Funny Anecdotes

Love it. A sense of humour is essential with cancer. 

In my local hospital, the urology unit is in an annex at the back of the hospital, you can't easily get to it from the main building. 

The appointment letter for my initial DRE advised that I should "enter at the rear".

Didn't it also tell you to 'get your finger out'??

That's as bad as one of our hospitals where the sign says

"GUARD DOGS OPERATING"

No wonder the junior Doctor's want more pay.......

Keep them coming. It's good to laugh.

Husband asked his urologist's secretary for a prescription for a bra along with one for his Leprorelin injection. Now she want's to know his size. In Greece the secretaries usually assist the consultants during procedures and she actually 'fired the gun' whilst hubby was having his 1st biopsy so she has seen everything -literally. 

Don't say that - am having my knee replacement on 2nd October

One of my Facebook posts from 2014 just came up as a memory. My grandson who was 6 at the time had asked me who my favourite hero character was. Tongue in cheek I said 'grandad'. He said 'no nanna, I mean a real one'. 

It is no longer tongue in cheek. What that man has been through and the progress he's made makes him my real life superhero. 

Part of the way I've always coped with things is through the absurdities.

When I broke my shoulder in a cycling accident 5 years ago, sent by an agency to begin nights on a private site, I staggered inside and asked the first man I saw if he could get the supervisor, that I had "ran over that sleeping policeman outside" and thought I'd broken my arm and needed an ambulance. He looked shocked, and said "you've ran over policeman?". He was Polish and didn't know what I meant by sleeping policeman, this narrow, home-made concrete speed ramp the site had around a bend with all the road lamps switched off as it turned out the owners had been prosecuted by the council for trying to maintain them in an unsafe manner.

A few days later I staggered to the local shop, and my arm in a sling, bought my cats some sliced ham as I was struggling to open their tins and pouches. I put the basket on the counter and the man frowned at me while scanning things and said "what 'appended to the am?" in his Asian accent. I looked around, back down the aisle and meekly said "is it not in the basket?" thinking I was possibly being accused of shop-lifting and he'd been watching me on the CCTV. "No, the am!" he said, gesturing to my aRm in a sling and an overcoat slung over that shoulder. I can never go into that shop now without thinking "what 'appened to the am".

With my prostate cancer it's all been about the female hormones and their effects and some of the things a man gets to wear, which has convinced me I am on the change, very on trend, and that I may turn into a beautiful woman before I die and enter the Ladies to annoy that womb fascist, the Harry Potter authoress. I am going through a menopause, am overemotional, cry every day and night, get hot flushes, but thankfully no tender breast tissue - so far. My body hair is slowly receding or falling out and I have this huge bald patch around my stomach from, I think, the radiotherapy on my spine exiting there. I get injected every month with hormones, into the stomach, and a swelling develops, which I call my baby. I was expecting twins at first as I had a jab either side.

In hospital I had to wear these knee-length compression stockings, like an old lady, and an elasticated garter worn high on the thigh, to support a catheter, this was in for 4 months with me continually needing to adjust the garter like Mae West. And when I had my op a nurse needed to do my gown up at the back as if I was wearing a dress. My bits have shrunk on HT and the pills I take, and I am chemically castrated and cannot get an erection, so to all intents I am practically female, or will be in due course. There's nothing I can do about this so I have to embrace the sisterhood.

Most recently I had my catheter out, and the removal of what I call my little alien (think of the thing which attached to John Hurt's face in Alien, well a leg bag of similar shape was attached to my leg for 4 months and a tube was into my bladder via the penis to 'lay' a balloon instead of an egg into the stomach via the throat). Anyway, last Friday I attended a Trial Without Catheter, an odd phrase which reminded me of the title of some old TV episode of Crown Court or something, where they had me drink lots of fluids to check everything worked okay. Then at the end of the morning the nurse said "you are free to go'. So I had not been sent down at my trial for urine retention, I was a free man!

I have an update, well it made me laugh anyway.

I had a battle royale to get a pressure mattress off the District Nurses, they said I didn't meet the criteria despite having spinal surgery. In the end they relented a little and I got an inflatable mattress topper, which is like a swimming pool lilo inside a polythene bag. I was shocked to discover they cost £300 given what they look like, and it arrived rolled up in a tube which doubles as a pump.

Yesterday I was laid down having a rest and Desmond, one of my cats, who weighs 16lbs, decided to join me, he had crept silently into the the room and suddenly jumped up and slipped and his claws dug in and popped the mattress topper. The mattress was under pressure with me on top so the popping sound made him run away and I laid there in shock while it completely deflated beneath me with a continuous loud farting sound.

I've had to order some polythene greenhouse repair tape off Amazon.