It’s now 156 days since I was discharged home from hospital having suffered acute kidney failure whilst on holiday in Jamaica. Having spent three weeks in a hospital in Montego Bay, during which I had the interetsing experience of having dialysis in a local dialysis unit, I was air ambulanced out to the Leicester Royal Infirmary. They took one look at me and said “Ah your the chap from from Jamaica, your going into isoaltion till we are sure you have not brought anything back!” So I was seperated and tested until I was declared fit for general consumption. A further three days and I was discharged home having had the delights of being introduced to digital rectal examination of my prostate by a young woman doctor late one night. What followed was what felt like a long series of tests and assessments leading to my diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer. That diagnosis was 83 days ago. Eighty three days which started with me getting my double injections on the first day to drive the testosterone from my body. The aim, to reduce the PSA level and starve my prostate of testosterone. Every 28 days I now get this injection and it will go on for the rest of my life. The side effect are tricky. Hot flushes for a start and the development of a belly. Apparently I may also develop breasts. I’m looking forward to popping down to M&S to meet the bra fitting woman, that will be a fun day for us both.
As a result of all the cancer “noise” and the attendant anxieties the experience of being ill in Jamaica has been locked away in a box in my head. It sits there nudgeing me every so often and reminding me of the things I said I would do in response to the kindness I recieved and the suffering I witnessed. At the moment I cannot face digging back into that experience, maybe over time the blog will help but in the here and now it seems too much. I am in a silent, hidden war, that forces me to focus on me and I’m not sure I like that. As my partner noted when I got grumpy about being chivved along because she was hungry, “its not always about you”. She is right, I need to remember to lift my head and look out.
A step too far?
The decision of the day was whether to go to the gym or not. What are these pains in my legs? It feelsl like the shin splints of old when I was running the odd marathon. Will my bones snap? Can I stand to be seen in my fattier form in changeing room and exercise areas? How fatigued am I or am I just projecting my anxiety all over the place? Having put off going to London on Monday and rearrangeing the planned visit by a plumber the gym option was taken.
The order of the day was track suit bottoms to hide the percieved waistline spread and to avoid craming expanding thighs into strech leggings. I clambered onto a across training machine and set a below normal resistance, slapped on the ipod, randomised, and started to tread carefully, pumping the arms with caution. A few twinges and a couple of hesitations and the legs slipped into a rythym. I was expeceting that at any moment my lungs would collapse, my legs give way or my body just stop. None of this happened. An hour later my Fitbit trembled with delight having counted 10,000 steps. A slow warm down and I had burnt 700 calories. I’m alive and not collapsed. I sit on a bench and do a few arm curls and decide its time to weight myself. 93.1 kilos. I’m amazed thats in my normal range, perhaps I am not the blue whale I thought I was. The Dark and Tricky rises and whispers in my ear, “you know fat weighs less than muscle, you are losing muscle and gaining fat”.
By the time I’m home and been reminded that its not all about me I am wilting. All I am good for is eating, and staring at the TV with an odd spike of excitement at Peaky Blinders time. I write this, unable to face the challenge of inserting images and trying to make it pretty. More effort to be pretty tomorrow.
