Living with cancer, David In Ireland [best ebook reader under 100 TXT] 📗

chemo. I felt fine. Then she went off and got a large bag covered in a purple sleeve, she hung this on my stand and connected it to my chest. She turned the tap on and within 5minutes I began to feel its effects. I gradually I went down hill, until I was so low I was not functioning.

Every aspect of my body stopped doing what it would normally do. My legs got heavy, my arms weighted a ton, to move took effort. But the worst bit was the feeling of nausea creeping its way up through my body.

There were no hospital beds available, so I asked if I could go home. Not a chance. I can’t go home with chemo plugged into me. I will have to receive this chemo 24 hours a day for 3 days, then I get a thing called Mezna (or something like that) foranother 12 hours. Then I have to wait 12 more hours to receive some injection before I go home. But I don’t have a bed, can I not sleep in the day ward? No,it is closed at night. Where do I go? To A&E (accident and emergency) or ER for those on the other side of the pond. But they told me to never go to a and e because of the possible infection..... .. .. Then the nurse came over to me and said the words I had been waiting to hear. “we have a bed for you”. Fantastic, I have a bed to sleep in! But my body is feeling so awful, I don’t really care about the bed. I just want the feelings to go away. The nurse tells me that I will be given more anti nausea pills when I get to the ward. I have to wait for the room to be cleaned and sterilised. So the nurse brings me to the waiting room on the ward. I am feeling pretty awful. The waiting room is also a visiting room so there are patients and visitors sitting together chatting, there are also people watching TV. I want to be sick, but I can’t be sick in here. I want to be on my own, not in public. The other patients can’t resist talking to a nurse so they all start chatting together. One of them starts asking me what is wrong with me. I can’t say “I have cancer”. What I want to say is ‘LEAVE ME ALONE’ but instead I say “I am in getting some extravitamins, you can’t get enough vitamins, the purple bag is blackcurrant flavour, what are you in for?” He then began talking about his sore foot. I felt weak listening to him. Then a nurse came in and started filling out more forms for my asmission. “how are you feeling with the chemo” she said at the top of her voice. The room went quiet. Everyone of them stared at me. That was the beginning of the stares.

I was brought to aprivate room. I am glad it was private, I do not generally like to vomit in public. I also want to be alone right now. I feel awful. I feel weak. I have arrived in hell. When I talk to people I am usually quite happy, when I can manage a smile, I smile. I am trying to be positive. I just want to go to sleep. One of the nurses told me that I will be given a sleeping tablet, I look forward to sleep because I hope to sleep for hours.

Day two on chemo. Woke up feeling unwell, went to the bathroom, thought I might have needed to use the toilet, so I sat down. I felt week, then cold,then I was sick, from both ends, at the one time. Slowly made it back to bed. Awoke again feeling sick, made it to the sink. Nurses and doctors came into my room in large numbers as I was throwing up, the doctors started asking me a million questions, I felt weak, so weak, I wanted to stop talking but they kept asking questions. Nurses came in and out with various meds that the doctors were prescribing as they spoke to me. I was given about 20 different tablets, some of them I got 4 of each. Thankfully after about 20minutes I began to feel well enough to want to stay alive. I had reached the bottom of a pit and I wanted it to fill in and take me away from this feeling. After that, my life began to improve, a slow but sure improvement of the feeling of being human. I never felt well, I always felt horrible, but it was bearable. I could live with it. The nausea stayed low enough to eat some dry crackers and drink some water, but that was about it. .. .. I am spending too much time on my own, the clock is slow, very slow. I am able to write things on my phone, this helps pass some time. But I think it is making me feel sicker,it is hard to tell, the nausea comes in waves. I am typing this on the phone right now, if you saw how slowly I am able to get the letters into the phone you would laugh. I think it is taking me about 15 minutes to type one line. This is crazy, time is so slow. I want it to go quickly but nothing makes it speed up. My thoughts take longer, my movements are so slow, everything causes nausea. I want it to stop.

