Life is not fair

I haven’t posted anything for a while, mainly because there’s been nothing much to report. Much as I might dislike it, my life now revolves around the fact that I have cancer. It’s not the whole of my life, but it’s certainly one of the main pivots, along with my family. So, in this case, no new posts meant nothing much to say. (Rather than being unable to say anything.)

I’ve shaken off the last of the somnolence from the WBR. And although I still have insomnia–I wake up every night at around 1.30–I’ve given up on sleeping pills, and I’m feeling much better for it. I’ve stopped taking codeine as well, and although I had headaches for the first couple of days, I now feel much better: no headaches, and my digestion seems to have settled. Drugs are useful for certain things, but they also have various unpleasant side effects. If you can stop them, you should. (YMMV of course.)

On the depression front, my mood has lifted a lot. Mainly, I suspect, because my brain (and its vari0us neurotransmitters) is settling down after being abused by the WBR. But also I’m sure due to exercise: running three times a week*, skipping**, stretching, and working my way through a 100 push up program***. Dopamine is a wonderful thing, and although it may hurt like, well, something very painful, running**** up hills will make you feel great when you finish.

And on a final note, my levels of fitness dropped to frankly fricken pathetic after the operation in April and the subsequent brain tumour fiasco. But today, as I was doing my final block of running, I felt for a short time like I did six months ago: that I was flying over the grass with my feet barely touching the ground and everything working in perfect time–breathing deep, arms swinging, legs pumping.

It was wonderful.

* Walk/run actually. The program I’m following is here. I just finished week 4.

**Don’t laugh. Ask boxers how hard this is. I’m doing 1 minute blocks of rope-jumping with 1 minute rests for a total of 30 minutes. harder than it sounds.

***Current maximum: 6. LOL, sad, right? Mind you, I started at 3, so there has been improvement.

****Actually, jogging while wheezing like a consumptive, but there you go.

I told my three kids about my prognosis today. A very unpleasant and difficult thing to do. Robert, the oldest, started crying and hasn’t stopped. Alex, the middle, cried hard, then some time later asked if I could buy him a game before I died (thanks, Alex). And the youngest, Harry, said ‘you’re not dead now?’, so I assured him I wasn’t.

Life with cancer sucks.

Cancer and hair loss go together like rain and holidays in Wales. Hair loss often comes from systemic chemotherapy (explanation here), but radiation to the head can also cause hair loss.

Now, when I previously saw people with cancer-related baldness, without really thinking about it, I assumed that their hair just fell out one day in big clumps, and as most cancer patients I’d seen seemed to have the Yul Brynner shine, I assumed it ALL came out.

This turns out not to be the case. Read the rest of this entry »

I haven’t been on a holiday in the UK for about fourteen years. Some holidays in Thailand–not many, as money was often tight and hotels are expensive–but nowt in the UK since a couple of years before I left to make my fortune overseas. (Didn’t end up making my fortune in the end, or if I did, it wasn’t a financial fortune.) Read the rest of this entry »

Well, actually he was quite a pleasant and likeable chap, but I just thought that title sounded neat. Anyway, I went into the Marsden yesterday for the melanoma clinic, armed with a list of questions I wanted to ask. In summary, my prognosis is as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

Well, actually the title is not strictly accurate. It should be something like ‘hair five years ago, gone today’, but that just doesn’t scan.

Yes, my hair has started falling out from the radiation. It’s not coming out in great chunks like it does in the movies; it’s more like a slow continuous fall of individual hairs. Whenever I scratch my scalp (which feels itchy from the radiation), a few hairs come away under my nails or attached to my fingers. Read the rest of this entry »

My short stories HALLOWEEN: COMPRISING A CAUTIONARY ACROSTIC OF NINE BEDTIME STORIES FOR READING TO THE TIRESOME OR DISOBEDIENT CHILD is going to be published in the October 2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy. The cover for the issue is below:

Realms of fantasy october 2010 cover

Now I want to know why I’m at the bottom again. I’ve got the polar opposite of star billing. Why? Whhhhhhhhhyyyyy?

Well, they warned me it might take some time for the effects to build up. And they are now building up. Or have built up. Or something.

I now have a good idea of what morning sickness must be like. Every morning for the past three days, I’ve ended up praying to the porcelain god in the bathroom. Nausea builds up slowly, then suddenly I have to *run* for the bathroom. It’s not painful spasming, like you get with food poisoning, just a sudden and violent need to empty my stomach. And when it’s finished, I feel fine, no bending over for ten minutes cursing the universe as my abs go into spasmic fury. Certain smells make it worse, as does people talking to me.

As well as the nausea, I’m feeling absolutely exhausted. I’m sleeping well enough, but when I wake up, I find myself looking forward to when I can go back to bed again. And you know that’s got to be a bad sign. It hasn’t got to the stage of somnolence and microsleeps yet, but it’s heading that way. What’s nice about this is that I finally have a medical reason why I MUST have a lie-in. Awwwwright!

A little late posting this, but there you go. The last day went smoothly enough, aside from a couple of minor panic attacks on the tube, when I had to squeeze past crowds on the platforms, and I had sudden horrible visions of stumbling over my own feet and toppling onto the rails. Very tired, though: feeling as though my head was crammed full of cotton wool. Some nausea as well when leaving, which wasn’t helped by the train ride . . . but I ate a Bacon Double Cheeseburger at Euston, and that seemed to sort my belly right out. Hurrah for Burger King!

The radiologist warned me that the immediate sided effects would last for perhaps another two weeks, and could intensify over the weekend. And so it happened: Read the rest of this entry »

Missed posting yesterday when I came back, so I’m typing this in the ungodly hours of the morning (before 7 a.m.). This is going to be short, as I’m going to post a round up and my thoughts on the whole thing when I come back this afternoon.

Not much to report from day four, other than the appearance of one of the side effects I was warned about. A couple of hours after I got back, my mouth started salivating, thehn muscle spasms started in my belly. I managed to avoid vomiting, but it was a close run thing. This morning, the same thing, only a little worse. Nausea first, then muscle spasms, then standing in the bathroom trying not to puke while my stomach knotted itself into painful knots. Nasty headache as well.

Good thing it’s the last session today. Only one more trip in.