17. I'm Blaming the Cancer

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It has probably been seriously remiss of me not to keep you all updated with the latest exciting news from the Acheson-Crow household, well at least to tell you whether I'm going to drop precipitately from my rather precarious twig.

I think what I need to do is return to late April where you last saw me throwing up rather copiously and testing multiple machines at Fowlers Motorcycle Emporium.

The throwing up, thank the Lord, came to a very welcome, abrupt end not long after our last conversation and apart from a brief reappearance a couple of weeks ago has not returned.

Eating however is a rather more complicated affair, it would seem that I have become, to not put too fine a point on it, a toddler. How so? I hear you ask, and thereby hangs, another tale.

The specialist nurse who told me that it would be at least 3 months before I was approaching something like normality was pretty much right apart from the fact that normality is now...different.

Firstly the motorcycle situation suddenly became somewhat more complicated due to my extreme lack of any impulse control. I was riding my overly large motorcycle to my sister in law's house for an impromptu barbeque toward the end of April when the notion occurred to me that I could just keep the Transalp (the fat motorcycle, keep up) and purchase a cheap small bike as a runaround.

No sooner had this thought occurred than it took root in a rather fixed manner, to the end that the next day I found myself in Fowlers yet again perusing motorcycles. In the Royal Enfield section were two rather lovely specimens that I could easily sit on with my feet flat on the floor.  I enquired of the sales assistant what damage to my pocket would occur if I purchased one of these paragons only to be told they had only just been taken in part exchange and hadn't been priced up yet.  This annoyed me exceedingly so I poked the salesman sharply in the eye and left to take my custom elsewhere.

Over the next couple of days I looked up information on the smaller of these bikes, the Royal Enfield Classic 350, and discovered that generally the price was gratifyingly low.  All the road tests said that the bike was underpowered and nearly all of them compared it unfavourably with the Triumph 400 that I had already taken rather a severe dislike to.  This was not really getting me anywhere.

A couple of days later Helen needed to go to the opticians to have something complicated done that would take some time and was under strict instructions not to drive. I duly became the chauffeur for the day and we rocked up at the opticians only to find that the appointment would take significantly longer than anticipated.

"Not to worry, I'll go and have a mooch around in Fowler's for an hour or so"

And so I found myself once more looking round a bunch of bikes that I had already seen and therefore was not that interested in. Never mind, they have a cafe that does outstanding bacon sandwiches, which would have been fine apart from the slight issue of having to eat said bacon sandwich which would probably take me most of the day and then I would promptly vomit over the nearest unsuspecting salesman. Bear in mind this was the end of April and the last vomiting session was very fresh in the memory.

I wandered disconsolately, I have a suspicion that I wander disconsolately rather too often within these pages, right where was I, yes, I wandered disconsolately over to the Royal Enfield area and moodily stared at the rather startlingly good looking Classic 350 in red and chrome.  It still did not have any price on it which annoyed me all over again, the same salesman from the other day was sitting at the desk nursing a black eye, alright, alright, I've never poked anyone in the eye in my entire life, but I had considered it.

I went over and asked whether he knew how much the 350 was yet. This it turns out was fatal, I'd asked about the price twice. I then compounded my mistake by telling him that I knew exactly how much the bike would be as I had done some research.  Smelling blood like a lion at a waterhole, he bounded up from his chair and exhorting me to stay where I was, set off to talk to someone senior who could tell me how much of my hard won cash would be required to buy said 350.  What you need to know is this was all said purely in the pursuit of more information, I had no intention of actually buying it.

Now, you also ought to know that Fowler's, and to be fair any large motorcycle dealership, tend to charge vastly over the odds for any second hand bike that they sell, so I was not expecting much when the salesman returned. I was rather taken aback when he quoted a price £300 less than I was expecting.

"Would you take an offer" I asked somewhat tentatively, "How much for cash?"

The salesman scoffed somewhat derisively,  "You do realise we make much less on a cash offer" he said

I agreed that I knew this was the case but however, how much for cash.

He inevitably came back with "How much are you offering?"

So I offered him another £200 less than he had quoted, which was a whole £500 quid less than the bike was going for in other dealerships of the same size.

He said he could do it for another £100 less which left me in somewhat of a dilemma, I'd only come in to waste some time while waiting for Helen and I was now on the cusp of buying a motorcycle that I hadn't ridden and had uniformly dreary reviews. This was the point to sigh and tell the salesman that I'd think about it and set off for the opticians and my loving wife, what I actually did, was say:

"Fuck it, go on then, I'll have it", as I previously averred I have a severe lack of any impulse control, I'm blaming the cancer.

So by the time that I had to pick Helen up from the opticians I had to confess that I was the owner of yet another motorcycle and had very little idea how I was going to fit it in the garage which would now house 4 motorcycles where one had often seemed to take up too much room. 

