Sister Morphine

Day 102

General status update

FEC5 - day 8

Anxiety level/insane euphoria (+/- 1-10,000): we’re adopting this category to allow for the violent mood swings engendered by the steroids. For the last few days I’ve been essentially bat-shit crazy – albeit very cheerfully so - but keeping on with the steroids has significantly decreased the power of the chemo side effects, and lowered my distress levels accordingly. Steroid dose now being reduced, so am starting to calm down, which will probably be a relief to Matron Becky, who was somewhat startled to have been elected World Mum/Mother Goddess yesterday, although she says she’s definitely going to put in for a pay rise.

Nausea demon: very morose over our 5am breakfast, and only had one bite of toast. Worried about him.

Chemo Muse: she sent me off to bed last night at 11pm, saying that I REALLY needed to get some rest now, and I mustn’t think about staying up all night writing again. Odd.

Despair Demon: there were noises coming from the airing cupboard last night, when I got up at 3am to get a glass of water – it seems he had company. Hmmm.

Chemo Brian: he’s really happy because when I popped into TKMaxx yesterday whilst waiting for a prescription to be sorted at Boots next door, I found the ultimate sofa comfort blanket – a huge, soft grey, chunky Argyll hand-knit cotton throw. You can never have enough throws, and I love it so much I fully intend to buried in this one, although not anytime soon, obvs.

PICC line: gone, but not forgotten

State of mind: Still Dexy-energised; no moping

Hair: there

  

Previously on Chemo Nights: it is the 4^th October, 2012, the day of the lumpectomy operation on my right breast. After a 7 1/2 hour wait for the operation, punctuated by some fairly deranged behaviour on my part, headed off by a kindly anaesthetist, the last thing I remember is having my pathetically inadequate veins insulted by another, less kindly, anaesthetist as he struggled to find an adequate venue for his cannula - now read on…..

A breast lumpectomy operation (or WLE – wide local excision), although a fairly major piece of surgery carried out under a general anaesthetic, is normally carried out as a day operation; once you have come round and had some time in the recovery room you can go home the same evening, all being well, and this is what is planned for me.

It doesn’t work out quite like that.

Although I reported to the hospital at 7.30am, my operation doesn’t take place until late afternoon, and I start swimming back into consciousness as I am being wheeled on a trolley into a ward where I will be staying overnight. And this is where my introduction to the awesome power of pharmaceuticals begins, because for the next 24 hours I am buoyed from the after-effects of the surgery on a wave of - presumably - morphine, blithely unaware of what will hit me once I get home.

There is a big dressing on my chest, but I am feeling perfectly fine and insist on R calling my mother and sister so I can tell them exactly how fine I am because they will be worried (I was, apparently, pretty much incoherent, but extremely cheerful). My surgeon, Mr H, pops in to check on me before going home and I greet him with a beaming smile. After R has gone, I bond with the other inhabitant of the ward, a woman called Sheila whose very complicated mastectomy was the operation before mine, and we sit in our beds chatting until the early hours of the morning, exchanging life stories in that extraordinarily intimate way you can do with complete strangers in adverse circumstances, particularly when you are completely off your face with drugs; every now and then we demand more tea and toast from the nurses who, at about 3am, gently suggest that it might be a good thing for us both to get a little rest now.

Early in the morning Mr H appears again for an informal check on me, before starting work for the day, and says I will be able to go home later in the morning.

Mr H’s aftercare, I have to say, is outstanding, and will remain so in the weeks that follow. Of all the breast surgeons in the world, I’m very glad he was mine. 

Later I receive the official ward round from his registrar, a very good-looking Croatian or Serbian who is flirting with the equally good-looking female doctor who accompanies him. Part of his general charm offensive is to describe us surgically battered female patients as ‘lovely ladies’ which, when you’ve just had your once lovely breast mutilated or removed, is rather adding insult to injury; however, he’s a nice bloke, and a good doctor, and I’m still high from the morphine, so I close my mouth without actually uttering the words ‘Don’t patronise me, you t***er’, which is the response which immediately springs to mind

I’m pronounced fit to go home and a couple of hours later, after the admin is all sorted and various drugs prescribed, am finally allowed to do so. The taxi delivers us back to our little eyrie in Gurkha Towers within ten minutes and R installs me on the sofa with books, magazines, and a range of refreshments.  I call a couple of anxious friends, and then start tweeting, saying that I am safely home, feeling fine, and we are now on to the ‘relaxing and recuperating on the sofa’ part of the proceedings. It’s just like BigSisFo said – having a general anaesthetic is no big deal, the operation has gone fine, and I should be up and about in no time.

I have absolutely no idea, not even an inkling, of what is about to hit me.

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.

.

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)