‘One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all’
(“White Rabbit”, Jefferson Airplane)
Cancer treatment involves an enormous number and diversity of drugs, dispensed in hospital by numerous pharmacists who carefully check that each patient has exactly what has been prescribed. Patients carry these home in distinctive bright green bags. Why pills vary so much in size, shape and colour is quite baffling. It sometimes seems that the importance of a drug is inversely correlated with the size of its pills and therefore the ease with which they slip from one’s grasp and disappear into the cracks between the floorboards. Pills beget pills; one of my medications raised my blood sugar to dangerous levels so that I now to have to take two different drugs to keep it down. As I write, I have 15 different drugs lined up in my drug drawer.
I sometimes feel almost privileged to have cancer. As well as the numerous nurses, doctors and pharmacists who attend to your needs, we have two specialist lymphoma nurses, Tracy and Anya, who we can contact by phone or by email to ask questions about any aspect of my treatment. I have also been allocated a palliative nurse, Jacinta, who visits us at home to talk about preparing for death and making my life more comfortable. We are eternally grateful to Jacinta for securing us a blue disabled parking badge. She also recommended some very expensive silk underwear to wear at night when the itching gets very bad. I was surprised to find that I am the only person with my condition that she has looked after. It is indeed a rare disease. For some years, Carolyn supported her own mother, who had progressive vascular dementia. The support available through the NHS for people with that terrible disease, and for their families, is pitiful beside that available to cancer patients like me.
