I have bought myself some pyjamas – the first I have had since my mother discovered Brentford Nylons in the sixties and we had nylon shirts, nylon sheets and many other nylon articles. Bloody near impossible to keep still in bed with all the sliding and then the whack! of static electricity and the blue flash when you earthed yourself on something. Happy days. I bought them ready for when I have surgery down the line – not wanting to appear with new ones. I already have a Guinness dressing gown and slippers and could have bought Guinness pyjamas as well but I didn’t want to create the wrong impression. I got them from ASDA and when I got them home they have got beer cans and wine bottles printed on them. So much for creating a good impression. Went out last night – Saturday – and there is a woman in our club whose husband died from bowel cancer last year. It’s not the first time that she asked me how I am followed by asking Irene “How is he then?” Well he is sat here and he can speak. It reminds me of when I was working in the welfare and a cerebral palsy lad was in running a fundraising evening. He was totally paralysed and communicated with a stick attached to his head to work a computer that moved his wheelchair and spoke for him. I asked him what he wanted the club to do for him – how he wanted the PA system and the stage setting up. At the end of the night he thanked me for talking to him like a human being. It wasn’t hard – he was running the show and all I did was give him credit for that. He may have been severely physically handicapped but he had a very bright mind and a wicked sense of humour. It is very easy to be insensitive.