Life is not fair

Went in for the enteroscopy today. I asked the very civil consultant to give me the maximum dose of sedation physically possible, plus a local spray to the back of the throat. Both of these made the procedure a breeze. He found the site of the bleeding immediately, gave me the good news that it seems to be very localized and that it should be easy to get out.

And in a rare case of the NHS moving faster than I’m comfortable with, I’m booked in for surgery on Monday to remove the dodgy section of small bowel. I have to go in on Sunday for blood matching and a couple of other things, then I go under the knife on Monday morning. Recovery time will probably be around a week in hospital, and then a couple of months more after that. But it also means I’ll be free of these bloody abdominal pains and the vile anemia that’s been plaguing me. It’ll take a while to build up to marathoning again, but I might be able to get into something in December (maybe a half). And there’s always the Watford Half marathon again next year.

On the plus side, I get to play with morphine again. Woo! On the downside, I will have to kick morphine again. Blech. If you’ve never done this,  it’s not nice. Morphine produces physical dependency in some people, like me, very quickly. Kicking it is . . . unpleasant.

Well, just got the results from my capsule endoscopy back. The bleeding is coming from something high up in my small intestine, and there’s signs of abnormal tissue around it. It looks like it’s at least one melanoma metastasis, and possibly a couple of others. All of them are small, but at least one of them is bleeding. I’m schedule for a enteroscopy tomorrow–the doctor is going to stick a tube down my throat and tattoo the bleeding area. Apparently then the surgeons will know where to look when they cut me open. He’s also going to try and seal the bleeding with some kind of futuristic heat ray thingy. (More science fiction from Queen Mary’s. Great.)

The surgeons at the Royal Marsden are going to try and get me in for emergency surgery some time next week. The section of intestine with the bleeding lesion is going to be removed. If the other little bits of melanoma are close to it, they’ll be chopped out as well. If not, they’ll be left in place until they start doing something naughty. It’ll probably mean about a week in hospital.

This is how it goes with Stage IV melanoma. There’s no cure, just management. They’ll keep cutting it out until it appears somewhere where it can’t be cut out. And then we’ll start chemo.

Adventures Fantastic has reviewed the June 2011 issue of Realms of Fantasy. They liked my story:

Euan Harvey’s “Wisteria” was the highlight of the issue for me, and not just for the great illustration.  It was the closest thing to sword and sorcery in the magazine, and one of the few where the action wasn’t solely emotional or internal.  The structure of the story, with nested narratives, will require attention, so I don’t recommend this one right before turning out the light at bedtime.  Harvey had a story in the previous issue, and I have to wonder if he’s going to go for a hat trick and get one in the next issue.  I hope so, because his stories seem to be more to my taste than most of the other stories in the two issues he’s been in.

Ah, yes, that illustration is awesome. I still haven’t got my contributor copies yet, but I can almost smell them now . . .

I haven’t posted anything for a while, so I thought I’d use this almost palindromic date to update the readers of this blog whom I know personally (which is probably both of them about the situation with my cancer.

First, the brain tumour that was diagnosed in July and treated in August of last year doesn’t seem to be doing much. As the usual survival time for patients with brain cancer metastases is 3-4 months, this is generally good news. It is highly unlikely that the radiation treatment has killed the cancer; however, it does seem to have stunned it. How long this state of affairs will last, I don’t know.

Second, it seems likely that the cause of my anemia is a lower GI bleed with a source somewhere in the small intestine. This means it’s almost certainly a result of a metastasis. There are other things it could be, but the overwhelming probability is that it’s the cancer spreading. There’s nothing on the CT scan, however, which means that it might not be very large. Which is good. I’m going in for a capsule endoscopy on Wednesday of this week. This should find the source of the bleeding. If it doesn’t, then I might have to have an exploratory laparotomy. Which would suck. If it turns out to be cancer, the likely outcome will be surgery. Again. Lucky me, eh?

Third, the CT scan showed some cancer in another set of lymph nodes (the peritoneal), which means probably an operation at some point to remove them. Not huge surgery, but the drains will stay for a few weeks as the lymph system heals. Sucky. The CT scan also shows an indeterminate dot in my left lung. Could be cancer, could be nothing at all. It’ll be checked on the next scan for comparison. If it vanishes, that would be awesome. If it gets bigger, that would suck.

So that’s about it. Don’t expect frequent updates on here. I post more about things like this on Facebook, so if you haven’t friended me, go ahead.

From the always interesting All That’s Interesting:

From Tangent Online (who are blasting through their ‘to do’ list):

Euan Harvey’s “Wreathed in Wisteria, Draped in Ivy” is a quasi-transcript of a historical document from Han dynasty China, which has been passed down and redacted and edited by at least two different individuals. This might appear to evoke Umberto Eco’s work, but Harvey eschews the metafictional route, instead using the narrative framework of the story-within-a-story simply to give his straight-up historical fantasy/horror story a few more layers for the reader to unwrap. The skill with which he crafts his tale ensures that you’ll enjoy unwrapping those extra layers, and revealing the pattern of the whole. The central story is that of Yu Kung, who, having been told by a sorcerer that he will die in three days, decides to defy death and ends up paying a hefty price for doing so. He tells a Baron his story, and the Baron tells someone else, who writes it all down for a reason that makes sense by the conclusion.

