Cancer!

I've toyed with the idea of writing about this for a long while. In the end both encouragement and assurances it would help others in similar circumstances and my own experiences of having sat with other people at various stages of cancer and various levels of worry - the two not being at all related - I have decided to give it a go. Most of these entries and descriptions were written at the time on the dates shown and therefore reflect my immediate reactions to what was happening to me and how it was affecting family and friends around me. Other times I have skipped many of the latter.

In particular I want anyone who is going through or watching a loved one going through the early stages of cancer to know that it is not necessarily the end of everything either immediately or at any time, though I acknowledge that for some who have a late diagnosis or a particularly aggressive form of this horrible disease, it may start to limit you in what you can do. I have found that having a positive approach has helped me enormously, as have the supporting words and actions shown by family and friends.

At the same time I have been enraged inside at some crass and thoughtless comments made by people who probably thought they were "helping" by either downplaying the risks or by insisting I couldn't be ill because I "looked well". Similarly people who treat you like you have suddenly become too delicate to do anything or must have some sort of mental deficiency needing baby talk... you get the idea...

March/April 2022. Start of a very difficult time... I had been Type 2 diabetic for a number of years although it was very well controlled and hadn't caused me much grief. Twice a year I have blood tests and twice a year for the previous few years they told me how well I had been doing.

In April 2022 this changed slightly. I got a call back to say I was anaemic - short of a few red blood cells. I had to have further blood tests and Ultrasound, CT and MRI scans which took place at Blackpool Victoria Hospital in May 2022. I wasn't exactly fancying spending time in an MRI machine - basically being shoved inside a tube for 40 minutes and subjected to a lot of mechanical noise. My most prominent phobia is of being trapped in constricted spaces. But in the end I resisted the urge to both shout and to squeeze the panic button they gave me - which would have realistically meant having to start all over again at some point... I've since found that familiarity breeds quiet acceptance.

The many scans (5 visits to the hospital over a 6 day period) showed a "suspicious lesion" on my liver. MRI data went off to Leeds where the liver experts for the north apparently reside. The consultant I saw said it looked likely that it could be the C word. I was at that time feeling fine, just a bit more tired than usual and finding concentration harder than normal.

1 July 2022. Today I am on a special diet - which seems to forbid most of what I like to eat... Tomorrow is no food at all, but only laxatives and clear drinks (no milk or fruit juice). I have been on an expedition to buy Oxo cubes to make mugs of that. Sunday is a trip back to the hospital for cameras both up and down. Hopefully not the same camera, hopefully not both ends at the same time and hopefully not this sort of camera...

2 July 2022. Later in the night... OMG! Have you ever had one of those laxatives? If it wouldn't have freaked out the neighbours I could have stood in the middle of the garden and coated the surrounding fence panels...!

3 July 2022. This morning's experience was nothing next to the discomfort of the laxative last night. Anyway contrary to expectations and to those who demanded photos - they did actually send me back with some tiny images of various points of interest. A few polyps were lopped and sent for biopsy and there was other news of a more sobering nature though still no news as to the nature of the lesion on the liver. The liver's non-alcoholic fatty disease has gone to cirrhosis, more investigation into that yet but looking likely to cause even more meds for daily consumption. Forgive the rattling as I move...

About a week later I got a phone call from someone at the hospital inviting me to go in to discuss the results of my tests. "You can bring someone with you if you like..."

I laughed. ""Bloody Hell, is it that bad?" I asked jovially. Stony silence. My mood changed quickly. "Oh... I see... thank you." At the subsequent meeting I'm told there is a suspicious lesion on my liver. "It looks like it might be cancer..." the consultant says quietly.

12 July 2022. Just a few days later I'm back at the hospital to meet the consultant again. I've now had confirmation that it's HCC cancer on the liver. Not spread anywhere else thankfully and hopefully can be sorted. I've been referred to Leeds St James hospital who apparently are the liver specialists for the north. Any surgery will be in Leeds and will probably mean 5-7 days in hospital. I am experiencing a weird sort of exhaustion without necessarily being tired and wanting sleep. Lethargy is a good word...

20 July 2022. They are not hanging about with these appointments. That could be worrying, but I'm sort of taking the view that whatever will be, will be. Doris Day would approve... We meet the oncologist (cancer specialist consultant) at Leeds. He doesn't mess about. "Your cancer is 6-7 centimetres (2.5-2.75 inches) and is inoperable and incurable." I never thought to ask and to this day I don't know whether it was sausage shaped, or a flat disk or a ball. I just know it sounded big. It got worse. "Because of your other problems with your heart and liver (cirrhosis - how unfair when I've never been a heavy drinker), we cannot treat it with chemotherapy in the form of tablets and it is too large to treat it with radiotherapy."

What they are going to do is a TACE procedure. Trans-arterial chemical embolism. They go in through the groin (eeeek!) and pass a catheter through the arteries to the liver where they inject a barrier foam to protect the liver as much as possible then inject, all via the catheter, a slow release capsule that will release chemo over the course of a year or so. It will be done in 4 or 5 weeks from now.

I ask how long I can expect to live. "Oh, it will be measured in years!" he says. When I receive a copy of his letter to my GP a few days later this has now become "'I told him "a short number of years"'... I will now be having MRI scans every six months (oh goody!) and am sent off to another area in the hospital where a young lady takes some more blood out of my arm and tells me "Ooh, you smell nice!" I'm not up to my usual level of witty repartee or I might have invited her to take another sniff. Perhaps next time.

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