6. Low End Sado Masochism

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So, to return to my previous preoccupation with our preconceptions about cancer. Cancer is discovered, surgery is scheduled, cancer is removed, patient lives happily ever after.  On the flip side surgery is cancelled or delayed cancer gets worse, patient dies.

This scenario was exercising me somewhat and I was quite depressed about the whole situation. The one thing that was worrying me was the blood thinners. No one had given me any time scale as to when the surgery would happen, and no one had mentioned stopping the blood thinners.  

The first thing I did was stop taking the blood thinners the very next day and substituted aspirin, I've been on low dose aspirin for the last 14 years and so far the brain has remained intact so it must have been doing some good.  The only issue was I had no idea whether the aspirin would be allowed before the surgery and I had no contact details, I couldn't ring the cancer clinic as it did not appear to have a phone number so I was not sure who to call.  I resorted to calling my GP and requesting a call back so I could discuss what to do next.

Now you might think that it's not a very good idea to stop taking drugs that are stopping me having a stroke. It probably isn't but with a complete lack of any guidance I had to make my own mind up.  What were the chances that they were going to ring me and say that the surgery was in 6 days time. Pretty high I thought, and if that happened then it would be cancelled if I was still taking the clopidogrel.

I then sat around moping for the weekend hoping that someone would call and give me some idea what the fuck I was supposed to do next.  Deafening silence from all healthcare professionals was what followed. I was scheduled for an endoscopy the next week so I was guessing that would go ahead now. 

Into the bargain I was feeling sick most of the time and had vague stomach aches.  One of the letters to my GP mentioned a mass lesion in my lower gastric pylorus.  A modicum of Googling did not really help as a stomach lesion can be anything from an ulcer to aggressive cancer.  

The weekend came and went with no word from anyone, Late on Monday I got a call from the NHS, 

"I'm afraid your endoscopist is not going to be available and we will not be able to do your endoscopy at South Bristol"

"Fuck me sideways, what a surprise", I thought quietly to myself

"Would you be able to come in to the BRI on Wednesday afternoon"

"Er, yes,no problem, can you confirm what drugs you want me to stop beforehand"

"We'll send you a text after this call", which, much to my surprise, they did.

This was somewhat inconvenient as Helen could drop me to South Bristol Community Hospital easily and bugger off and go shopping or visit the hordes of relatives who are only 5 minutes or so from the hospital. The BRI on the other hand is completely different kettle of fish, in fact you have about as much chance parking as you would in the aforementioned fish kettle. Ah well 'What can't be cured must be manured' or some such arrant wank.

Now as I have mentioned on many occasions I have a quite ridiculously extravagant gag reflex, I often can't brush my teeth early in the day as it makes me gag, I have, before now, actually bought up a bit of sick.  The thought of someone sticking something down my throat was filling me with horror.  It turns out that one of the guys I was working with has had numerous endoscopies and he told me in no uncertain terms to insist on sedation and insist on the good stuff.

I was extraordinarily nervous about this endoscopy, actually more nervous than about the pending surgery.  Helen dropped me off at the hospital and went into town to do some Christmas shopping, and I was left in the tender care of the NHS camera operators. I was swiftly booked in and it wasn't long before I was called into a side room with a nurse.  As expected she did her best to persuade me to not have the sedation. 

"They will spray the back of your throat with a local anaesthetic, it tastes of gone off bananas"

This did absolutely nothing to persuade me, in common with all my other wussiness I hate anything banana tasting, oddly I don't mind bananas themselves. Last time I had a camera down my throat they'd used the banana local and I had very nearly thrown up so I wasn't having any of it. I basically lied through my teeth and told her that in the past when I'd had to have a camera down my throat without sedation I had passed out. I hadn't and it was only down my throat not a full endoscopy. 

I wasn't sent back to the waiting room but taken to a ward and given a bed to sit on.  

"Wait here and someone will be along to cannulate you".

More bloody cannula's, I was a bit anxious about this, as for some reason my elbow was still painful from the blood test the week before. This is quite odd as I have had any number of blood tests over the years and none of them were as painful and certainly the pain had not persisted for even a minute let alone a full week. Generally I prefer a cannula in the elbow as the back of the hand tends to hurt more, plus I had previous with students using my hand for dart practice until I blacked out, but this time I was actually hoping for the hand.

