Looking into the Void?
As if to endorse my most recent medical problem, I have ‘lost’ my blog. Well not really ‘lost’ more like misplaced it in this electronic labyrinth tucked into a file no doubt about house insurance or face painting! It has to be somewhere but no amount of searching has brought it out. So this is effort number 2 of blog 32.
It is official, I can now be forgiven for forgetting what may have just happened, or been said... for being FORGETFUL! My defence, is as good as any husband could wish for “I’m sorry I don’t remember you telling me to ********”. No, it’s not the onset of dementia having turned fifty!
Let me fill you in on the last month or so.
I made an unscheduled visit to my local hospital A&E about a month ago…you guessed it, I couldn’t remember why I went and now rely on Michelle’s account of events and how dozy I had become.
Not surprisingly I can feel a little off colour with my drugs so I am always on the lookout for new side effects. A favourite is however tiredness, with just about every drug conspiring to bring it to prominence, the combined effect from the chemotherapy, thyroxin replacement and radiotherapy treatments do conspire to bring you down… they sometimes succeed. It can be a gradual process of increased lethargy, or simply a lack of involvement in a conversation. You can become vacant. Yes I know, how did anyone spot the difference from the real me? Well evidently on this one particular Saturday Michelle had had enough of the ‘dopey’ Richard and sought advice from the Royal Marsden Hospital. I guess when Michelle was told to go to my local A&E and to expect an MRI or CT scan of my head on the grounds that I had trouble concentrating and ‘choosing’ words, the Marsden had already second guessed the diagnosis.
Initial assessment by the A&E team had them only a little concerned, until that is when they thought to give me an anti nausea injection to compensate for another drug that I’ve never had nausea from, but hey ho! Wham! My brain just went on holiday and instantly I became unresponsive and catatonic. I was a blank sheet of paper for a short while with no recollection of anything from my date of birth, to what day it was. I found out that I was away with the fairies and for some reason found this situation far less worrying than Michelle and the Doctors. The standard finger tip to the end of the nose co-ordination was not quite as it should have been either, with my finger firmly poking myself in the forehead. Actually all I remember, rather than being told afterwards, is the lady Doctor's face staring into my eyes from close range for some sign of life. An image rather resembling a wide angle lens Alfred Hitchcock’ish’ scene and probably the closest any pretty woman has come to my face without being embraced in a kiss…now that would have been interesting, perhaps I did…na, I’d still bare the bruises from Michelle if I had!
This was all a bit much for the Doctor who had seen me arrive at A&E being just a bit ‘slow’, to being a vegetable in front of her eyes. It was only then that they agreed to CT scan me as the Marsden had requested.
Now those of you who have ever been on a pain relief such as morphine will empathise with the fact that I had no real knowledge that anything in my world was wrong, the effect being the same. I was content, even happy to be pulled around and was eventually admitted ‘unaware’ that anything was really that wrong. Dumb is fun, I really had no idea of the possible damage this new tumour could have caused.
This is fast becoming a medical blog with no laughs or gripes so let me cut to the chase.
The CT scan showed a new area of concern and one that the Marsden would need to see me about as soon as possible, but never the less not urgent. The scans would have to be hard copy viewed at the Marsden because the electronic images were not compatible. The scans from Southend Hospital however never did make it to London so I repeated both CT and MRI scans when they could fit me in. Evidently the fine quality of the Marsden MRI scanner identified two suspicious masses in my brain. One of these masses was thought to be ‘dead’, courtesy of the last Radiotherapy some eighteen months ago. (I’m happy to point out that all of the other tumours dealt with 18 months ago had disappeared to everyone’s delight). The latest new mass was only the size of a Malteser but was sat close to my speech centre in the brain and causing all sorts of mischief. This was the cause of my problems but the swelling around it exacerbated the pressure and caused the effects. But it had also triggered a happy button and I just didn’t have a care in the world. So Dumbo here finally gets his marbles returned to him after a few days, thanks to the decreased swelling in my head courtesy of steroids. I love to hate steroids!
The chosen medical option of treatment was at first a full blown knives out brain surgery to remove the new tumour but that later changed to a Stereotactic Radiosurgery solution. As I understand it the radiosurgery targets the mass and ‘zaps’ it with quite a large and precise dose of radiation. Naturally I was to glow in the dark a little bit more having been recharged, and was to watch out for the hair loss!
Back to the hospital for a new face mask (to give me a matching pair for the kids) and there I am once again, bolted unceremoniously by the head to the treatment couch. The second ‘dead’ tumour shown on the scan was considered too good a target not to blast again…just in case! I wish I could offer some anecdotal and in depth account of the 45 minutes spent in cranial bondage but …I was snoring like a horse for most of the time. For some reason I find being restrained a relaxing way to spend an afternoon, I have no idea why (answers on a postcard to…). They may have messed my hair up but, to this day (day 12) I still have a white crop.
I mentioned earlier how I love to hate steroids. It is unjustified, as they cause all manner of good medical stuff i.e. to keep you alive, but I find one of the secondary effects of blowing you up like a balloon and peeing for England through the night, highly irritating. My normal chiselled good looks have become bloated and dumpy, and I am heavier due to an insatiable appetite. Clothes sizing has become a problem. Some of my shirts were small in size two months ago but now I find I am more comfortable in an XL. Thankfully I have stored my fat gear in the loft and the fashion police have cleared most of them for a public decency airing…quite literally! You don’t put on 20 pounds and expect to get away with your skinny jeans. So I now have clothes ranging in 4 sizes.
So that’s where we are today. All of my other tumours are stable, a small point which was dropped into the conversation the other day at the Marsden having done a sneaky torso CT scan to check whilst my head was being looked at. I think daily about starting training for my annual 60 mile bike ride but to date have done nothing of note in the way of training. Two months to go.
Thanks for all the concern and prayers, over the last few weeks especially. Many thought it was the start of an irreversible decline but, what the heck, when I started being the same stereotypical grumpy, sarcastic and intransigent old man… they knew I had recovered!
Richard
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