Another Colonoscopy

I was happily enjoying my '3 month break' from seeing any consultants and not having and scans. At my last appointment in March the oncologist said we needed to 'wait and see' and that he would see me in 3 months.  It was already March so 3 months meant it would be June before I would be called back in for a colonoscopy. I was starting to relax and enjoy those few months without having to worry about all the shit that's been going on.

I missed a phone call a few days ago.  The call was withheld. When I noticed the missed call, my stomach did a huge, horrible flip because the only calls I get on my mobile that are withheld are from the hospital. What could they want?  I tried to tell myself it could be a cold call but needless to say I worried about it all night. I couldn't ring back as I had no idea who had called or what department.

I didn't have long to wait.  The following morning at 9 O clock the withheld call arrived again. It was the hospital wanting to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. I assumed they were ringing early for a June appointment but no, they wanted me to go in on Monday which was only 4 days away. The familiar panic started. Why? Had the oncologist looked at my scans and spotted something else? I explained to the receptionist that I had been told it would be 3 months before I was called in. She got a bit arsy and said she was only doing what the letter from my oncologist had said.  I couldn't do Monday. Apart from anything else, I was a bit concerned that the Prep they send in the post wouldn't arrive on time. I explained I'd got pre arranged stuff I couldn't get out of on Sunday. She didn't like that either and in hindsight, I wish I had just taken the appointment. Instead, it was made for the following Monday.

I rang the cancer nurses as soon as I could thinking that a mistake had been made and they wold just take over and say they would cancel the appointment and not to worry.  This wasn't the case though.  They said they felt the reason I had been called in was because my last colonoscopy was in January meaning the three month appointment was actually April.  The oncologist had definitely said 'see you in 3 months' so I couldn't accept this but I didn't say anything.

I'm already worried by it all.  I actually think that the worry must get worse with each appointment.  My ability to overthink things kicked in from the missed phone call and I've really been overthinking everything ever since. I'm not sure what a colonoscopy 6 weeks after an MRI will show.

My new found freedom didn't last very long.. I'm back on the treadmill.

Spring

This lovely weather has brought with it a renewed reason to feel happy to be alive. Like just about everyone in the country, the worst day of the year for me is the day the clocks go back. It's so depressing. I try and enjoy every season regardless of how many hours there are in the day but I think living in the country really brought home to me just how short the days are and how dark the nights can be.  When we did our escape to the country we found  out very quickly that no one goes anywhere without a torch (or wellies)!  Early on after our move we stumbled home from a friends house at 3 in the morning and completely lost our bearings. Yes, drink was involved but having no street lights and it being a moonless night with all the cloud, it was impossible to follow the dirt tracks.  The following day we bought torches and didn't go out of the house at night again without them.  A friends husband bought her a head torch for Christmas one year (I know!)  We were walking down the lane together with said torch and she nearly blinding me every time she turned to talk and the thing kept slipping further into her eyes. It may not seem funny now, but we fell about laughing.  Yes drink was involved.  Needless to say, we all got a head torch! Brilliant invention!  This actually reminds me of another occasion when everyone came back to our house from a night at the pub. It was about midnight I guess. We were missing one of the husbands for about an hour.  Eventually he turned up and apologised for being late but explained he had been having an egg and spoon race with some guests who were staying at the pub. Random.  :)

We took our VW camper van out for the first time this year yesterday.  He's a hansom fella and I love it when people smile and wave. There is no question that sun, sea, sand and camper van are bessie mates.

The sun has also brought with it visitors to our garden., human and animal.  If anyone sees you sitting outside, they just come over and sit outside with you.  Yes, drink is involved.

We get badgers in the garden. Last year they bought their babies with them.  It was quite joyous to watch.


It's not all been sunshine and socialising.  One of my online friends didn't email for well over a week and I was a little concerned that all was not well.  I DID go through the usual stuff of thinking I'd said something wrong so eventually I sent a little message asking if everything was OK.  She wasn't OK. A young girl from a cancer forum they were both on had died. She was 30.  I didn't know her at all but my friend did and it had  knocked her for six.  I lay awake thinking about Lea the girl that died. I don't know why but it bothered me. She was only diagnosed with bowel cancer last October and she died on her birthday last week.  Regardless of not knowing her, the story was bleak enough to cause me a sleepless night. Cancer is such a bastard.

