Getting the results

Results day is here at last. Woke up in terror with my mind throwing up all sorts of scenarios but there is a predominant one, that of hearing my consultants voice saying that I have three months to live!!!

I phone my warrior male friends who have been with me every step of the way with this cancer and tell them that I am really scared and want my Mum (who is dead) and in reality would have been too scared herself to have been of much help. However in times like these a Mum is a good person to have.

I am offered Reiki by one of my friends which is great. It did calm me down a little bit. My sister arrives and at 11am we set off in the taxi for the hospital.

It's like going to your death. I feel sick, sweaty, numb terrified and angry that I am in this position again. Shit! This is not fair! This is the sixth time my family and I have been left waiting for the results and it does not get any easier.

You can smell the fear in the waiting room everybody looks really stoical to me where as I have the feeling that I am looking terrified. I can't take up the offer of tea or read a book except just keep moving my crossed leg in agitation.

The oncologist, surgeon, radiologists etc all sit in a joint meeting discussing your case. It's all very joined up and confidence building as they all look at what's up with you and give their expert opinion. I see my surgeon Mike and he gives me a little smile which gives me hope. Whilst waiting for these results you scan the doctors for any tell tale give away signs as they are reading other peoples names out.

Finally after what feels like waiting for twenty four hours my name is called. Now it feels like the walk on death row......I get a glimpse of what it must be like to walk to your impending death. Images of Mary Queen of Scots arise as she is going to be executed etc ... What the fuck is going to be said.....

Phew! We all breathe gain the cancer has not spread.... They want to do another scan just to be sure....another wait..... bollocks! My young enthusiastic oncologist insists he is bouyant about a positive outcome. They just have to satisfy themselves that it is all okay before they go ahead and treat the right armpit locally with surgery/radiotherapy....

He says he is sorry I have to wait for the results another fortnight!!! I dont know why but I start to feel guilty/ashamed of having written "Hell on Earth". What will he think of me, this nice doctor who has just told me that my organs are clear of cancer.

This is exactly why patients don't feedback on the pain of waiting for results....the pain dissolves in the ecstasy of hearing good results. It's like experiencing the pain of having a child.... it's never again until the child is born and then all is forgotten.

I feel as if I have jumped out of my box when I wrote "Hell on Earth". Patients are meant to be compliant and not question the system....oh well.....

My family and I leave the hospital in a daze and after calling into our local cancer care centre for a debrief session we head for the nearest hotel for champagne and celebration that I am not facing "three months". I feel totally wiped out I am starting to come down from the andrenalin rush....

I feel jubilant this morning and I have decided cancer or no cancer to live my life to the full. These waiting periods have made me fearless. I am going to live the rest of my life as if I had three months left. I want to put two lines under the cancer no matter what comes my way and live life to the max taking all the opportunities out there.....watch this space......

Five days and counting

Today I am in my fifth day of waiting for the scan results. I will know on Tuesday 3rd July if the cancer has spread. Surprisingly I don't know if its because I have cathartized my feelings on to paper with "Hell on earth", but i feel calm at the moment and able to get on with things. Well that's what I am feeling today......

Nuclear Medicine !

Today, I have just been to get all the scans done to frightening places like my liver. bones and lungs. I really hope they are clear.

My daughter and I go to a weirdly named department called "nuclear medicine" It has got the worst waiting room imaginable. Half the overhead lighting does not work...the paint has not seen a lick in 25 years and opposite where the patients sit is a huge picture of the most miserable looking faces possible staring into the miserable faces of the patients opposite...

I feel one of my feedback letters coming on........

Laid out in my flamenco dress !

The first night after being diagnosed is always the worst for me. My mind wants to throw up my funeral and what I will be laid out in. The last time it was my flamenco dress which I had to laugh at it was so tight i could hardly get it on for a flamenco performance I was doing. So how the undertakers were going to fit my bones in to it ......

My mind likes to give me the scenario of the hospice bed scene with me lying in state looking serene giving audiences to all my loved ones and friends.... What a lot of pretentious shite...the mind, never trust it....

I am feeling however the sadness and the anger at possibly having my life cut short. I don't fear death its just I have lots left I want to experience in life and dont want to go yet.... That's the struggle I have. It's not with death itself, that's inevitable, it's with the timing...

Feelings of Peace and Acceptance

My Doc tells me of some other drugs including chemo. I am thinking how much can my poor body take. I dont take any of the technical information in.....I just want my mammy I want someone to come and take this pain away its like being in a bad dream....

The Doc makes arrangements for me to have my organs scanned to see if the cancer's spread again there is a wait there is always a wait......

Just after walking out of the Doc's office I experience a feeling of enormous peace and acceptance that the cancer is here it aint going yet. It has to live around me not me live around it.

What I had been doing is living from one chemo to the next hoping that I can get back to normal in periods of remission. There is no getting back to normal. I have to learn to live with it even through the bad times there is no putting my life on hold anymore for when I feel better.

Life goes on and I will be playing it to the full whether I feel shitty or not.....life is too short and I don' know how much longer I have. I have to find a way of normalising this cancer.....

My daughter and I finally get away from the hospital and decide to go for a pizza. I hadn't eaten all day and I feel like writing to Pizza Express sharing with them what a comfort a "four seasons" pizza and a bottle of chardonany has been in all of my three diagnoses.

Results day arrives and I am scared

Today I get FINALLY the results I am so scared...I go to the ward where I get my Hickman line for my herceptin attended to. It's there when I notice I may have an outbreak of shingles...help I'm falling apart..

I am told that I need to stay in isolation till I am seen by the Doc for the results.

The doc comes over and I can tell by his face it aint good news the Herceptin has failed. The docs were looking to that to keep the cancer in check. The lump was cancerous and twenty nine days after the chemo finished the cancer returned!!!!

I am surprisingly calm, probably numb. This is the third diagnosis of cancer in 2 years. My daughter is distraught and for a moment my oncologist looks worse than me. We stay a long time in the "awfulness" that it has come back yes.... well hurry up doc what have you up your sleeve now.....

Hell on Earth 2

I sent "Hell on Earth" via my local cancer group to the Head of Surgery and to the Head of Pathology. I did also enclose a suggestion that a written explanation of the waiting times alongside an acknowledgement for the distress patients experience should be considered.

The aim of writing "Hell on Earth" was not only for me to find a channel for my anger, fear and sadness at the cancer possibly re-occuring but also to "wake" the staff up including my doctor who are colluding conciously and unconciously with the "this is the way things are round here".