My 'All Clear' gift

Jude decided to buy me a post treatment 'all clear' gift. And I have to say that it's rather fabulous. With a 12*optical zoom it'll be just perfect for 'arresting' pics of the hairs up our neighbor's hooter.

I do like this being well again malarky - GIFTS!

Still knackered

I may not have cancer anymore but I'm still knackered - from the treatment, from being 35, from walking, from expectation, from the waiting, the wondering and the google searching.

But mainly from walking the dog for miles every day in this heat.

So not doing very much of anything today - which is just fine by me

I'm Boring

"You're Boring" said Doctor McSpecialist

"Your scans are clear"

And with that I am no longer "Cancer Boy"

No more tumors, no more lung rot, no more bouts of bloody coughing, no more chemo.

Done.

Clear.

I still have to see the radiation oncologist on Tuesday - as radiation therapy is usually recommended for people who where stage III / bulky mass or worse; but it's radiation as insurance not last ditch at cure.

Rather an anti-climax; but a warm, fuzzy and somewhat squishy anti-climax.

Let y'all know what comes next as soon as I do

It's Jude and the dog on a blog

b-tach(es)
Originally uploaded by stevenjude.

No real reason to blog this other than I quite like the pic

Results day?

Today is supposed to be the day that I get the results of my PET and CT scans.
Somehow I very much doubt that this will prove to be the case.

Yesterday's CT scan took a mind (and arse) numbing 5 hrs to get through as a combination of broken machinery, short staffedness (it's Memorial Day weekend) and 'mediacal emergencies' clogged up the corridor in which I was asked to take near permanent resisdence. Had I spent much longer there I'd have needed to a visa, I swear.

Why they have a plush waiting room and yet insist that all CT patients wait for their scans in a draughty corridor I have no idea.

Still the cast of characters kept me amused.

Old Mr Grace - must have been about 97 - in years and lbs. He was ambulatory only with the help of a walker that looked like a half dalek and a nurse that looked like a half amazon. His trips to the bathroom were frequent and lengthy; his walk to the CT machine held me up by another 20 minutes and he never spoke. Not even to say "You've all done terribly well"

The Drinker - was a dark haired, jewish woman in her 50s. She didn't stop talking. Primarily because she'd turned up late for her appointment and was told that she was now at the back of a LONG line, but also because she's overheard one of the nurse's say "oh god, The Drinker's back". This precipitated much pacing, muh repeating of both the late and drinker story and my favorite "I'm an x-ray patient, not a mental patient"

The Coffin Dodger - came in with her mustachio'd son. He looked, dressed and sounded exactly like the Simpson's earnest neighbor and seemed OUTRAGED that HIS mother had to wait. Especially as she'd left her oxygen in the car. A master of the audible sigh and meaningful look at the watch he became rather stiff in the shoulders having told me 'It's 4.15 pm, my mom has a 4.00pm appointment" and being told "Well mine's a 2.15 appointment and there are two people in line in front of me"

The drugged up mullet - came in as an 'emergency'. Walked as though in a stupor, spoke through thick lips with a thick accent, had a husband wearing a wife beater who sported 'I beat my wife' tattoos. Quite frankly everyone was astonished that they'd managed to park their trailer anywhere near the hospital - and that Jerry Springer didn't show up. 'Drugged Up Mullet' claimed it was only the 'Xanax' that was making her slow, dizzy and dozy (she couldn't open doors) - we believed it may have been genetic.

The Razor Hipped Ho - another emergency. Except she arrived in agony and left when there was a wait. Olive skinned, collogen lipped and wearing what my have been illegally tight jeans she sashay'd up and down the corridor wailing 'they said to come here' but left when her mom / pimp / mompimp turned up and demanded to know "Why you aren't at work, girl"

And finally The Must Obey Orders Frauline - a german woman in her early 70s who patroled the benches demanding that cell phones be turned off, that barium liquids were drunk at the stated intervals and that the hospital pay reparations for her delay.

It was a LONG wait, but I have to say that I (The Vampire?) rather enjoyed it

Shaved dog

doggy
Originally uploaded by stevenjude.

