Just back from my regular early morning walk over Bringsty Common - and still in recovery!
Joe's abed and Di has escaped back to Brum - something about a singing engagement at Symphony Hall. Apparently, she's part of the warm-up act for the CBSO's, Dream of Gerontius - nothing that couldn't have waited. I'm inclined to think that she simply wanted to get away from our male conversation - all clipped, morose and monosyllabic.
But seriously, if you want to introduce some cardio-vascular work into a morning stroll get a dog and come here to the Common. Better still borrow my dog, - that is, our dog - well, even 'our' dog is a tad presumptuous. You won't get much of a conversation out of Woody but he'll always be there, some 15 yards behind you, moving with the same head-down, doleful, hip-rolling gait.
You could then, of course, take the gentle or the head-on ascent of Watership Down. If the latter, be aware that when you are struggling the most, the chiff-chaffs have this intensely irritating habit of laughing at you from hawthorn trees that line the path. They insistently giggle, if not monotously, then no better than di-otously. It's not as if they have the output of an avian string quartet!
As you climb, head-down and Woodylike, you can study the minute tunnel entrances of the local burrowing bees and admire the splashes of eponymous colour from the dog violets, which, the display board in the car park tells me, are the food plant of the rare, pearl-bordered and heath fritillaries.
If you are at all like me and accompanied by someone with greater lung and thigh capacity, you can even pretend to find it important to stop from time to time and pompously intone, surreptiously-garnered, secondhand information.
All of which leads me to say that if anyone is to blame for this sudden arrival of blogging omnibuses look no further than Del and her recent expression of interest.
I'd give you her contact details but that might only serve to encourage a disproportionate act of vengeance.
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Wednesday, 11 April 2012
The want of time
Kate and Leon's (farm)house is on the edge of Bringsty Common near Bromyard in Herefordshire. Each morning, I'm the first out of bed to feed the dog, the chickens and to release the geese from their shed. Not that the geese are appreciative. They always impatiently and raucously insist that I attend to them first and then when I do, they arrow their extended necks first upright, then head down and issue menacing hisses and squawks at me. I retreat to deal with the less aggressive bantams.
Then, because I'm here with Di and Joe who, vampire-like, loathe the rays of the rising sun, I decide to take the dog for a walk. This golden labrador, who answers to the name of Woody, when he can be bothered, is both very placid and lugubrious. As I head down the lane that leads to the common he lopes along behind me, never complaining and never much inclined to take an interest in our route. I head for the summit; a Watership Down sort-of-hill topped by a small copse of wind-sculpted trees. Hazel and Fiver have yet to arrive as I climb the steep approach, my thighs on fire from the exertion. When I pause, Woody pauses; he sees no need to overtake me. For his benefit, I pretend to look at the view, take deep breaths and move on.
At the top, I slump onto a seat thankfully gifted by the family of the former blacksmith and postmistress and admire the landscape with its undulating quilt of field and woodland. In the distance the outline of the Malvern Hills and its associated treelined ridges rise and fall as though pegged like dark sheets to an invisible clothesline in the sky.
Last night we had watched the BBC Horizon programme about modern methods of cancer treatment and the hope they offer particularly for people of my generation. If you saw it, my circumstances were similar to the woman who had advanced melanoma. Her condition was inoperable; only the new types of targeted drug therapy could offer more time.
Who, on this hill, would be indifferent to the want of time?
Then, because I'm here with Di and Joe who, vampire-like, loathe the rays of the rising sun, I decide to take the dog for a walk. This golden labrador, who answers to the name of Woody, when he can be bothered, is both very placid and lugubrious. As I head down the lane that leads to the common he lopes along behind me, never complaining and never much inclined to take an interest in our route. I head for the summit; a Watership Down sort-of-hill topped by a small copse of wind-sculpted trees. Hazel and Fiver have yet to arrive as I climb the steep approach, my thighs on fire from the exertion. When I pause, Woody pauses; he sees no need to overtake me. For his benefit, I pretend to look at the view, take deep breaths and move on.
