2. A Bit of a Coincidence

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It's Friday night, today a very nice doctor told  me I have mouth cells in my lymph node, not quite sure how this works but as far as I can tell, I have cancer, somewhere, but nobody knows where. This has caused me to have mouth cells in my lymph node, what the actual fuck?  I don't know about you but I can't help imagining a lymph node slowly developing a little mouth. This is not very helpful. My overwhelming feeling is that mouth cells should stay in my mouth where they belong and not migrate around my body and frighten the life out of people. 

I'm lying in bed that evening feeling somewhat under the weather as I seemed to have picked up a cold, pondering whether I am no longer going to outlive the dog. This is actually a plus as the worst day of my life by far was when we had to have our dog Henry put down. I hate to say this but it was literally somewhat worse than when my parents died, I know, I know but what can I say, it is what it is.

However, thoughts of truncated mortality were soon overshadowed by an overwhelming desire to pee. I trotted off to the bathroom and obediently stood in front of the toilet waiting...and waiting, eventually a miserable trickle of piss made it's way into the bowl, odd.  I still want to pee.  Throughout the night I am woken by the need to pee, followed by very little actual peeing.

At about 3am I made the connection, I picked up the Ipad and looked up the symptoms of prostate cancer. Yep, I had pretty much classic symptoms, the prostate becomes enlarged and presses on the urethra causing problems with peeing, and just to confirm my suspicions the doctors have no idea where the cancer is. Strangely, after this I went back to sleep and slept the repose of the righteous until morning.

We were talking to Nic, my sister in law the next morning and she said, "Are you sure you haven't got a UTI"

I laughingly replied, "It'd be a bit of a coincidence Nic,  getting a cold, contracting a UTI and being diagnosed with cancer all on the same day"

Throughout that weekend the needing to pee and not being able to just got worse and worse, the problem is I am now in limbo, the consultant at the hospital said that I needed an MRI and a CT scan before I went back to the cancer clinic, in my experience these things take weeks maybe months but he'd booked me in for the clinic the week after next. I can't get any answers until both scans are done and maybe not then.  

By the Monday the symptoms had become excruciating and feeling quite extraordinarily unwell I decided to ring the GP before my bladder expoded. They put me straight on the urgent care list and I got an appointment that afternoon. I made sure I had a urine sample, which given the paucity of said liquid was, frankly, a miracle.

So I carefully explained to a doctor who was just about old enough to be my grandson. 

"I've been diagnosed with some sort of cancer but they don't know where the primary is, I appear to have the symptoms of prostate cancer but I can't wait until I see the cancer team as this is fucking killing me"

"OK, Sir, I'll need a urine sample", I smugly handed over my pre collected sample and he took it away and did scientificcy things with it. While he played with my sample of piss he explained. 

"If it was prostate cancer then the symptoms would develop slowly over time, if it is a UTI then they can develop very quickly".

Yes, yes I am aware that any fairly sentient adult would have worked this out for themselves or possibly had the mental acuity to find this out when Googling prostate cancer at 3am in the fucking morning.

"Yep, you've got a UTI, I'll prescribe some antibiotics, you should be fine"

Wait, hang on, what the actual fuck, at the very least I had been steeling myself for the inevitable finger up the bum. I am actually an idiot who should be listening to his sister in law.  However this should demonstrate the "Barrel of Tit's" syndrome perfectly, right now I was floating serenely sucking my own thumb.

I toddled off home and ingested industrial quantities of antibiotics and almost immediately the symptoms subsided. However, it was now Tuesday, there was only a week to go before the next clinic and no scans had been forthcoming I did have an MRI scan scheduled for a couple of weeks time but that was to check out the state of my sorely abused brain and had been organised by the TIA clinic.

I spent a day or so fretting slightly until a somewhat peremptory text arrived from the NHS requesting my presence at a CT scan the very next day. Right OK, good, this is good, yeah, no it's not good, it's fucking terrifying. 

I'll let you into a secret, the last CT scan I had was quite remarkably painful.  My first couple of CT scans involved being shoved into the big donut machine and lying still for a short while and then being wheeled back up to the ward, easy.  

This was back in 2010 and they couldn't work out why I kept having TIA's and it was obviously starting to annoy them.  The last CT scan they upped the game considerably, this involved an injection of contrast, if memory serves it is iodine, whilst the CT scan is being done. A nurse turned up and stuck a fucking great cannula in the back of my hand and I was wheeled down and strapped into the CT machine.

All fairly OK so far, didn't like the cannula being inserted but that should have been the worst part. However halfway through the scan a severe disembodied voice came over the intercom, 

"Injecting now, do NOT move at all or this will have to be done again"

I didn't move but for some reason it was quite exquisitely painful and left me with a deep distrust of CT scans. There was one small moment of levity during this torture session. As the iodine travels round your body you feel a rather unusual warm sensation, they'd warned me about this, however when it reached my arsehole I genuinely thought I had shit myself.

So, this was what was going to happen, I have no control over my life anymore, people are going to strap me into a machine and inject me with dye and it's going to be excruciatingly painful.  As a British male I have to submit to this with a stiff upper lip and a complete lack of emotion, unfortunately my upper lip exhibits an extraordinary level of limpness and the insertion of needles has a tendency to make me pass out. I am in other words, a complete wuss.

Although, I am as mentioned, a complete wuss, I have, over the years, been in hospital many, many times having unspeakable things done to my ankles and feet. In my adult life I have never felt the need for anyone to come into the hospital with me. Just drop me off and I'll get on with it.  I was about to discover that this was no longer a viable proposition.  When asked how I was getting to the hospital for the upcoming CT scan I presumed I would ride my motorbike in, find a convenient parking space and wander up to the radiology department. This was greeted with cries of derision from all sides. 

Cancer comes with a different set of rules, we have all watched a surfeit of television shows, films and even adverts where the patient is accompanied by hordes of relatives. I was not allowed to break this narrative, Helen, my other half, would accompany me and that was that. To be completely honest it was quite nice to have someone with me.

We made our way to the radiology department and sat down for the inevitable 5 hour wait, three minutes later a nurse called my name and I was marched away to another room for the torture to begin. The two radiologists had a combined age of about 20, I swear one of them hadn't yet left school.

I nervously explained about my unreasoning terror of CT scans and he calmly said, "That won't be happening today". However he still stuck a fucking great cannula in the back of my hand and I was ready for the off. There was a lot of humming and the bed ominously slid into the big donut. Some minutes later the disembodied voice said "Injecting now, don't move"

The pain was intense, the needle came out of my arm and blood spattered down over the side of the bed onto the floor...oh alright, I didn't feel a thing, it was a complete anticlimax, no warm sensation, no overly stimulated arsehole, nothing. A bit more humming and the bed slid backwards and forwards a couple of times and that was it.

I hopped off the bed and thanked the two teenagers and exited smartly, still no wiser as to what was possibly wrong with me, but another scary procedure had been ticked off the list.

Onwards and upwards I guess, just if I see a tunnel, definitely stay away from the light.