I’ve been commissioned for a third season of chemotherapy

foggy

Striker
And I certainly didn’t pitch it to any executives. I was happy where I was but everything is a f***ing trilogy these days.

I’m back in the chemo ward. The anti sicks have gone in. I’ve been flushed out. Then Atropin, a right stingy bastard but it’s supposed to stop the instant screaming shits. And now the main course. Folfiri is the catch all term for the three chemo drugs but right now it’s the starter, Irinotecan, and I can feel myself drifting off to that strange level of consciousness that only happens when the drugs go in.

Just got a message from the bairn. She loves me loads and loads and loads xxx. The best thing in my world. I’m emotional already. I’ve never had three lots of loads before.

I have six chemos booked before the next scan, my baseline CT scan is tomorrow, to check for ‘progression’. My scan in February showed the area of concern confirmed as disease in a PET CT but it has taken until today to get back in the chemo seat. I haven’t written much about it but it’s been a slog. To hear there was recurrence, again, was the hardest part throughout my journey. Recurring recurrence.

I really thought I might have some non cancer time. The Macmillan nurse told me over the phone when I was in the car on the way to see Green Book. I can’t remember much about the film. It won an Oscar I think so I must watch it again. I parked up in the car park, had a short cry, a nanosecond of why me, then trotted off to the Costa for a big cup of tea to drink during the film.

Message Board Time Served Season Ticket Holders will know my history but a short recap for those late to the party. At the start of 2017 I was 47, no really, with a job and a normal life. Never been to the docs in 10 years. Then stomach cramps, fobbed off by GP and urgent care centre until two months later an emergency trip to A&E as the tumour in my bowel had grown so big it ruptured the wall. It could have been 5 or 10 years old. No symptoms before the cramps though.

I had it all removed with a fair bit of bowel. Then it was my first lot of chemo, Folfox, 12 rounds over 6 months. 2018 started with increasing pain, another CT showed I had spread in my peritoneum. It’s like the orange net bag that keeps the kindling in, except it keeps my bowely bits, liver, gall bladder and all that stuff wrapped up. And I don’t think it’s orange.

This diagnosis was far worse. Chemo can’t cure peritoneal disease so I was put on palliative care. The slow road of resistance until the inevitable. There was a silver lining. There was a little known very expensive operation called Cytoreductive Debulking with HIPEC. This was a possibility if there was no further progress. And after 9 more rounds of Folfiri, there wasn’t.

So I upped and offed to Basingstoke for the mother of all surgeries. Apparently it costs just short of 100k so thank you NI payers. I was the only one from the North East Trust to get it. And I was very grateful. The operation went well, they took out my kindling bag, took the scissors to the naughty bits, bathed my abdomen in hot chemotherapy for an hour then stitched me back together. We beat Gillingham away that night. It was one of the first questions I asked when I woke up in intensive care. The nurse popped over as a ‘Guy’ from ‘the message board’ wanted to know how I was, while I was surrounded by consultants telling me how the operation went. Reading back, that was the funniest moment when it finally made sense on the thread timeline, that it was you lot butting in while the consultants had to check their fingernails for a bit.

I was in for 3 weeks, tubed up to fuck. The first operation was my first experience of a pipe up me tail but these went one better by adding a stent up me arsehole. I’d lost a bit of anus in the operation so the pathway had to be kept clear. Their metal mickeys were much posher than up in Durham. They even fed me through my neck while administering the drugs. It was all a bit painful. That button press thing made nee difference. Fast forward three weeks I had my first fart, followed by my first shite. Thanks for the prayers on here. You all helped that first shit. So they let me home with a bigger scar and a shitload of medication.

Now, I love this place. I’m anonymous, I’m just a made up name with a picture of my first hero. I like that. I can write what I want, how I feel, on here and it’s very therapeutic. There are one or two in the real world who know it’s me who is me on here. I’d rather they didn’t but hey ho. Otherwise I feel very comfortable here. I didn’t think I needed the support, I just wanted to vent, but the response has been overwhelming. I won an award for fuck’s sake. Giv over and thanks very much at the same time.

While I was less unwell this year, I managed to get to a few matches. Started with Gillingham ironically the home return match, I didn’t have to ask a nurse in Basingstoke, we won, I know, I saw it, then Plymouth, we won, then Bristol Rovers in the cup. I had a long trip down to have some time with the bairn and took myself to the ground to watch us progress to the final of the checkatrade. Then Walsall, we won, then Coventry, we lost. This also marked the last time I was able to go as my health had been going downhill for a while. I had a ticket for the final but sold it to a fellow dog walker. I was prebooked to go to Madrid with the boys and managed this with proper good support from them. I've sorted the wheat from the chaff in the friends terms. I am left with the wheaty ones and I wheaty appreciate it. I also managed to get out, have a few beers but was stuck in the f***ing Bernabau watching that shite instead of us. I had to admit the level of football was breathtaking and that also applied to SD Huesca, the whipping boys of that league. It was later on so saw most of our match at the Irish Bar. Until Liverpool/Tottenham kicked off and they turned it over. I tried my best but was outnumbered. By about 200 to me. Bastards. I watched the penalties on the phone. We lost.
 