Two very nice nurses turned up and the first thing they said was, "We are student practitioners and we're here to cannulate you"

I must have turned white because they looked a bit concerned, personally I was fucking terrified. I explained yet again that I was likely to pass out. I suspect that my blood pressure had taken a dive because they weren't able to find a vein, they called another more experienced nurse who immediately found a vein and then said, 

"Right, there you go, you can take it from here"

To her eternal credit one of the students looked at me and then said "I think it might be a good idea if you do this"

Huge sigh of relief from me and the cannula was slipped in with no issues at all. I was left to my own devices to await the upcoming nastiness, I was a bit less concerned now that the cannula was in place. Sedate me back to the stone age and do what you want is my take on this.  My previous experiences with sedation have been uniformly marvellous, in that, on every occasion I have been completely unaware of anything. Apparently I have been conscious but I have no recollection and that is how I like it.

I've sat around in any number of NHS waiting rooms over the years and usually can count on about a 3 hour wait before anything happens.  This is obviously no longer the case, in and out is the mantra these days. I'd hardly leant back on the bed before I was called in.

There were two nurses and the main torturer in a room full of obscure electronics. I climbed on to the bed and lay back full of trepidation.

First thing one of the nurses said was "I need to spray the back of your throat"

What the actual fuck?  

"I thought I was getting sedation?"

"You are but we still have to numb the back of your throat, I tell people it tastes like boozy banana"

Oh fucking marvellous, "I will probably gag I'm afraid"

"Don't worry we are used to that, open wide"

She proceeded to spray the back of my throat with the singularly most disgusting substance and yes, I gagged but managed to keep the sick down. 

"We need to put this in your mouth", this looked like something from a fairly low end S & M store which forced my mouth apart and tied behind my head.  Now we are talking gag central, I started gagging immediately and quite violently.

"Not long now", I felt a cold sensation in my hand, but I was still gagging uncontrollably. I forced the mouthpiece out of my mouth with my tongue and stopped gagging. Fortunately they didn't notice and gradually the ketamine or whatever they gave me started to take effect and I let the mouthpiece slide back in.

I was still fairly compos mentis when they slid what felt like a drainpipe down my throat.  The sedation must have had some effect as I have very little memory of the procedure and it was over and done with in what seemed like about 3 minutes. The endoscopist then said something startling.

"I didn't see anything unusual apart from your stomach wall which is a bit nodular"

Hmm I have a nodular stomach wall, is this good? Who knows, certainly not me and I was not in any fit state to be asking questions. I was taken back to the ward where I had to wait for an hour before I could be picked up.

I lay there indulging in some people watching, there was an Asian nurse with spiky hair who was making sure everyone was OK and that relatives were called to pick people up and get them out as quickly as possible. I heard him asking whether the nurse on reception had rung Helen, she hadn't.

"He's not ready yet it's only been half an hour"

"Ring her now, it'll probably take her a while to get here"

15 minutes later my phone rang, it was Helen.  

"I'm lost, where are you?"

"I'm in A414, where are you?"

"I don't know, I came in the wrong way and I've ended up in a dead end, what floor are you on?"

"All the rooms start with the number of the floor, so 414 is on the 4th floor, you need to find a lift or the stairs, go to the 4th floor and then follow the signs for A414 which is the Queens Day Unit"

She rang off and about 5 minutes later the spiky haired nurse came over and told me Helen had arrived.  He took us to a side room and gave us the spiel about what I was not allowed to do for 24 hours, cook, drive, sign legal documents, write anything in a blog.

"The good news is, the endoscopy found nothing out of the ordinary in your stomach"

The look of relief on Helen's face was enough for me to be happy to have gone through 5 endoscopies without sedation.  This cancer malarkey is much harder for the people around you.

That was that, I had mildest of mild sore throats as they had said I might, it wasn't enough to worry about. It was nice to know that there was nothing going on in my stomach but, and this was a fairly big but, a Kardashian sized but, if you will, I still had cancer busily growing behind my left tonsil and no word as to when this might be removed. Christmas was now imminent, it'll probably have to wait for the new year.