5. Just Go Ahead and Die Quietly

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We have many preconceptions about cancer, these are fed by a deluge of slightly inaccurate information from books, magazines, television and most of all these days, bloody wellness influencers. 

I am starting to come to to the conclusion that there is a Darwinian imperative lurking in the pernicious trend of believing every fucking thing that is on the internet rather than a proper scientific double blind trial conducted by people who have been studying their field for years. The conclusion is this, we should encourage this trend as much as we can as it will thin out the herd for the rest of us.

Apologies, cynical grumpy old man came to the fore a bit there, lets get back to cancerous inaccuracies, watch any series on the TV and a protaganist will get cancer, they will be rushed to a hospital that is the only one willing to try a new procedure, the cancer will be removed and then we will see them celebrating with their tearful relatives.  Well to use a sadly underused word, bollocks, absolute bollocks, the reason for these bollocks will become increasingly evident in further installments. 

To be honest, I've just looked back over my own writing and I think we can conclude that in the last few missives I may have given the word 'bollocks' slightly more airtime than it deserves. Oh well, bollocks. 

Right now I am quite happy that they are going to, apparently, remove the cancer in three days time. I am also, frankly, shitting myself empty. I've had lots of operations but they have all been, relatively, far away, well as far from my head as they could get since they've all been of my feet. I'm used to having painful feet, it's a way of life. Head's are different, a bit too close to home, and I hates a sore throat, me. The consultant very helpfully told us that it was going to be the sore throat from hell. Ooh er, I don't much like the sound of that.

The very next day I received a text to attend a pre-op appointment at the BRI at, approximately the break of dawn. Pre-ops are generally a piece of piss, turn up, answer a bunch of questions, if you're unlucky decant several gallons of blood and leave, job done.  

This is not an appointment that requires the presence of anyone else so I checked the weather forecast and set off on the trusty Honda, said trusty Honda is quite a large bike and I, despite the addition of many pounds of extraneous fat am a fairly small person, with a dodgy knee and ankle to boot. At my tallest, according to the wall at home where all the family heights are recorded, I just about topped out at 5 foot 9 and a half or 176.5 cm for those of you who have joined the decimal revolution. 

Something untoward has been occurring over the last few years and now I can barely manage 5' 8".  Frankly, I am shrinking, and I don't approve, this can cause some issues with tall heavy motorcycles. 

It's early December and the weather, although not inclement is distinctly chilly, but, hey ho, it's not raining so I'm in the de rigueur kevlar motorcycle jeans and a rather natty wax cotton jacket that I have taken a liking to.  There is a slight issue with the jacket, it looks fantastic, complements my slightly portly figure, goes nicely with a tweed waistcoat, what's not to like. Well, I bought it in the summer and although it is waxed cotton, it is also mesh, to allow cooling breezes to blow through. Because I am a tart and like the way this jacket looks it is my first choice when out on two wheels.  

Halfway to Bristol I am starting to regret my decision, to not put too fine a point on it, I am heading hypothermia-wards quite quickly.  Of course as I skirt the Cumberland Basin it begins to drizzle lightly. By the time I arrive at the hospital I am in somewhat of a bad temper which is not helped by the only motorcycle parking for the entire hospital being completely full. To make matters worse, although not technically late, I am cutting it a bit fine. 

I grumpily make my way back out onto the road and find a parking space for which I have to pay. This involves manoeuvring the fairly tall and heavy motorcycle backwards whilst not actually in possession of the appropriate length of leg. This in turn causes some tightening, or possibly loosening of the old anal sphincter as my feet slip on the tarmac. To put this in context, I'm on a fucking hill, you can't park the bike leaning down the hill as it will just fall over, on the other hand you can't park it leaning up the hill as there is not enough lean and it will fall over. Parking a heavy motorcycle on a hill involves the use of fairly hardcore quadratic equations to get the fucking thing into a position where it won't fall over and more to the point you can get the bloody thing out again later on. 