At the top, I slump onto a seat thankfully gifted by the family of the former blacksmith and postmistress and admire the landscape with its undulating quilt of field and woodland. In the distance the outline of the Malvern Hills and its associated treelined ridges rise and fall as though pegged like dark sheets to an invisible clothesline in the sky.
Last night we had watched the BBC Horizon programme about modern methods of cancer treatment and the hope they offer particularly for people of my generation. If you saw it, my circumstances were similar to the woman who had advanced melanoma. Her condition was inoperable; only the new types of targeted drug therapy could offer more time.
Who, on this hill, would be indifferent to the want of time?
Monday, 9 April 2012
Thoroughfare toTupperware.
As I write I'm sitting on a comfortable sofa, warmed by a large log stove in Kate and Leon's place in deepest Herefordshire. Along with their part timber-framed farmhouse we are sitting their dog, Woody, a couple of unfriendly geese and a sizeable group of bantams.
I'll concede now that my strategy of leaving a lengthy gap between 'posts' in order to elicit a collective pleading from you lot, has failed. My only compensation has been a single request from Del that I make a further effort - because she at least is reading the blog.
I guess that the most significant development, of late and of a positive nature, has been my recent experience of travelling, beginning with a solo expedition to London. I had been to stay at Kathy's before - in the years B.C. I recall the view from the top-floor window of her terrace house in Greenwich of the London skyline; the glimpse of St Paul's, the Eye and from another window, Canary Wharf and the Millenium Dome. I'd thought these wonderful sights but knew that when she realised that long-harboured wish for a place on the river, the view would be even better.
But those plans went back to a time when John was still alive and more than 6 years had now passed since his loss to aggressive bowel cancer. We'd reconnected after a long gap in those early traumatic months. There had been many tears and occasional forays into our shared ancient history as fresh-faced, exuberant undergraduates in the late 1960s.
Then. when I was diagnosed she had visited Brum and drawing on her experience of a long journey into loss, she had some wise and calming words to offer.
But since her move to that riverside flat, I had been unsure about taking her up on the offer to visit. How would I cope with travelling on my own? Would she understand that, post-op and on-chemo, I am not as I was? So, when she offered to both pick me up from Euston and return me the following Monday, I was greatly and gratefully, relieved.
That journey from the station to Greenwich turned out to be more eventful than I would have wished. An accident a few days prior to our meeting had resulted in her use of a courtesy car sporting gadgets she had yet to master. On a beautiful spring morning we over-revved and hand-braked our way across the busy, bustling, thoroughfares of the city.
I had, of course, imagined the river aspect as described in numerous phone conversations but the reality when we reached the penthouse living space was simply stunning.
From the picture windows and the balcony beyond, the span in view was a cinemascopic 180 degrees of an expansive, tide-swollen, swirling, chocolate-grey, River Thames. To my right the Millenium Dome nestled amid the low-rise buildings like an outsize and unexploded, WW2 mine. Across the water the towers of Canary Wharf competed for my attention led by the tall, blinking, obelisk of One Canada Square. Ahead, on the opposite bank some considerable distance from the facing riverside apartments I could see the distinctive outline of the Gherkin and the Eye; to my left Wren's Naval College, the masts of the Cutty Sark and the sky-piercing Shard.
The lazy, endlessly shifting, riverscape is so different to the buzzing world at ground level with its narrow Georgian streets thronging with excited young tourists and local residents.
The weekend of walks and words went well. I feel I can make further excursions into the old world where I once moved so unthinkingly.
But first there was another part of my new world with which to contend; the consulting room of my oncologist at the QEH Cancer Centre. At the end of my two-week drug-free period I returned from London for the news on how I was progressing. The young female doctor said I was doing very well to have reached this point, the end of five cycles and still on the maximum dosage of the powerful anti-cancer drugs. Apparently it is elderly, slightly-built women who suffer most from side effects and have to either reduce their dosage or come off the medication altogether.
Which is a nice way of saying that the toxicity is diluted for fatties like me.
She took some interest in my new regime of analgesics following the visit to the palliative care doctor (see last post) and when I reported that they had made little difference after an encouraging start, she prescribed additional medication.
I am now taking so many pills each day that Boots have submitted a planning application to open a branch next door to our house, I need special computer software in order to co-ordinate my drug regime and a large set of tupperware boxes to serve as containers.
