All done!!

Hi Everyone,

I promised an update after my HDR Brachy and radiotherapy was finished, well today was the day it all ended and that belkl was well and truly rung!  The HDR was done 5 weeks ago on a Monday morning, by the afternoon I was in a single room on a ward (did someone pull strings because i'm Macmillan staff and well known to the cancer staff...??), with free TV all day, usually quite expensive for what it is.  I had a catheter installed which wasn't very comfortable to move around in the bed, but none the less i managed to have some sleep that night.

Catheter removed on Tuesday morning and home I went.  All went well until Thursday night when I couldn't pee.  Hmm, straining to push even a few drops out.  OK don't drink too much on Friday, it will sort itself out.  Saturday morning I was calling 111 and they booked me into A&E (or as they now call it ER) to be re-catheterised - they drained me of 1.7 ltrs!  "That will have to stay in all week, the District Nurses (DN) will take it out on Friday", I was told.

Friday arrived, DN's arrive. Hmm, "it's a bit soon" they said, but we'll take it out and call you this afternoon.  if your still blocked, back it goes.  Suffice to say  it went back!  "We'll take it out in 11 days"

OK come 11 days later and i'm now in the middle of the radiotherapy treatment.  "Oh, we can't take it out now, it will have to wait until the end of the radiotherapy"  "OH NO  PLEASE TAKE IT OUT!!  Nope, so it stayed.  That has been the worst bit of this - the damn catheter.  Can't wait for Monday morning!

To be honest, the radiotherapy has been a breeze.  Sorry to those of you who have had the issues that they tell you about, but apart from a bit of loose bowel last week and falling asleep in front of the TV of an evening, I really wouldn't know anything has happened.   Drinking 2 ltrs of water a day was hard!  I purposely asked for my treatment to be in the afternoons, so that if i did get tired, i could sleep it off during the evening/overnight and then do a mornings work and that's exactly what happened.  I drove myself to and from each appointment with no issues.

So apart from the bruising that the HDR caused and the possible blood clot that caused the blockage, (the doc's considered opinion), it's not been a bad experience.  At least I can look my clients in the eye now and tell them I know what they mean.

Peter