02 Apr 2007
 | Burning Ring of Fire I was kind of expecting some energy to arrive this weekend, maybe not the mad lunacy cutting grass energy but just a bit. Nope. Well not until I dragged myself out of bed at 4pm on Saturday as my good mate (and boss) Angela (she of purple chemo bag buying fame) came over laden with M&S goodies. Yummy! Managed to polish a decent amount off which made me very happy. Except of course this meant more toilet trips. More about that later.......I know you're dying to know but shhhhush. We also indulged in some home made tea cake (the sort made with erm tea......) it was very moist and fruity and tasted very good with tea (the drink that is). At around midnight I attempted to sleep.....and was still attempting at 1am,.........2am........3am.........at 4am bored with reading D H Lawrence I got up for a drink and biscuit......and finally at around 5am sleep finally deigned to pay me a visit. I was up at 11 on Sunday. Eyes sore, spirit as tired as limbs I finished reading Sons and Lovers - not wishing to spoil it for you if you avoided this so far but erm someone gets cancer and it's very sad. Couldn't drag myself out of bed until 7.30pm on Sunday - now at this point I've managed to stay awake hoping sheer exhaustion will send me off ready for starting more arse burning on Monday. Sadly this was not to be. At 3am I fetched the laptop and pootled about on the internet for an hour, after a drink and biscuits again I believe sometime between 4.30 and 5 I was asleep. My head has been throbbing rather for a few days now and I don't believe the lack of sleep is any help! Alarm went off at 9.15 and got snoozed for best part of an hour as after only 4 or 5 hours sleep again I was good for nothing but hitting the snooze button. Got up, into the bathroom, rigged up chemo pump via ropes and pulleys to the shower rail .........then promptly wrenched it back again to stagger back to bed to lie down in a heap. Horrid dizzy spell/belly burning. Now here's where the toilet stories come in. Since about Friday I appear to have been eating nothing but stinging nettles and holly leaves, maybe the odd bit of hawthorn and rose stems. Now you'd think that as my "lumen" is narrowed due to my squatter, Tyson, and only passing things as thick as a pencil or sometimes my thumb, but never bigger than my big toe, nothing could possibly hurt. Not when it's erm the consistency of peanut butter as the fair Gillian McKeith describes it. WRONG. When you've had radiation therapy burning off your cells inside your body and these four beams of power day in, day out (except weekends)hav been directed at something sitting in your arse, believe me every raw nerve is exposed, not just at the meeting point of said beams, but in that whole sorry area. All weekend (I lost the will to count after 6 attempts at "elimination" I was passing the diet which I thought consisted of nothing harder than a piece of candied peel in the teacake but in fact was all things stingy, burny, spiky and full of tiny needles. Since I'd had some chick peas in turmeric and cumin (no chilli, no sireee, learned that lesson) and a few mustard seeds I thought, well obviously the mustard seeds are too much...........but it doesn't take three days for chick peas to work through a system that's clearing out umpteen times a day, so today, after more zapping I had to face the real truth - it's yet another fabulous side effect. I sat in the hospital toilet for an age in silent tears of pain. Bought a sarnie from the shop and winced in the car. It being a sunny day and me having been in the confines of my bed all weekend I thought I'd get some vitamins etc from Boston, so I park up, wander into Boots, pain takes over - at this point I'm perusing their wares - I hurry as fast as a cancer patient can to the rather grimy public toilets across the square. This, ladies and gentlemen appears to be a very urgent delivery of a football shaped nettle, stinging chemicals all very much present. I actually thought I might pass out it hurt so much, like my insides were being hacked with a knife. Luckily someone flushed a loo so I cried properly this time and had to sit awhile to let things subside, before stocking up in the nearest health food shop (probably cheaper than Boots anyway. Things haven't improved all afternoon, in fact sometimes when gas is gurgling away THAT even hurts - and I have another 5 sessions to go Here's a funny thing which I may have mentioned before........on being told I was about to start radiotherapy a member of our HR questioned "oh is that a pill?". I don't believe there are enough expletives to print my response here. However, to be fair some cancers can be treated by tablet form of radioactive pills or something..........but really it's not like just taking "a pill" is it? |
. Lord knows what it's going to be like if I'm lucky enough in a few months time to have been deTysoned and stapled back together and can once again attempt toilet functions without the aid of a "bumonmytumbag". I mean STAPLES are metal and they've gotta hurt......... 
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