This is the reason for our retreat to a Herefordshire idyll; our Moseley friends and neighbours are unhappy about the proposed pharmacy but more especially, they are distraught about a possible renaissance in 1960s Tupperware parties.
I'll concede now that my strategy of leaving a lengthy gap between 'posts' in order to elicit a collective pleading from you lot, has failed. My only compensation has been a single request from Del that I make a further effort - because she at least is reading the blog.
I guess that the most significant development, of late and of a positive nature, has been my recent experience of travelling, beginning with a solo expedition to London. I had been to stay at Kathy's before - in the years B.C. I recall the view from the top-floor window of her terrace house in Greenwich of the London skyline; the glimpse of St Paul's, the Eye and from another window, Canary Wharf and the Millenium Dome. I'd thought these wonderful sights but knew that when she realised that long-harboured wish for a place on the river, the view would be even better.
But those plans went back to a time when John was still alive and more than 6 years had now passed since his loss to aggressive bowel cancer. We'd reconnected after a long gap in those early traumatic months. There had been many tears and occasional forays into our shared ancient history as fresh-faced, exuberant undergraduates in the late 1960s.
Then. when I was diagnosed she had visited Brum and drawing on her experience of a long journey into loss, she had some wise and calming words to offer.
But since her move to that riverside flat, I had been unsure about taking her up on the offer to visit. How would I cope with travelling on my own? Would she understand that, post-op and on-chemo, I am not as I was? So, when she offered to both pick me up from Euston and return me the following Monday, I was greatly and gratefully, relieved.
That journey from the station to Greenwich turned out to be more eventful than I would have wished. An accident a few days prior to our meeting had resulted in her use of a courtesy car sporting gadgets she had yet to master. On a beautiful spring morning we over-revved and hand-braked our way across the busy, bustling, thoroughfares of the city.
I had, of course, imagined the river aspect as described in numerous phone conversations but the reality when we reached the penthouse living space was simply stunning.
From the picture windows and the balcony beyond, the span in view was a cinemascopic 180 degrees of an expansive, tide-swollen, swirling, chocolate-grey, River Thames. To my right the Millenium Dome nestled amid the low-rise buildings like an outsize and unexploded, WW2 mine. Across the water the towers of Canary Wharf competed for my attention led by the tall, blinking, obelisk of One Canada Square. Ahead, on the opposite bank some considerable distance from the facing riverside apartments I could see the distinctive outline of the Gherkin and the Eye; to my left Wren's Naval College, the masts of the Cutty Sark and the sky-piercing Shard.
The lazy, endlessly shifting, riverscape is so different to the buzzing world at ground level with its narrow Georgian streets thronging with excited young tourists and local residents.
The weekend of walks and words went well. I feel I can make further excursions into the old world where I once moved so unthinkingly.
But first there was another part of my new world with which to contend; the consulting room of my oncologist at the QEH Cancer Centre. At the end of my two-week drug-free period I returned from London for the news on how I was progressing. The young female doctor said I was doing very well to have reached this point, the end of five cycles and still on the maximum dosage of the powerful anti-cancer drugs. Apparently it is elderly, slightly-built women who suffer most from side effects and have to either reduce their dosage or come off the medication altogether.
Which is a nice way of saying that the toxicity is diluted for fatties like me.
She took some interest in my new regime of analgesics following the visit to the palliative care doctor (see last post) and when I reported that they had made little difference after an encouraging start, she prescribed additional medication.
I am now taking so many pills each day that Boots have submitted a planning application to open a branch next door to our house, I need special computer software in order to co-ordinate my drug regime and a large set of tupperware boxes to serve as containers.
This is the reason for our retreat to a Herefordshire idyll; our Moseley friends and neighbours are unhappy about the proposed pharmacy but more especially, they are distraught about a possible renaissance in 1960s Tupperware parties.
Thursday, 22 March 2012
Growing pains.
There is something very elusive about my relationship to pain. For a start the four-letter word itself seems woefully inadequate when confronted with the need to explain myself. If the Inuit have at least 50 words for snow surely we could better manage to differentiate between the qualities of the negative experience that is pain. Wikipedia tells me that, "Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage". This may be useful but it doesn't add to the lexicon at my disposal.
