Brave New World

Day 77 

General status update

Hair: still snooded – it’s better that way. And warmer.

Nausea demon: I wish he’d just b***er off back to the infernal regions. I am SO, SO SICK OF FEELING SICK

Chemo Muse: I’m writing this at 3.15 am so, as you can tell, she’s firing on all cylinders.

Chemo Brian: slumbering on the sofa – I wish I was.

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Fatigue/weakness: I’m wired on Dexamethasone – I could take you, easy.

Sleep, lack of: acute, right now. The steroids are keeping me wide, wide awake

Anxiety level (1-10): Worrying about what’s going to happen to me when the steroids wear off, and that’s because I KNOW what’s going to happen to me when the steroids wear off.

State of mind: forewarned is not forearmed – just frightened.

It is the third of October, 2012, the day before the operation on my breast is due to take place. I have already done the usual tests to check that I am fit for a general anaesthetic, something I’ve never experienced before. BigSisFo, who had a general anaesthetic a few months earlier for the removal of a small and entirely non-cancerous lump from her side, has assured me that it is no big deal; she felt perfectly fine afterwards, and was up and about conducting her normal activities the next day. Not too scary, then, and my lumpectomy will be carried out as a day operation; if all is well, I will be able to go home in the evening.

Today, however, I have to go to the hospital for one final pre-operative procedure: the injection of some radioactive dye into my breast for the sentinel node biopsy. This morning they will inject the dye into my breast, and tomorrow, when the surgeon opens me up to remove the tumour, the dye will show which of the lymph nodes under my arm fluid drains to first from the breast – the ‘sentinel node’- which is where the cancer will have gone if it has started to spread. This node will be removed, and analysed in the path lab for any traces of cancer.

An injection of dye doesn’t sound too heavy duty, so I assure R this is a hospital appointment I can handle alone. I go the department of nuclear medicine, am escorted into a treatment room, and told to lie down on a bed surrounded by a lot of very hi-tech equipment. A female doctor, young and jolly, comes in and explains what she is going to do. Then she says ‘OK, so it’s your left breast we’re injecting…’

I go cold, and stare at her, terrified.

‘No, it’s my right breast. MY RIGHT BREAST.’

She smiles, ‘Sorry, they didn’t put it on the request form.’

I’m appalled. How can this be? What if they were to operate on the wrong breast?’

‘Um… are you sure the surgeon has written it down right? It is on the system that it’s my right breast?’

‘Yes, don’t worry, it will all be on the system, just not on this particular piece of paper.’

I am not overly reassured, and my mood drops further when the doctor tells me that she is going to inject the radioactive dye into my right nipple.

WHAT? Nobody said anything about injecting me in the nipple.

‘I’m afraid this may hurt rather, but we can’t give you any anaesthetic, because you have to feel it so we know that it’s working.’

I’m not convinced by the logic here at all, but I’m lying on the bed rigid with terror, about to be injected, and in no position to argue. The nurse holds my hand, the doctor gives the injection, and it is agony. I was completely unprepared for this.

What happens next I simply don’t remember: most events at the hospital from the diagnosis onwards are still very clearly etched in my brain, but this one day is blurred, because I am in shock from the pain, and the impact of the first physically intrusive procedure. I do not realise it at the time, but this injection is a rite of passage: it marks my transition from being physically whole, and healthy, and autonomous, to being a cancer patient, dependent upon the doctors to save me, my body invaded, injected, sliced up, and sewn back together again.

In time, I will become accustomed to handing my body over to strangers while they do unpleasant things to me - the constant prickings of injections, drawings of blood, the PICC line inserted into my body as a semi-permanent installation to deliver the chemotherapy drugs up through my arm into a bigger vein, close to my heart - all of this will become routine.

But now, this day, is my first real entry into a new world of pain, and I am quite unprepared for its impact. When they let me go, I walk down the corridor, down the escalator, and out into the hospital grounds, shaking, trying not to cry. I need time to collect myself, and sit down on one of the benches outside, in front of  the railings which surround the hospital grounds, on the other side of which is the never-ceasing flow of traffic down the Fulham Palace Road.

I sit and cry for a while, with the realisation dawning on me that I can’t be in denial about the cancer anymore; this morning has introduced me to the harsh physical reality of what I am about to face - I am now alone in an entirely new, painful and very frightening world.