You’re my life now. Part four

 Captain’s log, star date 17012022. We  have  been trappedinadarkvoid for seven days.

“SPOCK, what’s the latest?”

“Ladbaby nailed the Christmas number one spot by shamelessly piggy backing Elton  John and Ed Sheeran by replacing every fifth word in their Christmas song with the words sausage roll”

“It’s worse than I thought Spock. We need to get out of here now. Scotty! The only way we’re going to get out of here is if we fire our way out. Set ship’s photons on full power”

“The engines canna take it Cap’n. We could lose the whole crew”

“Scotty! I think we had this conversation. It doesn’t matter what I ask you tell me the engines canna take it. Have you ever considered an alternative career? Now do it, full power.”

The Enterprise blasted out of the void at warp speed just after I sat down. After seven days I was no longer  constipated.

It’s been a strange few days. After suffering very few side effects from the chemo treatment I was now nauseous, constipated, my cough was back and my temperature was rocketing. I also felt terrible. Ironically I hadn’t blogged until now because literally nothing had happened but when something did happen I was too out of it to write one.

The only way to stay positive is take each day as it comes but when you get three lousy days in a row and no indication of improvement then it becomes hard. Still! I’m out of it now and back to near normal. I don’t know how many days I’ve got left on the chemo tablets but it can’t be more than a couple. After that it’s a needle into the bone marrow to check if there are still any aberrant cells left. If there are then it’s stem cell treatment which is onerous and has a 15% chance of failure (ie death). Sorry! An 85% chance of relative success.

I come across a lot of people, particularly on Twitter, who talk about positive mental attitude. This simple phrase covers a multitude of sins. To me it means affect what you can affect and accept what you can’t but seek mitigation. To others it means telling everyone the sun is going to shine before checking where the switch is. I know which one I’d prefer to build me a firewall or a town’s flood defences and it’s not the “it’s just a trickle” man.

I’m not sure when I’m getting out. Different doctors have different views. I’m also pushing to get the booster in hospital because that seems the best place to stick your finger in the fire. I’ve asked three times now and still not got a definitive. Communication and continuity of care are the biggest challenges here and for the most part it’s fine but I have had to point out a few dropped balls when we’ve been short staffed. Most European countries have at least twice our nurses, doctors and beds as we do and covid, Brexit and years of cutbacks have only highlighted these issues. It’s no surprise then that we have a capacity crisis in most winters. The Nordic countries do not.

Anyway at least the constipation has gone. Trying to make something happen and finding that relations between your bowel and you have broken down is most disconcerting. At one point I thought of sticking a spoon up my bum and giving Uri Gellar a call. I was offered laxatives after a couple of days but I turned them down, silly me. “Damn, I’ve left the wet wipes on the bed. Gently does it and off we go. Wash hands, sing happy birthday and forge on regardless.

Scotty turns to the captain. “There’s Klingons on the starboard side cap’n”

“Just get us out of here Scotty. The job is done”