All of which is a preamble to admitting that I wasn't very good yesterday when the doctor in the Palliative Care Clinic at the QEH Cancer Centre went through his battery of questions designed to give him the clearest possible outline within the least amount of time. To be honest I was more than a little abstruse when it came to explaining the nature of my experience.
I had been given this appointment because a month or so earlier at the end-of-cycle consultation with my oncologist I had talked about the difficulties with pain management in my back and leg. By this time I already had a referral to the QEH pain clinic arranged by my orthopaedic consultant but it was for three months hence. 'Orthopaedic time' is elongated and interminable whereas 'cancer time' is, by comparison, smart and snappy. So my oncologist offered to speak to the Cancer Centre's pain management doctor. He was making no promises but within days an appointment had been made.
At least this was the first occasion when a doctor was interested in the whole experience - the problems resulting from my back as well as the cancer. Usually the doctors are wary of demarcation disputes and stick closely to their specialism. Encouraged, I made an unsuccessful attempt to talk about the pain resulting from different conditions 'overlapping' and 'interacting' but had to retreat under the baffled scrutiny to which he subjected me; and it didn't help that he had two registrars observing our exchange.
My concern is that I failed to give a good account of the situation I face; the different centres, shades, intensities and otherness of 'pain'.
Now at least you have some sense of how the doctor felt.
I have to accept that I have moved well beyond the point where pain is viewed as a symptom that assists diagnosis and treatment. The diagnoses, such as they are, particularly in relation to my back, have been made. The die is cast. Pain is now something to be treated as a discrete entity. It is separate from understanding and remedying the condition. It is now inevitable and long term.
The outcome was that I would supplement my existing cocktail of drugs by taking two paracetamol, four times a day for the next month - and monitor my capacity for physical exertion.
So, stuffed with paracetamol, I spent the afternoon sawing and chopping a modest amount of wood and then collecting some more from my store on the allotment. I took my time; approached each separate task in a measured way and asked for help when I had need of it. On this, the evening of the last drug day of my 5th cycle, I feel 'cream crackered'.
So, at least that is my baseline established. I'll see how it goes over the next month.
All of which is a preamble to admitting that I wasn't very good yesterday when the doctor in the Palliative Care Clinic at the QEH Cancer Centre went through his battery of questions designed to give him the clearest possible outline within the least amount of time. To be honest I was more than a little abstruse when it came to explaining the nature of my experience.
I had been given this appointment because a month or so earlier at the end-of-cycle consultation with my oncologist I had talked about the difficulties with pain management in my back and leg. By this time I already had a referral to the QEH pain clinic arranged by my orthopaedic consultant but it was for three months hence. 'Orthopaedic time' is elongated and interminable whereas 'cancer time' is, by comparison, smart and snappy. So my oncologist offered to speak to the Cancer Centre's pain management doctor. He was making no promises but within days an appointment had been made.
At least this was the first occasion when a doctor was interested in the whole experience - the problems resulting from my back as well as the cancer. Usually the doctors are wary of demarcation disputes and stick closely to their specialism. Encouraged, I made an unsuccessful attempt to talk about the pain resulting from different conditions 'overlapping' and 'interacting' but had to retreat under the baffled scrutiny to which he subjected me; and it didn't help that he had two registrars observing our exchange.
My concern is that I failed to give a good account of the situation I face; the different centres, shades, intensities and otherness of 'pain'.
Now at least you have some sense of how the doctor felt.
I have to accept that I have moved well beyond the point where pain is viewed as a symptom that assists diagnosis and treatment. The diagnoses, such as they are, particularly in relation to my back, have been made. The die is cast. Pain is now something to be treated as a discrete entity. It is separate from understanding and remedying the condition. It is now inevitable and long term.
The outcome was that I would supplement my existing cocktail of drugs by taking two paracetamol, four times a day for the next month - and monitor my capacity for physical exertion.
