My Drug Buddy

Felicitations, pop pickers

I noticed my adversary trying to catch my eye as I arrived back in the Chemotherapy suite after my inaugural radiotherapy session. My would-be Cancer Buddy sitting opposite was eye-ing me and readying himself for conversation, but I am a seasoned miserable old git, and was having none of it. With one deft movement, I was onto my lounger, nose in my book, avoiding all attempts at bonhomie. I don't want any Cancer Buddies.

I could tell immediately that he was the type, actually inoffensive enough, who needs mindless conversation like most of us need oxygen. When he had exhausted the hospital staff's conversational patience, he turned his persistent glare back on us. My eyes remained fixed on the Lance Armstrong biography, but Catherine weakened, showed a flicker of humanity, and was captured.

The inevitable comparison of treatments followed: Cancer Buddy impressively reeled off all his cancer stats, and declared "chemo is better than radiotherapy". I was about to break into a chant of "We all agree, chemo is better than radio", but contented myself by honking to Catherine, as sotto voce as I could, "perhaps he's a doctor".

Unsurprisingly, Cancer Buddy proved himself to be an expert on most things, from nutrition to roofing ("don't use porous roof tiles", he advised Catherine"). Fortunately, I resisted the temptation to engage him in a conversation about current affairs, for fear of being humiliated. He did ask whether we liked the treatment at Barts. Oh yes, it's been lovely, we'll definitely be coming back, and I'm going to recommend it to all my friends.

As you can tell from the above, the chemo / radiotherapy started yesterday. It was a long day of mainly sitting around in the Chemo suite, having various fluids pumped intravenously into my body, with a brief intermission for the radiotherapy session.

I was wheeled down from the Chemo suite to Radiotherapy in the afternoon. Whereas in Chemo, we'd been in the communal area, a suite of 8 loungers occupied by mostly old, mostly miserable patients (is that me?), when I got down to Radiotherapy, we were isolated, as I am still a carrier of MRSA. Even after I'd used the toilet, it was immediately declared out-of-bounds until it could be deep-cleaned. I really don't know why I was deemed persona non grata downstairs, yet welcomed with the masses upstairs. You work it out. (Note: when I unwisely used the horrible expression "go figure" in a previous post, my older bro John rightly took me to task. I promise to avoid such vulgar Americanisms i future.)

Anyway, radiotherapy.

I've had my wrists slapped for my lethargy in not providing more frequent bulletins on my progress, and have been particularly admonished for leaving you all hanging in suspense after a very depressed post a couple of weeks ago.

As I start chemo and radiotherapy tomorrow, I thought I'd better put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, to be more accurate) and let you know what's happening. I'll try to keep it short: you're all busy people and it's nearly my bed time.

OK, so what's been happening? We've attended a couple of meetings with the charming Nancy, Speech Therapist at Whipps Cross. Some of you may recall that our experience with the Speech Therapy people at Barts was a bit unsatisfactory, so we were quite pleased to be referred to Whipps Cross for this part of the treatment.

Nancy has given me a set of tongue exercises, and told me to stand in front of a mirror enunciating various sounds (ooh, ee, ahhh, oh: the sort of sounds that one associates with sexual ecstasy. I wouldn't know). She's also keeping a close eye on my drinking. I need to remind you that this does not mean she follows me from pub to pub, keeping a count of alcoholic units consumed.

It seems that the butchery that has been committed on my mouth has left me vulnerable to liquids going down my windpipe and into my lungs, rather than its normal course down to the stomach. The result of this would be pneumonia, so we have to tread - or sip - carefully. Nancy has given me permission to be a little more adventurous with my drinks, so I can now progress onto smoothies, soups, custards and yogurts.

As far as booze is concerned, I do enjoy a very small glass of white wine, which currently has to be diluted with an equal amount of water. I've also found a low alcohol cider in Sainsbury's which I quite like, but I'm drinking it extremely slowly. It's going to be a long time before I will be the life and soul of the party, I'm afraid.

Today's meeting with Nancy ended with a potentially distressing, but ultimately amusing, incident. She was examining the wreckage that is my mouth, and noticed a lump. She brought in a senior colleague for her opinion, and she authoritatively announced that it looked like an infection, which needed to be seen immediately by an Ear Nose & Throat specialist.

From there we were escorted to the ENT clinic, and jumped the queue to be examined by the Registrar. He poked around my open mouth with a large metal implement, finally flicking a large, gooey, brown blob of gunk onto my sleeve. The infectious growth was nothing more serious than a particularly revolting accumulation of phlegm!

The other main thing to report is related to nutrition. Although I have been obediently consuming my 2,700 calories of yummy feed through my stomach tube every day, I haven't put any weight on, and may even have lost a couple of pounds. As I am now lighter than any time since my early 20s, there was some concern about this: it seems that weight loss and radiotherapy is not a happy combination. The nutrition specialists have therefore given me a food supplement, which is apparently pure fat. Just 90ml a day will give me another 400 calories, so it's to be hoped that I'll soon be piling on the pounds.

This is the blog that was unfinished on Thursday - unfortunately after 24hrs of sickness Rick was re-admitted to Barts hospital for some intravenous re-hydration. He did manage to complete his 3rd session of radiotherapy before going up to the ward - only another 30 to go! Sickness after chemo is very common, the only concern was that if he got too dehydrated it could possibly damage his kidneys which was why he was kept in. No doubt in his next blog Rick will tell you all about his latest stay.

That's all for now,
Catherine