Post 139: What quality of life?
Some days are better than others — I’d rather forget this one.
———
When you wake up with pains that make you want to cry, you know the truth: you are unwell and the cancer is progressing.
I wanted to go to A&E to get some pain relief and sleep — but the voice of reason, a.k.a. my Darling, said: No, you’re not. You’re having a day of Max-Morphine.
I’ve got to say, firstly she was totally right, and secondly “Max-Morphine” sounds like a comic superhero (just saying).
So that’s what we did.
Every four hours I had another dose, and for the whole day I sat in my rocker watching TV, filling in sudokus, and talking to peeps on phone or video.
It was a day that’s easy to forget, but in the end it became a landmark of a sort — by virtue of my mind being fixed on the facts of my dreary daily life.
So what is my quality of life?
Should we have a scale?
Maybe one to ten: ten being a day out in Wales, strapped to a zip-wire and flying across a lake over an old disused quarry; one being a day in bed, dribbling.
I must have had a two today.
Maybe a two and a half.
A day in a rocker chair, a medicine chair, the morphine chair.
I’ve written some more questions down for the meeting Thursday, which I’ll edit before I get in the car to go.
I flit between feeling sick to death about the whole reason for this meeting — and its likely negative outcomes — to sitting there silently, feeling sorry for myself, or wanting to say my piece and shout loudly that I’m not ready to waste more time on stupid chemo that isn’t working.
I just don’t expect there’ll be any really helpful answers for me to be lifted with.
My eldest son told me I was depressed and needed a talking therapy to help me out of my funk.
I would agree, and I want to get back to some counselling, but it takes a bit more desperation than I’ve got right now to make that call.
I can feel the eyes of everyone I know on me recently. I’m living in a glass, see-through cancer bowl where everything I do is over-analysed and noted. I’m a lab rat (or lab goldfish).
Today ended as it started — with immense pain and my Darling administering more morphine as I tried in vain to get comfy in bed.
Today was a 2.5 on the QoL scale.
I’m not unhappy — it could be worse.
Maybe Thursday will be a good day.