So, stuffed with paracetamol, I spent the afternoon sawing and chopping a modest amount of wood and then collecting some more from my store on the allotment. I took my time; approached each separate task in a measured way and asked for help when I had need of it. On this, the evening of the last drug day of my 5th cycle, I feel 'cream crackered'.
So, at least that is my baseline established. I'll see how it goes over the next month.
Friday, 24 February 2012
A simple desultory philippic
Yesterday I saw my oncologist. He wanted to know about the cystoscopy, once I'd reminded him that it had happened. He was happy to learn that the result was positive but as he'd yet to receive any report - he'd only got my word for it.
He commented on the fact that my hair (beard, eyebrows, nasal, ponytail) was turning white. 'That's the effect of the drugs.' Diana wanted to know how he explained her condition....
But, I jest. To be honest I came away more than a little chastened. He spoke of the fact that even if the nodules were shrunk to a point where they were no longer detectable, I would still continue with the 'chemo'. He said that they would re-appear and would in any case ultimately prove resistant to the toxicity of the drugs. 'At that point we will have to try something else' - but he didn't sound very optimistic.
My head knows this condition isn't curable but my head isn't always fully engaged.
We returned home and updated the 'hired help', my brother John. Invited to spend a few days with us, he has been working through a list of DIY jobs including what will be, to my knowledge, the only listed wood store in the UK. (He's very thorough).
As a 'thank you' I took him out for a meal last night. We went to a new Asian restaurant, Mughal e Azam on the Stratford Road in Sparkhill. The building is a W. H. Bidlake congregational church dating from the 1930s. It is listed grade II. I can recommend it both for the food and the experience.
It is an example of a fine building that has found a new purpose. Decorations suspended from walls and ceilings put me in mind of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. The aim in both buildings is to demonstrate that the premises are under new management but that there is still pride in the drama and beauty of the original design.
This line of argument may not find favour with the small congregation that chose to sell up and move on.
But then, 'all change is difficult'.
He commented on the fact that my hair (beard, eyebrows, nasal, ponytail) was turning white. 'That's the effect of the drugs.' Diana wanted to know how he explained her condition....
But, I jest. To be honest I came away more than a little chastened. He spoke of the fact that even if the nodules were shrunk to a point where they were no longer detectable, I would still continue with the 'chemo'. He said that they would re-appear and would in any case ultimately prove resistant to the toxicity of the drugs. 'At that point we will have to try something else' - but he didn't sound very optimistic.
My head knows this condition isn't curable but my head isn't always fully engaged.
We returned home and updated the 'hired help', my brother John. Invited to spend a few days with us, he has been working through a list of DIY jobs including what will be, to my knowledge, the only listed wood store in the UK. (He's very thorough).
As a 'thank you' I took him out for a meal last night. We went to a new Asian restaurant, Mughal e Azam on the Stratford Road in Sparkhill. The building is a W. H. Bidlake congregational church dating from the 1930s. It is listed grade II. I can recommend it both for the food and the experience.
It is an example of a fine building that has found a new purpose. Decorations suspended from walls and ceilings put me in mind of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. The aim in both buildings is to demonstrate that the premises are under new management but that there is still pride in the drama and beauty of the original design.
This line of argument may not find favour with the small congregation that chose to sell up and move on.
But then, 'all change is difficult'.
Thursday, 16 February 2012
oh-my-goshscopy!
On Monday evening we were at the Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath, celebrating Jenny's 60th birthday. It was great to see a lot of friends some of whom have not been part of the regular round of walking, visiting and tea-quaffing - and others who have. This was an extremely potent mix of hugging and warmth from both men and women. But it's the women who make sustained and unselfconscious contact through embracing and the holding of hands. At times like these it feels as though I have attained some special status - that I have been invited into a female world that for men usually hovers somewhere nearby - we sense its presence but it exists in a different dimension.
But don't be misled - it isn't always like this.
I've noticed that as 'cystoscopy day' approached a significant number of women couldn't help themselves - they relished, in a muted but nevertheless, perceptible manner a degree of satisfaction that 'the boot is on the other foot.' I knew what they'd like to say - 'Now, we'll see how you like it when you're subjected to an invasive procedure' or 'What a fuss over an internal examination; during my pregnancy I had, goodness knows how many doctors.............'