At the end of the Coventry match my abdominal pain hit new heights. I’d had a few episodes, some ending in vomiting but this was a new level. A group of lads saw me at a table and said ‘the result wasn’t that bad man’ I managed to say it was pain before my head went down again. Four Ubers cancelled until one finally turned up on some price premium thing for what was the longest journey of my life. Even though it’s 13 miles. My eyes were closed but I knew which roundabouts we were on on the Wessy Way. Anyway got home, puked and puked and just suffered. And the bairn witnessed it all for the first time. It may be adhesions from the surgeries or an obstruction or worst of all more disease.

That’s everyone up to date so here I am, metal mickey carrying the bags and pumping the poison in through a port in my chest. It needs a big vein, little ones can break down. I have had a chemo drug added to end of treatment. Avastin. It was taken off NICE’s list of NHS drugs in 2010 so I am paying for it. There was a general election that year but I’m not being political or owt. Just saying. It will be almost £10000 for five rounds. I’m not rich but what choice do I have. I was retired off from work last October so the lumper will have a bite taken out of it. The oncologist told me the price, the chances of heart attack, stroke, perforated bowel ‘which in your case would be catastrophic’ she said. She’s a proper doom and gloomer. If she was in the Ant Hill mob she would be the fucker screaming about crashing all the time. Anyway I signed up immediately for it. Fuck it. It has good results. What price life?

Back in October when I was upright again and expecting to make a proper recovery I got myself a puppy. She’s a small red fox colour Labrador cross. I’m not sure entirely what with but I do know she is simply quite amazing. Despite the being thought of as strong and all that stuff there are moments let me assure you when I am quite the opposite. I have fantastic support from family and friends but she is the one who is always there. Our lass reckons I talk to the dog the way I used to talk to her back in the day.

The surgeon up here said hello, it’s bad news, no more surgery and shook my hand. So with a little help from a private Facebook group of fellow stage 4 Bowelies I found a surgeon in that London with a reputation for doing things when the rest have written you off. I went to my GP and asked for a referral to him. She talked of budgets and whatnot so I said I would pay. She asked me if I knew how much it was, I said I didn’t care. So she said something like fuck the budget and referred me anyway.

In the space of a week the London surgeon wrote to me, had my scans looked at and agreed to ‘remove the lesion’ if there was no more progression after chemotherapy. My Oncologist of Doom assures me my cancer had showed resistance to my last chemo so I have little chance of that. I like her in an odd way.

But I do have a chance. I’m 26 months into a 12 month life expectancy. I’m 50 soon. Not that it matters too much. I’m listening to Bill Bryson’s A Short History Of Nearly Everything’. I like everyone else am just a shit ton of atoms bunched up into cells. Cells that divide, copy a new one and die off. Everyone has a few snags with this. Which is why we grow old, grey and wrinkly. Or in my case, where they have gone badly wrong and are busy dividing in a way that is just not cricket. My atoms will eventually say ta’ra to each other and go off to do something else in the universe. Some of my atoms came about in the big bang. I’m millions of years old man, it just so happened that relatively recently a very unlikely mix of conditions allowed us to be us.

What makes up my conscious is the bit I can’t fathom. Just like everyone else, they’re all stuck on that one. Or believe in a deity for a better time somewhere else later on. I have no fear of death. I’m selfish as anyone just to have some more of life but we’re all on the way and this has given me a good bit time to make peace with everything now that I’m racing down the fast lane on the road to the end of me. It pains me the grief those I love will have to suffer. It pains me more than I can explain but I’ve even started to come to terms with that. I’m already enjoying memories of life had and appreciating the moment. I can’t plan for the ahead but don’t worry about it. My daughter is sorted materially and that is all I need.

I’m sure the best way to live your life is to have cancer without the fatal side to it. But then you still wouldn’t really get it. Ah fuck it, try and imagine you are going to die, not knowing when or how awful the journey may be but inevitably sooner than anything you ever thought. If you have even thought about death. We all know we’re mortal, but I lived preferring the put-that-shit-in-a-bucket immortal way we do, while worrying about the nowt and the next to nowt stuff.

