The Cancer Journey of a Normal Bloke: September 2009

Sunday 27 September 2009

Heigh ho heigh ho it's off to work we go.......

Long time no post as us bloggers say. What can I say about September? Well apart from a string of expletives I can only say that I am glad to see the back of it!

This has been Reality Time. Back to work full-time and work being very stressful. A huge workload and far too many new initiatives to implement at the same time and 7 months after your husband died people seem to expect you to be "back to normal". If only I knew what normal was for me these days. Outside of work a complete treadmill of cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing and ironing so that you really get to see what life as a bereaved parent is like ( I prefer the term bereaved parent to single parent as Emma does have two parents it's just that one of them is no longer on the Earthly Plane). This is all on top of extreme tiredness (and at times during the month illness). I have never before experienced anything that makes you as tired as grieving for your partner does and in a bizarre twist of fate, even when you are exhausted, grieving does not allow you to sleep. And with your new financial restrictions you can't afford to eat out or have a takeaway when you are completely knackered. The whole thing becomes like living in the Twilight Zone (60s version not the Stephanie Meyer books for younger readers of the blog).

I am hoping that I will gradually adjust to being back at work as I am unsure how long I can sustain myself on this level of exhaustion. The hardest thing I find is that you have no obvious wound or injury for people to see to make it obvious you will be finding life tough. For me, losing Dave is the equivalent of having my right arm wrenched off. If I was walking around with my right arm wrenched off people (especially people I don't know) might take some notice and be kinder to me! I also have a feeling sometimes of being a "has been" from a tv soap opera. So many people got involved and were caught up in the drama of Dave's illness and death but like anything else people move on quickly in their lives to the next thing. I'm not saying that it is wrong that people move on, it is actually entirely appropriate, but for me I am sometimes left with the feeling that Dave, Emma and I are yesterday's fish and chip paper. And this is at a time when things are really tough. Luckily, fantastically caring friends and family are switched on enough to recognise this and stick by Emma and I and keep an eye on us.

The best way to manage the exhaustion has been to limit activities outside of work so I have stayed relatively hermit like this month, unable to cope with very little on top of work. Although as my friend Carol pointed out last Sunday "your hermit like life is probably my normal" as I am normally a pretty energetic and vital person compared to the average human being.

In amidst The Trudge as I call it there have been some good moments. At the end of August Emma found out that she had got A* for the GCSE Maths that she took a year early and A*s in all the GCSE Science modules for this year which was extraordinary considering all the school she missed and all the upset she has been through. She also did a fortnight's informal work experience with Greg in his art gallery and a fortnight's formal (school) work experience in the Art and Design department at York College. She also went to her first music festival. Last week, I started back at college to learn Indian Head massage and Emma and I have started to go to yoga together on Thursdays. There have also been glimpses of happy times to come on a walk last Sunday at the coast and a meal out last night where I found myself laughing more than I had done for a while.

So for now I will keep on trudging and trusting in the future and things ultimately working out. It just seems to require more patience than I have ever needed for anything ever before in my life. For a recovering Control Freak this is HARD so I have given up trying to control anything and am just taking life on a day to day or week to week basis. Bite sized chunks of life I can just about manage but looking further ahead is impossible right now.

MacMillan Cancer Support

I have decided to use this blog as means of playing a mind diverting game of raising a few quid for the wonderful people at MacMillan, who provide invaluable support for people at all stages of cancer. If you have found the blog interesting, useful or moving, please click on the "donate" button below, and you can be a part of this game. The current target is £10,000, but if just 5 people gave £1, and then enrolled five others to do the same, after just 6 rounds, we'd raise well over £100,000! Please consider donating, and if you can't do that, please share this address with at least five other people. Many thanks!
David