What I hadn't bargained for was the number of women involved in administering this procedure at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. I saw one man throughout my time in the endoscopy department. He was the consultant who having shaken my hand, disappeared from sight leaving me in the hands, literally, of four women, one doctor and three nurses. I resolved to be 'cool'; even while lying prone.
Having rearranged my clothing a nurse placed large paper squares over my exposed body. She then swiftly pulled the centre of one square into a mini peak and tore it to leave a strategically-positioned opening . Like an Inuit over an ice-hole the doctor then went fishing.
I'd expected them to be clinical and 'matter of fact' but I'd also been told in the prep room that it would be 'a very thin' tube that would be inserted into my 'water pipe'. ('Urethra' I'd corrected her - we're all professionals here.)
The instrument was considerably more robust than that which I'd imagined; a shiny black object tapering to a mobile, flexible tube with multi-coloured eye at its tip.
There was certainly no 'foreplay'. I'll spare you the details but suffice to say I was soon watching an image of the coloured tube that is my urethra. I had assumed that the screen above the operating table might have been used for something entertaining like a re-run of the Swansea - Norwich match from the weekend. Nobody looked like they were being entertained though I was making a brave attempt at it. 'Is that filmy tissue in the picture normal?', I asked in what I hoped was a nonchalant voice.
The young doctor commented on the narrowness of my urethra and tried to make her request that someone find the consultant sound perfectly normal. Then after much tentative manipulation and with the help of another nurse she finally managed to make progress and we were looking at the creased walls of my bladder. She cancelled the request to reach the consultant, went on a Cook's tour and concluded that all was well.
The alien one-eyed worm was swiftly removed. Boy, that felt a better. I didn't hang about. With my hospital trousers rapidly hitched up, she detained me long enough to say that there was nothing she could see that was of any concern. If I had further problems I should contact my G.P.
In the recovery bay I exchanged some effortless banter with another male patient before the nurse discharged me with the injunction that I drink lots of water for the following 24 hours. Some hours later my bladder is calming down.
A couple of days earlier the results of my upper spine scan came in. On the phone, the consultant said they were perfectly normal.
So far, in 2012, things have gone pretty well; shrinking nodules, a functioning cervicothoracic spine and a urethra that does undoubtedly lead, eventually, to a bladder. I wonder how many other parts of me can be confirmed as normal?
As for the female cystoscopy team, I'm not saying they enjoy their work exactly but I don't think I would want to be in the canteen when they were sharing some 'down time'.
But don't be misled - it isn't always like this.
I've noticed that as 'cystoscopy day' approached a significant number of women couldn't help themselves - they relished, in a muted but nevertheless, perceptible manner a degree of satisfaction that 'the boot is on the other foot.' I knew what they'd like to say - 'Now, we'll see how you like it when you're subjected to an invasive procedure' or 'What a fuss over an internal examination; during my pregnancy I had, goodness knows how many doctors.............'
What I hadn't bargained for was the number of women involved in administering this procedure at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. I saw one man throughout my time in the endoscopy department. He was the consultant who having shaken my hand, disappeared from sight leaving me in the hands, literally, of four women, one doctor and three nurses. I resolved to be 'cool'; even while lying prone.
Having rearranged my clothing a nurse placed large paper squares over my exposed body. She then swiftly pulled the centre of one square into a mini peak and tore it to leave a strategically-positioned opening . Like an Inuit over an ice-hole the doctor then went fishing.
I'd expected them to be clinical and 'matter of fact' but I'd also been told in the prep room that it would be 'a very thin' tube that would be inserted into my 'water pipe'. ('Urethra' I'd corrected her - we're all professionals here.)
The instrument was considerably more robust than that which I'd imagined; a shiny black object tapering to a mobile, flexible tube with multi-coloured eye at its tip.
There was certainly no 'foreplay'. I'll spare you the details but suffice to say I was soon watching an image of the coloured tube that is my urethra. I had assumed that the screen above the operating table might have been used for something entertaining like a re-run of the Swansea - Norwich match from the weekend. Nobody looked like they were being entertained though I was making a brave attempt at it. 'Is that filmy tissue in the picture normal?', I asked in what I hoped was a nonchalant voice.