So far this has not mentioned how I am or how the cancer is progressing or regressing whichever is appropriate.  This maybe because, as soon as I started feeling a smidgin better, the cancer firmly took a back seat to much more interesting things like ravishingly pretty red and chrome motorcycles.

Within a few weeks of the arrival of the new bike I was at the Distinguished Gentleman's Ride

with my daughter on the new bike and a few weeks after that my brother Rob arrived and we set off for the Dig for Victory 1940's show with the old bike that I had bought at the back end of 2024 and a few weeks after that I was at the Adventure Bike Rider's Festival with the old bike and the little Montesa trials bike so life was far too busy to be thinking about cancer, although it does tend to hang about like Banquo's ghost trying to get in on the act.

Approximately every other day, in between these exciting interludes, I would receive a summons to the Ear, Nose and Throat Dept of the BRI. The first of these was about a month after the radiotherapy ended and I was able to use the new bike for the purpose for which it was bought, to wit, riding to hospital appointments. This was nothing short of revelatory, the new bike revels in town traffic and parking in exactly the same place where I nearly dropped the Transalp was a joy. I trotted into ENT with a spring in my step and possibly a song on my lips, lines from Wordsworth may have occurred about 'birds singing a joyous song and young lambs bounding as to the tabor's sound'.  I may be overly egging the pudding here but I was pretty chipper nonetheless.  

I was for the first time entering the hospital for something routine where nobody wanted to irradiate my neck or stick a horse needle in my arm.  It was nice to just be going in for a normal routine appointment.  I signed in and shortly was ushered into the presence of a doctor who appeared to still be playing with dolls.  

The first sign that something might be awry was when I tried to sit down on a normal chair and she indicated that I needed to sit in the examination chair, my heart took an abrupt lurch and the birds promptly stopped singing and if there were any lambs they certainly weren't bounding any more. She asked me a bunch of questions about my weight and eating which I answered somewhat tentatively, my eyes could not help swivelling toward a tray that was by her chair and was covered with plastic so I couldn't see the contents.

I was right to be concerned, after asking her questions she removed the plastic covering:

"I just need to have a look down your throat"

Oh fuckity fuckity fuck, I don't like the look of this. 

"Are you OK if I put this camera up your nose?"

As you can imagine, I screamed, punched her swiftly on the nose and while she was momentarily distracted, made my escape.

In other words, I said "Of course, no problem"

With a singular lack of ceremony she stuck the camera up my nose, ignoring my slightly desperate gagging noises when the camera touched the back of my throat, just as swiftly removed it, said, "That all looks good, we'll see you in four weeks time" and summarily kicked me out of the door.  

The whole appointment including the insertion of the camera had taken under five minutes and I was walking back out of the main door feeling slightly shell shocked. I mean it's nice that it all looks good but they could have given me some warning.

By the end of June I was eating slightly more and the appointment for the fateful PET scan had arrived. I was to present myself to the Department for Nuclear Medicine at Southmead hospital and be pumped full of excitingly effervescent radioactive isotopes and once more scanned to discover whether I was still cancerous.

I duly arrived in a somewhat nervous condition, enough time had passed that I was no longer required to have a chaperone to these appointments and again rode to the hospital on my new bike.

Oddly, I wasn't at all nervous about the results of the scan, I was nervous about encountering the work experience nurse once again and being poked full of more holes than a pin cushion. I need not have worried, the nurse this time was reassuringly efficient and whipped a cannula into my arm in double quick time. I'm definitely getting used to these scans, halfway through this one I jumped slightly and realised that I had fallen asleep, I lay extra still hoping I hadn't ruined the scan.

I hadn't, two weeks later Helen and I toddled into oncology to find out the result. A slightly astigmatic young nurse called me through to be weighed. Helen and I had a small wager on what my weight would be and I was gratified to find I was exactly right, 67 of your English kilos or maybe to be more accurate 67 of your European kilos. Whichever it was I had not put much weight on. This was all to the good as you may remember my oncologist had always complimented me on looking very dapper and so, being a complete tart, I had deliberately made sure to turn up to this appointment in full tweed which was complemented by my new slim physique. Shallow? Moi? never.

I needn't have bothered, we were ushered into the presence of another astonishingly attractive oncologist whom I had never met and she showed zero interest in my sartorial elegance. She very quickly told us that the results were fairly reassuring and the treatment had done it's job and they were pretty sure that I was all clear. Not completely sure however as the radiologist was concerned about a shadow on my lymph node so I had another PET scan to look forward to in three months time.

It was a little strange as it almost seemed like an anti climax, after all the daily hospital visits, the near continuous throwing up, mask wearing and chemotherapy it ended with a very quick visit to an oncologist I'd never met before who told us 

"Pretty sure you are all good, see you in three months"

I would say that all's well that ends well but we still have the strange and unusual situation where I have become a toddler, but that can wait for the next installment...if the constant motorcycle buying and riding allows 😉