Juicing Fights Back

One of the worst things about me (and there are many) is that I have allergies and reactions to just about everything.  For instance, dental block doesn't work on me, I have to have enough to knock out an elephant before the gum is properly frozen. As for pills and potions, there's hardly anything that doesn't cause me to have some sort of reaction. 8 years on and my GP is still trying to find a blood pressure pill that a) works on me and b) doesn't make me ill in the process.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find that carrot juicing isn't going too well.  It's taken me about a week to realise that the really bad headaches I'm getting are probably related to juicing and also the IBS which flared up about 4 days ago and is getting steadily worse has been brought on by the carrots. This only occurred to me during the night when I was woken up with severe itching on the palms of my hands. I get this with most antibiotics but I don't think anything other than medication has ever caused it before.  Whilst wondering what I'd taken to cause the itching it dawned on me that the only thing I have been doing in abundance is juicing.  The penny dropped.  Of course.  It is causing the headaches and the IBS too.  I googled it and found that yes indeed carrots can cause many problems including itching, stomach cramps and headaches.  I had upped the amount of juice in the past 24 hours and it clearly made things even worse.

I'm not sure where I go from here. I can't even save my own life without issues.  Can you imagine just what chemo and surgery is likely to do to me!!!  I ended up in hospital after being prescribed my first blood pressure tablet.  I was so ill I thought I was having a heart attack.  I was admitted to hospital and over the following 24 hours it transpired the blood pressure tablet was causing the problem.  As soon as it was out of my system, the problem stopped.  

Being inspired by a friend raving about her hot tub, I got one and for a few days loved using it. Within about 3 days my skin had reacted to the chemicals in the water and the tub had to go.

I can't wear anything metal. I get a sticky weeping wound.

Any type of false nail makes my fingers swell up and itch.

I can only wear the best quality make up and face creams. I'm an expensive accessory for my husband.

I can barely take any prescribed medication. Even the glue on the heart monitor pads brings me out in hives. I'm a poor specimen of a human being.  My brother suffers the same (not with the false nails) and so did my dad.  Having been bitten by a dog as a child, I was taken to hospital and asked if I had an allergy to penicillin. I don't but my dad did. Once told of this, I had to have two injections just in case I had a reaction.  As it happened I DID have a reaction..it was from the Tenanus jab. It made my leg swell up like a whole slab of doner kebab meat. I was told never to have the Tetanus jab again. I'm assuming if I get bitten by a dog I'll just have to suffer the lockjaw.

Carrots are currently off the menu.

Under Surveillance

I'm going under surveillance. I'm not sure if this involves me wearing a cream mac and a trilby and following unscrupulous people around or if someone is going to follow me home and park up outside my house watching everything I do. If it's the latter they will be very bored.

I spoke to one of the cancer nurses yesterday and so my very worst fears had been put on the back burner and I wasn't feeling quite so anxious about my appointment with the oncologist today.  I'm not out of the woods but I do not need immediate surgery or chemo.  Regardless of being told this, I still had the worst nights sleep and tortured myself that the nurse could have mixed up my scan results.   If any author is looking for some wild ideas for plot lines, I'm your woman. The things I can make up are alarmingly shocking!

The oncologist threw me a curve ball I wasn't expecting today.  He said he had two options. One was to crack me open and remove my bowel leaving me with a Bag For Life or he could leave it for 3 months, send me for another colonoscopy (can't wait) and review it all then.  I hope the delay of 3 months doesn't mean that after that time I will need the surgery anyway.   The good news is that the site where the cancerous polyp was removed appears cancer free.  There COULD be a tiny amount left but if so it is so small it is undetectable at the moment.  I have 3 nodes. They too are small and need watching.  If I had been told this would be the outcome last week I would have grabbed it with both hands but today I'm worrying what three months will bring, of course I am, I worry about what to cook for dinner so I'm hardly going to let this pass by without some sort of drama.

So I'm relying on the carrots to do their best at shrinking these nodes.

I'll keep you posted.

Worrying

I've never stopped worrying since I first saw blood in my poo. Admittedly, some worry is far worse than other worry but worrying goes with the territory of either thinking you could have cancer or being told you have cancer. It's hard to deal with. Waiting causes severe worry and then when you are no longer waiting, you worry again.

I finally got the phone call today from my oncologist's secretary. She's always very to the point. He wants to see me at 9AM tomorrow. She won't answer any other questions, 'I'm only his secretary, I can't answer medical questions'.

So what does this mean. Well for me, it means that, as I've never had a phone call from them as early as 11.30AM before, I am thinking that mine must be the most serious case and the consultant wants to see me first.  Nothing anyone says will make me think differently. They fact that I'm first in the following morning has sent me into a huge panic.

Is the waiting now over I wonder. Will I go in tomorrow and be told I have to have surgery the following week or will they say they will let me know and I end up hanging around again.  I really don't know what will happen but that won't stop me thinking what might happen.  I don't know what to expect tomorrow. I don't know how good or bad things will be but I'm braced for the worst with my glass half empty as always.

It's been 3 weeks since the MRI scan. It seems like months.  I wonder if they know jus how terrible it all is for the patients who have to endure waiting to hear.  They actually tell you the waiting is the worst but I'm sure they have absolutely no concept what so ever of what that wait is actually like.