The young doctor commented on the narrowness of my urethra and tried to make her request that someone find the consultant sound perfectly normal. Then after much tentative manipulation and with the help of another nurse she finally managed to make progress and we were looking at the creased walls of my bladder. She cancelled the request to reach the consultant, went on a Cook's tour and concluded that all was well.
The alien one-eyed worm was swiftly removed. Boy, that felt a better. I didn't hang about. With my hospital trousers rapidly hitched up, she detained me long enough to say that there was nothing she could see that was of any concern. If I had further problems I should contact my G.P.
In the recovery bay I exchanged some effortless banter with another male patient before the nurse discharged me with the injunction that I drink lots of water for the following 24 hours. Some hours later my bladder is calming down.
A couple of days earlier the results of my upper spine scan came in. On the phone, the consultant said they were perfectly normal.
So far, in 2012, things have gone pretty well; shrinking nodules, a functioning cervicothoracic spine and a urethra that does undoubtedly lead, eventually, to a bladder. I wonder how many other parts of me can be confirmed as normal?
As for the female cystoscopy team, I'm not saying they enjoy their work exactly but I don't think I would want to be in the canteen when they were sharing some 'down time'.
Sunday, 5 February 2012
My magnetic personality
Last Thursday, seated in the 'ante-room' to the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital MRI scanner, the radiographer was going through the usual checklist of questions designed to ensure that a part of me didn't become overly-attracted to the super-powerful magnet I was about to enter. I established with her that the shrapnel the military medics had been unable to remove in my left leg would be well outside the neck and chest (cervicothoracic) region under investigation. She made a monotone response to indicate she had heard this one many times before but this only served to strengthen my resolve to come up with an original line and make her, or a colleague, chuckle in appreciation.
Next, I thought it best to establish that this new ROH scanner (one of many that I've visited in the West Midlands!) was as I remembered, 'doughnut-shaped' -and reassuringly open on both sides. Her brow furrowed and she told me that though it was more capacious than the one in which I'd had my claustrophobic experience (see Thursday 16th June 2011 post) it was still of the 'tunnel' variety and that I would need to be taken fully into the scanner. This instantaneously squashed all ambition to amuse her. I could already sense a warm fluid rising through my trunk and limbs and the automatic intake of deeper breaths.
We agreed that I'd have a go.
Inside the tunnel I was focused on only one thing, the small mirror locked into place above my head and set at a forty-five degree angle so that I could see into the airy, life-enhancing and spacious room I had so recently entered. I had been assured that the procedure would take only fifteen-twenty minutes. I wasn't told, however, that, once inside the tunnel, you enter a 4th dimensional time-warp. This was the longest twenty minutes of my short life. Only the blurred sense of people in hospital uniforms pursuing their normal lives beyond the viewing window and my enhanced yogic breathing kept me from the hazardous cliff edge of panic. The headphones gurgled some baroque music, intermittently obliterated by the thunderous roar of the scanner that gave every impression of trying and failing, to reach a speed that would enable it to take off.
But, I hear you ask; 'How did you get to be in yet another scanner? Surely every part of your body is already, intimately known to modern science?'
Well, let me take you back to the last post - the one you, unkindly, thought would never end . If you recall I had mentioned then that my next appointment, in late January, was to be with the consultant at the ROH. I expressed the opinion then that I was so fed up with the neurological and mechanical discomfort in my back and leg that I was prepared to request a surgical procedure on my poor scoliotic spinal column.
The surgeon had other ideas.
I imagine that medics are taught that there are at least three sources of information that might help them diagnose a patient's condition; physical examination, technology-based testing (such as blood and urine samples, all manner of scans and 'oscopys') and finally, 'verbal feedback'. However, asking me questions about my back pain is something in which my consultant isn't particularly interested. He is a 'scan man'. He has looked at them before I enter his office and so knows what outcome he wants - and assisted by a personable, authoritative style he usually gets it.