Right I’m off to pick up the dog and get me anti-sicks in. 3 more days of pumped into me heart chemo then bottle disconnect just in time to get back and watch us tear Portsmouth a new one

All the best
 
At the end of the Coventry match my abdominal pain hit new heights. I’d had a few episodes, some ending in vomiting but this was a new level. A group of lads saw me at a table and said ‘the result wasn’t that bad man’ I managed to say it was pain before my head went down again. Four Ubers cancelled until one finally turned up on some price premium thing for what was the longest journey of my life. Even though it’s 13 miles. My eyes were closed but I knew which roundabouts we were on on the Wessy Way. Anyway got home, puked and puked and just suffered. And the bairn witnessed it all for the first time. It may be adhesions from the surgeries or an obstruction or worst of all more disease.

That’s everyone up to date so here I am, metal mickey carrying the bags and pumping the poison in through a port in my chest. It needs a big vein, little ones can break down. I have had a chemo drug added to end of treatment. Avastin. It was taken off NICE’s list of NHS drugs in 2010 so I am paying for it. There was a general election that year but I’m not being political or owt. Just saying. It will be almost £10000 for five rounds. I’m not rich but what choice do I have. I was retired off from work last October so the lumper will have a bite taken out of it. The oncologist told me the price, the chances of heart attack, stroke, perforated bowel ‘which in your case would be catastrophic’ she said. She’s a proper doom and gloomer. If she was in the Ant Hill mob she would be the fucker screaming about crashing all the time. Anyway I signed up immediately for it. Fuck it. It has good results. What price life?

Back in October when I was upright again and expecting to make a proper recovery I got myself a puppy. She’s a small red fox colour Labrador cross. I’m not sure entirely what with but I do know she is simply quite amazing. Despite the being thought of as strong and all that stuff there are moments let me assure you when I am quite the opposite. I have fantastic support from family and friends but she is the one who is always there. Our lass reckons I talk to the dog the way I used to talk to her back in the day.

The surgeon up here said hello, it’s bad news, no more surgery and shook my hand. So with a little help from a private Facebook group of fellow stage 4 Bowelies I found a surgeon in that London with a reputation for doing things when the rest have written you off. I went to my GP and asked for a referral to him. She talked of budgets and whatnot so I said I would pay. She asked me if I knew how much it was, I said I didn’t care. So she said something like fuck the budget and referred me anyway.

In the space of a week the London surgeon wrote to me, had my scans looked at and agreed to ‘remove the lesion’ if there was no more progression after chemotherapy. My Oncologist of Doom assures me my cancer had showed resistance to my last chemo so I have little chance of that. I like her in an odd way.

But I do have a chance. I’m 26 months into a 12 month life expectancy. I’m 50 soon. Not that it matters too much. I’m listening to Bill Bryson’s A Short History Of Nearly Everything’. I like everyone else am just a shit ton of atoms bunched up into cells. Cells that divide, copy a new one and die off. Everyone has a few snags with this. Which is why we grow old, grey and wrinkly. Or in my case, where they have gone badly wrong and are busy dividing in a way that is just not cricket. My atoms will eventually say ta’ra to each other and go off to do something else in the universe. Some of my atoms came about in the big bang. I’m millions of years old man, it just so happened that relatively recently a very unlikely mix of conditions allowed us to be us.

What makes up my conscious is the bit I can’t fathom. Just like everyone else, they’re all stuck on that one. Or believe in a deity for a better time somewhere else later on. I have no fear of death. I’m selfish as anyone just to have some more of life but we’re all on the way and this has given me a good bit time to make peace with everything now that I’m racing down the fast lane on the road to the end of me. It pains me the grief those I love will have to suffer. It pains me more than I can explain but I’ve even started to come to terms with that. I’m already enjoying memories of life had and appreciating the moment. I can’t plan for the ahead but don’t worry about it. My daughter is sorted materially and that is all I need.

I’m sure the best way to live your life is to have cancer without the fatal side to it. But then you still wouldn’t really get it. Ah fuck it, try and imagine you are going to die, not knowing when or how awful the journey may be but inevitably sooner than anything you ever thought. If you have even thought about death. We all know we’re mortal, but I lived preferring the put-that-shit-in-a-bucket immortal way we do, while worrying about the nowt and the next to nowt stuff.

Right I’m off to pick up the dog and get me anti-sicks in. 3 more days of pumped into me heart chemo then bottle disconnect just in time to get back and watch us tear Portsmouth a new one

All the best
I’ve no words to express what I’m feeling just now. None of us can know what lies ahead , but for me if it’s this then having followed your story I know I’ll be better equipped to deal with it.
Thanks marra. And the very best of best wishes to you.
 

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