Day two, three and four in hospital. .. .. I do not have the literary ability to describe how time went past during the 5 days. Every moment is like an hour. Every hour is like a day.Every day is like a week. Time stands still. There are endless portions of time. If a clock goes ‘tick,tock’ then in chemo world it goes‘tttttttttiiiiiiccccckkkkk,tttttttoooooccckkkk. They were not too happy about my wanting to wander around the hospital. They kept asking where I was going, when I would be back. They did not like me leaving my room. But I needed to see people, even just to see people was enough, I would walk to the central part of the hospital and sit down as if I was waiting for someone or something to happen. I would watch people coming and going. I would think about why there were in hospital, who were they visiting. .. .. I am typing this on my phone. I am sitting in a sunny area of one of the hospital corridors. It is the main walkway to the canteen. My nurse from the first day walks past and stops to say hello, her name is Sarah,she is a very kind person. Then Jill, the girl who pushed my wheelchair out to my wife’s car when I got the Hickman fitted, stopped to say Hi. Then some of my doctors saw me and sat down to ask me some questions. Then the nurses from my ward arrived. It was crazy. I came down here to get to see some normality and for almost an hour I have had constant conversations with nurses and doctors.Then an elderly lady, slowly, comes down the corridor, she is so frail, I would guess she is in her 80’s. She sits down beside me and starts telling me that she is on chemo. She talks slowly, but with a passion, about her life before cancer, her family, her great grandchildren. She shuffles off into the distance, slowly, after about 10 minutes.

My days are filled with time. Lots and lots of time. I cannot concentrate on reading, I feel ‘car sick’ after a couple of minutes. I cannot bear the sound of the TV. My only break during the day is when a nurse comes in to check on me. So I walk around the hospital, until I am exhausted, then I go back to the ward and sleep. My wife brings in my girls each evening. I love to see the three of them, but I feel terrible, I try to be happy when they are there. I try not to show how I feel, but I fear it slips out, or pours out. I sit up straight, I try to listen and reply to each of their conversations. I do love to hear about their day. I want to absorb everything about them so when they are going I can think of them. My mind is constantly wandering, I can’t keep an idea in my head for long, it is constantly interrupted by strange feelings in my body. .. .. I am so tired. I keep fighting with myself, why am I doing this poison, why did I agree to treatment, because it might make me betterthat’s why. But it is awful, I want to stop. I want to stop now. No way, you are fighting this, not for you, for your wife, for your children. It is to give you a better chance of survival. But is it worth it? Is there any quality of life left? Eventually.

My mind struggled with it every day, every second of everyday. I knew I would not stop, but I wanted to. I wanted to go home. I wanted to feel well again. .. .. FINALLY, I was returned to my lovely home, with all of my favourite things. My wife, my girls, my everything. I was on a high just for making it home. The car journey was not easy, but I wanted to get home so I was able to put up with the feelings. Every mile that passed was a mile closer to home.Then I got there, finally I walked through my front door. My dog wagging his tail, if I had one I would have been wagging it too.

My wife set me up in a comfortable position. I got comfortable. I was so happy. I smiled and smiled and did some more smiling. My face was actually sore from smiling, it brought back memories of my wedding day. Even when I was in a room on my own I would suddenly smile. .. .. Days have been up and down since then, some bits good, some bits not so good. I have managed a couple of short walks, but not much else. I am exhausted within a few minutes, not much good for anything. I was walking much more in the hospital.

I have been home 5 days, had to go back in to the hospital yesterday to have some stitches removed (from the Hickman), had my bloods taken and waited for the result. The wonderful nurses, keep telling me things about my blood levels, I don’t understand any of it. “your suffering from acuteneutropenia” said one nurse to me. “how bad can it be when you say it is cute?”was all I could think of.

Had to back into the hospital again today to have the Hickman flushed and cleaned. It took about 3 hours in total, plus car time there and back. Not much, but I was flattened by the end of the day.

My sister came out to visit me, it was lovely to see her and chat with her, when it is just the two of us we seem more capable of chatting, there are no other interruptions, as she is a nurse I can ask her many of the questions that have been going through my mind. After she went home I got very tired, I slowly came to a stop. I had to lay down for a while. When I felt more able to move I got up and began to cook the dinner. I love to cook, for a variety of reasons,