A well written fantasy that elegantly evokes its time and place, weaving mythology into a personal tale of men trying to direct their own fates in a world that asks that they not. The tyranny of their Emperor begins to reflect the tyranny of time and fate.

Could it be . . . ? Is it . . . ? The Tangent Online Seal of Approval? It is! Woot! Cheer! [Applause]!

This is the first review I’ve gotten from them which is positive all the way through. (Apart from possibly the bit about Umberto Eco, but as the reviewer used ‘eschew’, I’m willing to grant a generous degree of license.)

This at the end as well:

A solid issue with no standouts, though Bobet, Mock and Harvey’s offerings impress in their own quiet ways.

Mmm. I impress in quiet ways. Mmm. Shh!

Tangent Online is running a few months behind reality. They’ve just posted a review of the April 2011 Realms of Fantasy:

“By Shackle and Lash,” by Euan Harvey, tells the story of a mysterious prisoner with blue eyes like the warm harvest days of summer. Kemal and Wahid are men of the Mukhabarat, a sort of police organization that serves the Shah, but they abandon their duties and are sentenced to work in the dungeons. It is here that they come across the woman in cell Alef seven. She is weak and sick and has recently soiled herself, but she has her eyes and a mouth that tells the men things they cannot remember and cannot disobey. I am unfamiliar with folk traditions from the Middle East, so it very possible I am missing references; I do know, however, that the story stands on its own. It has a hypnotic quality that should not be denied.

Which is an okay review, I guess. I’m never entirely sure what to make of Tangent; they seem kind of out of step with other review sites. (And generally, they don’t seem too keen on my stuff.)

My story Wreathed in Wisteria, Draped in Ivy is in issue 100 of Realms of Fantasy. It’s just been reviewed by Lois Tilton at Locus Online:

This title seems like it should belong to the Bobet story above, but in fact the author is only using the vines to drape a tomb in this dark historical fantasy of revenge and undeath in Han dynasty China. It is in the “ancient manuscript” mode, the text redacted in places for good reasons the reader will discover by the end, and the narrative is triple-nested. Its core is a tale told by an old, old man.

The ancient’s beard reached down past his chest. His face was shrunken, cheeks fallen in, skin deeply wrinkled. His eyes had sunk deep into his head, and now they peered out from caves under thick eyebrows of bushy white.

In his youth, he had set out for the imperial examinations and in one village encountered a demonic sorcerer who predicted that he would meet death in three days. The young man suspected extortion and refused to pay the fee for warding off this fate. And death did come to him, sent by the sorcerer, but he managed to defeat it three times. It will not come again.

This is a horror story, and an effective one. The author connects his narratives well, including redactions and notes by both author and a later editor, which all combine to complete and enhance the tale. The story does not require specific knowledge of the historical figures mentioned in the text, which I find just as well, given the variations in translation and transliteration that can snare the uninformed. Yet the author writes with sufficient authority about this setting that I hesitate to point out that the imperial examinations would not have been established by the time of Yu’s youth, if I have understood the author correctly.

I think she’s right about the imperial examinations. But, um, [footshuffle], ah poetic license? Yeah. That’s it.  Otherwise, I thought the review was pretty good.

I went in to the Royal Marsden yesterday for a blood transfusion. It was the usual NHS hurry-up-and-wait deal. I arrived at 8.30 a.m., had blood drawn at 9.00, waited until 12.30, then started the transfusion. Two bags of blood, each supposedly taking two hours, but actually a bit more, as every time I moved my arm, the machine assumed there was a blockage and started peeping.

They also gave me a print out of my blood work. On the 12th, my HGB (measure of hemoglobin) was 8.5 (normal male count is 12-15), and other measures of the number of red blood cells were down as well. On the 27th, after eating a load of iron supplements, my HGB had actually dropped to 7.4. Also, a couple of other measures that indicate the amount of hemoglobin in each red blood cell had also dropped.

So . . . I’m probably bleeding somewhere internally. The melanoma nurse said my blood work was consistent with a slow internal bleed. No results from the ferritin tests they ran yet, but if they come back normal, then it’s not an iron deficiency.

Which narrows it down to either a bleeding ulcer or a melanoma metastasis which is bleeding. Neither is particularly great. The melanoma nurse said that normally melanoma patients with small bowel metastasis present with abdominal pain and dramatic blood loss. Mine is more a drip, drip, drip, which suggests it may be an ulcer.

CT scan on Tuesday, which may reveal more.

On a brighter note, I feel amazing today. I didn’t realize how weak the anemia had made me. I did 21 miles on the bike this morning and felt great. I’ll have to ask for more blood next time. Moar!