Don't bring me down..

Day 81

General status update

Hair: Dishevelled, ratty, shedding, but still largely attached. It’s a miracle. I truly thought it was falling out after FEC3, but it was a false alarm. No one believes I’m having chemo, obvs. Even some of the doctors look at me oddly.

Nausea demon: Still doing his best, but starting to lose his grip for this cycle.

Chemo Muse: She says ‘ENOUGH WHINING! You’re starting to feel a bit better, so just shut up and get on with it! And watch my lips: NO MORE LORAZEPAM.’

Despair Demon: the Chemo Muse evicted him this morning, after giving him enough money for a one way ticket to Milton Keynes – he’s needed there.

Chemo Brian: We’ve had 3 days on the sofa together in a Lorazepam daze, but now it’s time to rejoin the human race.

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Fatigue/weakness: gathering 

Anxiety level (1-10): Anxiety has been put on hold for the time being, due to the complete unbearability of thinking for even one nano-second about the next chemo cycle. WE ARE NOT GOING THERE.

State of mind: Considerably more alert after stopping the Lorazepam, and slightly less crazed and angry, now that the worst days of the cycle are over. Onwards and upwards.

The Chemo Muse is back in charge again now, after the last few days of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth as I went through the truly bad days of the chemo cycle. She wants effort, work, progress, and a return to the - very - slowly unfolding narrative of the events that led, inexorably, to My Chemo Hell and the shipwreck of a person who now presents herself to you in this blog on a daily basis. Let us return, then, to the morning of October 4^th, 2012 – the day of my operation...

As instructed, we are at the hospital at 7.30 am, reporting to the confusingly named Riverside Ward (the Charing Cross Hospital is some distance from the River Thames). This is the ward where day operations take place, and the waiting room is packed; soon there are a number of people standing. R sportingly gives up his seat to someone who looks in more need of it, and sits on the floor next to me. We are both terrified, and pretending not to be, and somewhat disconcerted to find that relatives are not admitted to the ward at all; R will not be able to come to my bedside after the operation, but will be telephoned to come and pick me up when I have recovered enough to leave the hospital. We agree that he should go home, and wait to be telephoned, and when my name is called I have to go in alone, leaving him behind.

Inside I am shown to a curtained bay containing a hospital trolley/bed and given a hospital gown, paper knickers and surgical stockings. The nurse tells me I am fifth on the operating list, so there will probably be some considerable time to wait. Reluctantly, I change into the hospital attire, and consider what to do next. The hospital bed/trolley is very narrow, the curtained cubicle is tiny, and there is no chair to sit on, but I am very strongly disinclined towards getting into the bed and awaiting my fate. I have read some of the medical anthropology literature on the role of patient, and know that as soon as I get into that bed I will be weakened, enfeebled, institutionalised, passive, putty in the hands of the medical establishment.

Well, sod that for a game of soldiers. No, there must be another way…

Some time later, when the duty anaesthetist pops his head round the curtain to introduce himself and ask the regulation pre-general anaesthetic questions, his brow furrows and he looks puzzled, as well he might, because there is no patient in the bed.

Then he looks up and sees me some distance above him, perched on the very high window-sill, a position I have only been able to achieve by climbing up the rung-like metal sides of the hospital bed and using it as a base from which to launch me upwards. The window ledge is quite wide, and pleasantly cool, as a tiny bit of air is managing to make its way in round the edges of the sealed window unit.

(‘Oh my God, you must have looked like a demented owl’ said my sister a few days later, horror-stricken by my accounts of repeated bad behaviour and non-compliance in hospital environments since being diagnosed with cancer. ‘Why can’t you just be a bloody patient like everyone else and let them help you get better, you FREAK?’)

‘Ah, hello’ says the anaesthetist ‘I’m Dr X’ (I’m afraid I don’t remember his name, which is a shame, as he turned out to be so very, very kind).

‘Don’t mind me’ I say, morosely, ‘I just don’t want to be a patient yet, and when I get in bed, I’m a patient’.

Dr X could have pointed out that since I am in hospital wearing a hospital gown, surgical stockings and plastic identity bands on my wrists, and am going to undergo surgery within the next couple of hours, it is a bit late to start talking about not wanting to be a patient. Instead, with a great deal of forbearance, and considerable kindness, he humours me.

‘No problem’ he says, ‘I know just how you feel. I had an operation myself recently. Why don’t I just come and sit up there with you for a few minutes, while we do this?’

He repeats my procedure of climbing up the metal side parts of the bed and launching himself thence onto the window sill, and we sit there for a few moments in companionable silence. After a while he begins to ask the questions relevant to the imminent administration of general anaesthetic, all of which have been asked before more than once, but which presumably must be triply and quadruply checked to make absolutely sure that there is no error, that no point of danger is overlooked.

In the middle of all this, the surrealness of my position kicks in again. What am I doing here, dressed like this, answering questions from a doctor in surgical scrubs? I don’t want to be here, I want to be…

‘In Goa. I want to go to Goa.’

‘I’m sorry…?’

I explain the whole ‘escaping to Goa’ plan to Dr. X, telling him how it can’t possibly be right that I have breast cancer because have I not swum 23 miles this summer in the swimming pool of THIS VERY HOSPITAL, and do I not have terrific upper body strength with excellent triceps, which I would display to him were it not for this pesky hospital gown? And he nods and listens, and holds my hand as I start to cry, and for some time afterwards, and tells me how I can go to Goa later on, when I’m better. He gently suggests that a tranquiliser might be a good idea to help with my anxiety, and after he leaves I come down from the window sill, get into the bed, and go to sleep for a while.

(to be continued)