Having established that the epidural (see 23rd November 2011) had been unsuccessful he proceeded to dissuade me from asking for major surgery by showing me the MRI scan of another patient whose spine was liberally studded with ghostly pins. The man's back had been unable to take the strain of linking these pinned vertebrae to the first 'good' vertebra in the lumbar region causing one of them to fracture. The man was now bent double when he walked.
'And your point is?' I wanted to ask.
Not that I was looking for major surgery but I did have a small speech prepared much of which had already been rendered pointless by his conclusion that there was nothing more he could do for me. He did offer to refer me to the pain clinic at the QEH and I hope for an early appointment but he otherwise intended to discharge me from his list.
Then I remembered part of the 'speech'. I wanted him to know that I had also experienced a change in the way I used my left arm (and not only my leg). I relayed some of the symptoms which threw him into some consternation as he had already intoned summary and final letters into his dictaphone.
'Have we scanned your upper back?'
We established that 'we' hadn't. So that's how I came to be in the MRI room, renewing my relationship with the guardians of the scanner. There is obviously a powerful attraction there.
Next, I thought it best to establish that this new ROH scanner (one of many that I've visited in the West Midlands!) was as I remembered, 'doughnut-shaped' -and reassuringly open on both sides. Her brow furrowed and she told me that though it was more capacious than the one in which I'd had my claustrophobic experience (see Thursday 16th June 2011 post) it was still of the 'tunnel' variety and that I would need to be taken fully into the scanner. This instantaneously squashed all ambition to amuse her. I could already sense a warm fluid rising through my trunk and limbs and the automatic intake of deeper breaths.
We agreed that I'd have a go.
Inside the tunnel I was focused on only one thing, the small mirror locked into place above my head and set at a forty-five degree angle so that I could see into the airy, life-enhancing and spacious room I had so recently entered. I had been assured that the procedure would take only fifteen-twenty minutes. I wasn't told, however, that, once inside the tunnel, you enter a 4th dimensional time-warp. This was the longest twenty minutes of my short life. Only the blurred sense of people in hospital uniforms pursuing their normal lives beyond the viewing window and my enhanced yogic breathing kept me from the hazardous cliff edge of panic. The headphones gurgled some baroque music, intermittently obliterated by the thunderous roar of the scanner that gave every impression of trying and failing, to reach a speed that would enable it to take off.
But, I hear you ask; 'How did you get to be in yet another scanner? Surely every part of your body is already, intimately known to modern science?'
Well, let me take you back to the last post - the one you, unkindly, thought would never end . If you recall I had mentioned then that my next appointment, in late January, was to be with the consultant at the ROH. I expressed the opinion then that I was so fed up with the neurological and mechanical discomfort in my back and leg that I was prepared to request a surgical procedure on my poor scoliotic spinal column.
The surgeon had other ideas.
I imagine that medics are taught that there are at least three sources of information that might help them diagnose a patient's condition; physical examination, technology-based testing (such as blood and urine samples, all manner of scans and 'oscopys') and finally, 'verbal feedback'. However, asking me questions about my back pain is something in which my consultant isn't particularly interested. He is a 'scan man'. He has looked at them before I enter his office and so knows what outcome he wants - and assisted by a personable, authoritative style he usually gets it.
Having established that the epidural (see 23rd November 2011) had been unsuccessful he proceeded to dissuade me from asking for major surgery by showing me the MRI scan of another patient whose spine was liberally studded with ghostly pins. The man's back had been unable to take the strain of linking these pinned vertebrae to the first 'good' vertebra in the lumbar region causing one of them to fracture. The man was now bent double when he walked.
'And your point is?' I wanted to ask.
Not that I was looking for major surgery but I did have a small speech prepared much of which had already been rendered pointless by his conclusion that there was nothing more he could do for me. He did offer to refer me to the pain clinic at the QEH and I hope for an early appointment but he otherwise intended to discharge me from his list.
Then I remembered part of the 'speech'. I wanted him to know that I had also experienced a change in the way I used my left arm (and not only my leg). I relayed some of the symptoms which threw him into some consternation as he had already intoned summary and final letters into his dictaphone.
'Have we scanned your upper back?'
We established that 'we' hadn't. So that's how I came to be in the MRI room, renewing my relationship with the guardians of the scanner. There is obviously a powerful attraction there.
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