Yeah, ok, it’s been a while.
I last left you at the start of my radiotherapy treatment,
well, that’s all finished now and it took up so much of my time I found that I
kept missing the chance to type anything here.
When I did have the chance to tap something down, I was, without doubt,
really quite pissed off with it all.
Pissed off with the itchy face (as it became more and more “sunburnt”),
Pissed off with the sore throat (a cough/cold has nothing on
how sore your throat becomes via this treatment),
Pissed off with the tiredness (being physically (from all
the travelling) and mentally drained (from saying to all that I was “fine” and
keeping up my appearance)),
Pissed off with the snowfall and painkiller combination (for
putting my truck through a hedge),
Pissed off with the blisters on each side of my tongue
appearing, swelling up, popping and then reappearing as though my tongue was on
some kind of “slow rolling boil”. (Resulting
in a constant foul taste being delivered to my already worn out palette)
Because of this level of anger that I found myself in, I
could not bring myself to use this sounding board, this blog, I did not want it
to become a repetitive series of moaning paragraphs full of woe and misery, so
I did what I thought would be right for me, I had a beer or two and tried to
forget the annoyance of my situation, put on my “everything is fine” mask, and
not write about it.
And now?
I have to say, everything is fine. It’s a surprise to
the medical staff as it is to me. My last poisoning with chemotherapy drugs
occurred on the 16th of January and this was a last minute drug swap
to save me from loosing anymore of my hearing, as a side effect that I have
received from my previous chemotherapy has been loss of clarity in sound to my
left ear and yet an increase in the volume of the tinnitus that has plagued me
for many years. At the end of this session my PICC line, the pipe from my bicep
to my heart, was removed (quite an experience to see a foot of plastic piping
be pulled from your arm) and yes I did ask to keep it, maybe I’ll string my 8
teeth on it.
My last session lying on Varian 1 happened on January 30th 2013 and I
came away from the hospital carrying a life size mask of my own chest,
shoulders, neck and head. This now adorns my office wall waiting to be
decorated with my other used medical paraphernalia
As predicted the effects of this radiotherapy treatment kept
on happening throughout February, the soreness, the blisters, the pain and the
having to feed myself via the PEG tube as I could not swallow anything other
than liquid and that was difficult at times, but it got better.
Since the end of February, drinking is not a problem in the
slightest and as long as the food is wet enough I find that I am able to eat
again, although it is not quite the wonderful experience it once was, this is
good news as last week, my back up form of feeding, my PEG tube, fell out. Not
fully which meant I had to go to A&E. Fortunately for me, I had already had
a chat with Joe, my oncologist, and we had decided that instead of having my
PEG tube replaced for a fresh new one for the next 3 months, I could just have
this one removed at the end of March and I would not need another. All this
information was in my medical file, which meant after a 3 hour wait, the lovely
A&E Doctor spent 5 seconds pulling it out of me and sticking on a plaster.
Job done. However, she had discarded this last piece of curative apparatus
before I had the chance to ask for it, to add to my macabre collection (good
job I have a spare clean one).
So, yeah, I’m feeling good. I’m getting stronger and I am
slowly but surely putting on weight, I had dropped to just under 9stone.
I am, however in a state of “limbo” a form of “recovery
limbo” I don’t know if the treatment has worked and I won’t know for some time,
I have to have CT and MRI scans then I have to wait for the results.
I will keep you posted.
This is me, Steve Royal. Out the other side and keeping on
the positive.