I'll know my fate tomorrow.  I'm glad to get to this point but I still don't want to hear the news.

Carrot Juicing - The Facts

I've been juicing carrots as mentioned before. I've no idea how anyone can actually have the 5 - 6 pounds of carrot juice a day! It's quite difficult to get down but I guess if you think it might be a matter of living or dying it becomes much easier to drink!

I bought a juicer  - it was around £100 but I think this is quite cheap for a juicer looking at some of the others. They can be over £300 and some are over £1000 - well sod that!

The £100 juicer started quite well other than there was an enormous amount of pulp  floating on top of the juice. This was a bit unpleasant but I still drank it. I googled the *pulp* and read that this can happen with cheaper juicers. There is far less pulp when using one of the more expensive juicers.  I decided I'd stick with my *cheap* £100 one and started sieving off the pulp which worked well.

The machine I bought is compact but still too big for our smallish kitchen.  Some of them look like a small village.  The jug collecting the juice on my juicer is small and after juicing half a dozen or so carrots I have to stop to tip the juice into another container. When I've completed all the carrot juicing I end up with a couple of jars of juice.. three sometimes, but this is only ever around 4 pounds of carrots at most.  I put the jars in the fridge and drink it throughout the day. It's better cold from the fridge although it has given me brain freeze a few times!

There are two types of juicer, cold press and centrifugal. I struggle to know the difference, but the gist of it is that the cold press are the expensive ones and have a better way of extracting the juice with less pulp and as there is no heat generated, it ends up with more nutrients.  The centrifugal ones use fast spinning metal blades, produce a bit of hear which can kill off some of the goodness in the carrots and from what I can gather are not fit for heavy daily use! I say this because yesterday after trying to juice 5 - 6 pounds of carrots for the first time, I got to around 4 pounds when the cutters started to go slower, the machine spluttered and smoke started pouring out of it.  I'd had the machine 10 days :(

I'm going to get another machine and I'm going to have to shell out more money for it or no doubt the same thing will happen.  I've considered just not bothering but if I don't I will just worry that I could have been doing myself some good but spoilt it by not continuing!

What a merry-go-round this whole new cancer world is!

Fed Up

I'm really fed up.  Since having the MRI scan a couple of weeks ago I've heard nothing at all.  On the day of the MRI, I rang one of the cancer nurses and left a message for her as she had asked that I let her know that I had managed to go through with the scan this time.  Later that day one of the other nurses called back to say that she would look out for the scans arriving (probably the following Monday) and would make sure my case was down to be discussed by the team the following Wednesday.  It's difficult a few days before these meeting trying to keep things together as it's too easy to imagine awful things. Usually what happens after the meeting is I get a phone call asking me to see the consultant the following morning. This didn't happen.  I rang the nurses but was told that the MRI scans hadn't arrived and so it would be the following week before my case was discussed. This is all very difficult to deal with when it has already been 11 months since I first saw signs of blood in my poo.  This in itself is dreadfully shocking and it's impossible not to continue looking for blood on a daily basis.  This will be with me forever as I will never stop looking.

Frustratingly, no one seems to be in any rush for answers but me.

Knowing that my case was going to be discussed yesterday, I had another few bad days worrying about the outcome.  Dreams are vivid and  range from upsetting to weird to joyful. But no phone call came.  Against my better judgement and knowing I was making a nuisance of myself, I rang the nurses again only to be told that my case wasn't down to be discussed as the MRI scans still hadn't come back.  Apparently, the scans are sent out to third party companies to be assessed and returned and mine hadn't yet been returned.  No one seemed to know who had the scans or how long they might take to come back.  To say I'm fed up is an understatement. To say I'm angry is closer, annoyed, very much so and pissed off.. yes, so very very pissed off.  

I was told I would get a phone call today. I won't be holding my breath and even if I do I know that it will be next week before anyone sees me. I can't help thinking that if I had been seen quicker last year whether all of this would be over now.

I feel sorry for myself for the first time. I don't like to feel this way and I don't like to admit it. I feel let down by just about everything and everybody. My husband doesn't want to discuss anything about cancer or the possible consequences. He has a positive outlook on everything and so just thinks I'm being a drama queen.  He took early retirement last March. The plan was to spend more time together as 'none of us know how long we have got left'. He does a bit of consultancy work here and there and he's booked something this month which takes him away from home so I'm left wondering if I could be in hospital during this time. Am I being selfish worrying I'll be on my own? What if I'm having chemo then. It's all what if's I know but I'm the only one with any of these thoughts it seems. Everyone else seems to think I'll get the all clear when the MRI results are finally revealed but I can't be positive. The pain in my left side is still there, worse if anything. Would it still be there if there was nothing wrong I wonder.

Today, I feel let down by absolutely everyone. I'll feel bad even saying this tomorrow but the cold facts are I'm pretty much on my own with this.