Yup, Velcro got the summer shave and now looks like a retarded poodle.

Still I managed three laps of the park - during a local school's walk-a-thom with nary a cry of "Shaggy dog, it's the shaggy dog."

Blessed. blessed relief

PET Down, CAT today

PET scan went exactly to time yesterday.

All very efficient and everyone remembered me, perhaps I should be collectioning 'frequent scan points' - I must have enough for a toaster by now.

Da Vinci Code (Post PET 'treat') was like the movie version of 'Allo Allo' - lots of dodgy French accents and a search for a hidden treasure ('Leesen very carefully Pro-fizer, I zall say zees only wornce - where iz ze fallen Madonna wiv ze beeg boobies?')

CAT scan today - lots and lots of barium to drink. Lots of Iodine to be injected. Lots of post scan water to be drunk.

And then on to Billy Connelly ('Oh, j'ou bloody think so?) as post scan treat of the week.

Thursday results, then memorial weekend (and a BBQ) before Radiation oncologist Tuesday

An Alanis style 'irony'

Having managed to survive, without complication, all of the cancer drugs, poisons and 'experiments' thrown at me over the last 5 month I find myself having a rare (but not serious) reeaction to my over the counter allergy medication.

I'll keep taking it until after the scans - because it does work and my chest is clear; but the inability to pee is an unexpected and unwelcome side effect that will see me ditching it in favor of streaming eyes and hearty coughing by the end of the week

Not a huge amount to say here

It's cold out - which is a blessed relief as the recent warm weather brought large numbers of still untanned legs and deathly white breasts out onto the streets. You couldn't move for blue veined calves and Elvira like cleavage. Most unseemly.

Tests tomorrow and Wednesday - can't say that I'm looking forward to an hour spent in a corridor draining a glass of barium solution every ten minutes but c'est la via. An 'la vie' is what this is all about.

Last time I was there an old guy kept shouting

"I can't drink this, it's all too much"

To whit his wife replied

"You say that about drinking water at home, you've always been a whiner'

I'm always amazed at how people become so comfortable with their domestic dysfunction that they feel that they can play it out (loudly) in public.

The scans themselves are okay. The room is always freezing and a battery of doctors (is that the right term?) stand elevated and behind glass (is that symbollic?) no doubt catching glimpses up your gown and making disparaging remarks about the size of your spleen - I know I've been most evil when viewing people from behind a one way mirror - there's something about it that turns them into 'subjects' rather than real people.

PET scan takes a lot longer than the CAT scan - and involves laying down for an hour before being 'taken to the machine' but both are harmless.

Both though have a sticker, right next to the laser, that says in small print that you have to stare at to see 'do not look at the laser' - too late, I'm blind and about to be cut in half - Bond style.

Worst of all is visiting the oncologist. A long wait is punctuated by your being moved from waiting room to 'Suite' - then from 'suite' to consulting room, where you sit, usually for about 90 minutes, bored, cold and despairing as the doctor finishes off a plate of fois gras at his country club and meanders back to the hospital in his black German car.

Anyway lots of puff about nada

Time to wake up 'The Judith'

Considerably older than you

I’d always pictured my riding into old age on a chariot of over-enunciation, tales of the Raj and deep violet dressing gowns heavy with the yellow stench of good cigars.

I’d never really thought about the physical limitations that old age throws at you. And I suppose that old people don’t really think about them all either. Many of the symptoms of old age are so stealthy, so patient that you simply forget what it felt like to be fully functional.

But this treatment has brought the full force of old age to me with dread speed. My fingertips are numb – so I’m already fiddling (pensioner like) for change and with the lids of coffee cups. The drugs make it harder and harder to pee, demonstrating the effects of the swollen prostate most of us have in the future. The hair has gone – and suddenly hats litter the house as I try to combat the effects of sun upon shiny pate. My energy leaves not slowly, but all at once, like an elderly cell phone that can no longer hold a charge. And of course there’s the proximity of death; ever present, hovering just about my left shoulder and whispering a dark incantation.

No being old is not all it’s cracked up to be.

I think I’ll buy myself a motorbike and see if fate helps me escape the slow decline into doddery-ness.