Background Information

I'm a forty seven year old husband and father of one daughter, living in York, and it's about a year this November since I was told I had between one and three years to live.
Having been diagnosed in 2006 with bowel cancer, operated upon and being told thereafter that the cancer had all been removed, I thought I had made it through a relatively tough period in my life.
Then in 2007, when I was on holiday in Portugal with my wife and daughter, I began to experience some pains in the pelvis, and brought forward my planned October review to September. After a few tests, it turned out that the cancer had already been on the move before it was removed, and was now in my lungs (two small tumours in the right lung), on the prostate (as opposed to inside the prostate which is what happens with prostate cancer), and also in my lymph system (which is the means by which it had travelled elsewhere).
So, I have decided to publish this blog with a view to updating all those who are interested on the latest developments, and, perhaps, to provide some information that might help other people who have bowel cancer in whatever stages.
I hope that it's useful, and maybe (as some people have told me that I have been "inspiring" in my approach) give people some increased sense of hope.
Feel free to comment on anything you see here, and use it to get in touch with me if you want to do so.

Brief History

October 2008: Get given a wheelchair - just in case!
September 2008: Buy a walking stick! This is to prevent me falling over when I give myself a boost of the drugs into my spine, as the local anaesthetic makes my legs go numb.
August 2008: have a catheter inserted into my spinal fluid which is fixed to a pump containg morphine and a local anaesthetic
May 2008: by now, taking a few hundred milligrams of morphine per day to manage the pain
April 2008: Chemo stops early due to side effects. No further treatment recommended at this stage, and referred to the Palliative Care Team for pain and symptom management
March 2008: stop the Oxiloplatin part of chemo due to loss of feeling in the fingers
December 2007: Chemotherapy recommences with forthightly treatments into a Hickman line (tube into the chest that runs up to the veins in my neck to put chemicals directly to the heart
December 2007: doctors tell me it's incurable, but that with treatment I have probably two to three years of life left in me
November 2007: PET scan and lymph node biopsy confirm cancer in the lymph nodes in the pelvis
October 2007: CT and MRI show tumours on the lung, and possible tumour on prostate
September 2007: Bring forwaard October's review, and the hospital sets up new CT and MRI scans to check out the pains
August 2007: Pains in the pelvis begin to make sitting uncomfortable, but a couple of nurofen seem to do the trick
April 2007: First review meeting declares all is well
January 2007: start to work again after miraculous speed of recovery!
November 2006: Operation to remove rectum and Sigmoid colon (the bend just before the rectum
October 2006: Consultants confirm tumour is operable, and that permanent colostomy is probable
September 2006: Chemo-Radiotherapy starts
August 2006: first visit to Cookridge to meet the Chemo-radiotherapy team
July 2006: Results confirm tumour in the rectum
June 2006: Colonoscopy and MRI scan
June 2006: Visit to the Colo - Rectal Clinic
May 2006: first examination by the GP

About Attitude

Because part of the purpose of this site is to serve as a useful source for other people with cancer, and because I believe attitude is vital when facing cancer and the possibility of death because of it, I am including a precis of an earlier post about the attitude I have adopted to having cancer. The earlier post in full can be accessed by going to the bottom of this page and clicking "Older Posts".
1. Be responsible: if you are not responsible for the fact you have cancer, you are a victim of it and looking to blame your having it on something or someone else. Responsible does not mean you blame your self, just that you have the power to respond to the fact you have cancer.
2. Behaviour in the present is being given by the future you can see for yourself. If you can see surviving as a future, your behaviour will be consistent with that future.
3. You always have a choice. You can choose every second of every day the response you have to your cancer. You can choose to live powerfully with it, or not.
4. Choice can only truly occur if you have considered all the possible outcomes. A person who is scared of dying is not choosing to live, but trying not to die. This would be fine if it were not for the fact that to be this way is to continually bring the thought of dying along with you. Choosing to live once you are not afraid of death does not bring the thought of death along with it.
5. Every emotional response is valid: trying not to feel sad, or trying not to cry, or forcing oneself to try to be positive all the time is to deny your humanity. Allow yourself to feel exactly how you feel, and the feeling can then pass freely on its way without being supressed and adding more emotional pressure onto an already emotionally charged situation.

The Cancer Journey of a Normal Bloke

Sunday 27 September 2009

Heigh ho heigh ho it's off to work we go.......

Emma

MacMillan Cancer Support

Email Address

Background Information

Brief History

About Attitude

Summer 08

The Family

From the Yorkshire Evening Press

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