The only method of paying available to me is by the app which is not a problem as I always use the app, it's at this point I discover that I do not have the app on the phone, it's new and I haven't yet installed it. It's now raining slightly more heavily. I remove the crash helmet and try to shield the phone from the rain whilst setting up the fucking app, the level of bad temper is gradually escalating and I am the recipient of some alarmed looks from passers by as I swear rather loudly at the bloody phone. I have to enter my bank card details which keep getting wiped off as I sweep the rain from the phone. I eventually manage it and pay for the parking whilst hurrying down the hill towards the entrance of the Bristol Heart Institute.

As usual all the angst of the previous few paragraphs was to no purpose at all. I arrived at the pre-op assessment ward well before time and strode manfully up to the door past a waiting room full of people only to find that it was locked.  I sheepishly returned to the waiting area and took my seat with about 20 other slightly anxious looking people. To be honest we all looked fairly healthy, so I guess appearances can be deceptive. One elderly lady was very concerned that she might be in the wrong place. The man next to her, who for some reason I remember was from the Forest of Dean, had a look at her letter and reassured her.  "If you're in the wrong place, then so am I." he said with a smile and she calmed down somewhat.

It wasn't long before hordes of competent looking nurses started appearing and within a minute one of them had called us into the reception area where our names were taken and we were directed to another waiting area. The receptionist at the second waiting area gave out questionnaires to everyone and we sat in rows diligently filling them in. Before long a very bubbly, Australian nurse directed me to a side room and the pre-op began in earnest.

I'd done my homework and bought a print out that contained my blood sugar count and blood pressure readings for the last month, it also included an average for both and against each day the drugs I was taking and I had been noting down my meals.  This obviously caught her eye because she quizzed me at length about how I went about cooking pheasant which was one of the entries. What also caught her eye were the drugs that I was taking. In particular the blood thinners I take to ensure my brain refrains from exploding.

"When did you last take the clopidogrel?"

"This morning, at six o'clock" I replied, feeling very smug as I had all the times in front of me.

"Hmm, that might be a problem"

She didn't elaborate and before long I was horsed back out to wait some more. An older nurse appeared wearing Rudolph antlers and a Christmas jumper, she called my name.

"We need to take some blood, is that OK"

No, it's not, it's really not, I was still suffering the bruises from the recent work experience nurse's ineptitude and wasn't really looking forward to more needles.

She ensconced us in a cozy side room and I gave my normal apologetic spiel about possibly fainting. She propped the door open, that's a new one on me, and got me to lie on the couch. From long experience it is nearly always a good thing to have an older nurse taking blood so I was fairly confident that everything would be fine.

There was no searching for a vein for half an hour this time, she tapped a few times, and whipped the tourniquet round my arm and before I knew it she had the needle in and the blood extracted. It was a good thing she was so quick because the pain was out of all proportion to anything that I have experienced before when having blood taken. This was going to have slight repercussions for at least a week.

I was ushered back out to await an appointment with an anaesthetist. Before long my name was called by a somewhat jaded looking man in pink scrubs. I was ushered into yet another side room. He was fairly blunt, 

"We can't go ahead with your operation as you are on blood thinners, there is too much of a risk"

"Oh, OK shall I just go ahead and die quietly then?", I didn't reply, 

"The way your blood thinners work means that they need to be stopped at least 7 days before the operation"

"What the actual fuck, over the last 3 weeks about 300 people have asked me about what drugs I take", again, sotto voce. I must have looked somewhat devastated as he said, 

"Because of the cancer, I know your surgeon will want to schedule this as soon as possible"

"I should fucking well hope so"...lots of inaudible replies in this bit.

Then he told me to fuck off and go back home.

Just to add insult to injury, there was a sodding great queue of traffic on the hill and I had to manouvre the bloody bike backwards and forwards about a million times while praying I wouldn't fall off in front of the assembled Bristolian commuters. 

Somewhat depressed, I pointed the bike at Butcombe and did what the anaesthetist requested and fucked off