Too Good For Giving up: The Cancer Diaries Pt 12

I've been quiet for a while and to be honest I don't really fancy writing this yet but I decided at the start of all this I'd document every step both good and bad in the hope of at least informing people what it was like to have cancer and to, hopefully, help someone along the way. So here goes...

On Monday the 6th June I went into York Hospital to have a bowel resection, this involves cutting out the tumour and a section of bowel either side of it. I'd done all the pre-op stuff the day before - eat nothing (fucking starving!) take loads of meds at different times of the day, inject yourself with some other stuff around 6pm and drink some pre-op drinks (not bad to be fair). So I was ready, shitting myself but ready.

I presented myself at the ward at 07:00 and had a few meetings with various medical people about what could happen (really didn't help with the shitting myself thing...) and heard the nurse on the desk tell my wife to ring about lunchtime as I was the second one in. Hearing this I assumed I'd only be in theatre a couple of hours, I was taken down at 10:00, had a bit of banter with the anaesthetic people and then went to sleep. When I came round all dopey and groggy (more so than usual!) the nurse looking after me, having noticed the Newcastle tattoo on my chest gleefully informed me she was from Sunderland - on reflection I should have realised things were only going to go downhill after that! Looking at the clock on the wall I could see it was 17:30 meaning I'd been in theatre for over seven hours! This probably explained why, despite all the drugs I was on, I was in a lot of fucking pain! 

I then spent a week in York Hospital, learnt how to manage and change my stoma bag and made a couple of mates. The pain never really went away though despite the morphine I was necking at regular intervals. I was discharged on Saturday 11th at teatime and figured that would be it, doss about, eat loads, recover enough to go for walks etc and jobs a good 'un. Oh you silly, silly boy...

As it turned out the hospital had forgotten to discharge me with a drug known as Loperamide, this helps to thicken up the flow of waste your bowel starts pumping out initially after surgery. So when I started throwing up on Sunday and didn't stop until Tuesday combined with my bowel non-stop disposing of everything immediately I became severely dehydrated. I was due a visit from my Stoma nurse that day so my wife rang her to let her know what state I was in and her advice was to get me to Scarborough hospital as quickly as possible. At this point on Tuesday morning I'd managed to get myself downstairs and onto the settee but was incapable of anything else - it was a massive effort just to breathe in and out! - and was mentally and physically at rock bottom. I'm not exaggerating when I say that at that moment I was beaten, I had nothing left and fully expected to die on that settee. 

I will forever be grateful to my wife, Lisa, for taking charge. She gave me a pep talk and then, somehow, got me off the settee, washed and dressed, into the car and took me the twenty miles to Scarborough Hospital where I was placed on a drip for three days, they also weighed me and it turned out I'd lost a stone in weight in the three days between hospitals!  

I've mentioned before how music has helped me along this journey and in particular Liam Gallagher's 'Why Me Why Not' album during my Chemo sessions, well he had a new one out prior to my operation which I made sure I got and one of the songs (Too Good For Giving Up) echoed round my brain the entire time I was in hospital. It's about being close to the end but not giving up and it helped enormously - thanks Liam you big Manc fucker.

I was discharged from Scarborough (which, as hospitals go, was really nice and the staff were lovely) on Friday 17th feeling much better and immediately got home and started eating - had the perfect excuse for being a greedy fucker for once in my life.  Come Monday the 20th I felt good, I was eating well, getting out in the garden and my stoma appeared to have calmed down...in fact there wasn't that much coming out at all...

On Tuesday my stomach started to hurt and was bloated and inflamed...and still nothing was coming out.  I decided to try a few things (prune juice etc) and if nowt worked then give my stoma nurse a ring tomorrow - this was a mistake. By Wednesday I was in agony with both my stomach and my kidneys, couldn't walk up the stairs and my energy levels were back at the point where, once more, it was all I could do to breathe. Again, the mighty Mrs Rivers got me back to Scarborough Hospital when I'd really had enough of everything and was seriously looking out for the grim reaper and relief from the pain.

Once there it was decided I'd need a CT scan to ascertain the problem but they thought my bowel had 'kinked' causing a blockage. When the porter came to get me for the scan I had to drag myself off the bed and into a wheelchair - I really wasn't well at this point and as we entered the hot and airless lift I passed out. Coming round outside the lift to the stares of everyone at the main hospital entrance opposite there was a nurse right in my face and a doctor steaming down the corridor shouting for a 'Crash Team' - never let it be said I do things by half!

The CT scan showed I had indeed got a blockage and there was (quite literally) a lot of shit backed up in there, so now what to do about it - if you're a bit squeamish you might want to give the next paragraph a miss...

The first plan was to stick a catheter in my stoma (that's the bit of bowel that now sticks out of my stomach and empties into the very fashionable bag I now sport round my belly) I thought this might hurt but it couldn't be worse than the pain I was already in.  I was mistaken as it didn't actually hurt and managed to remove about 800ml of 'product'. I figured they would just keep doing that until I was empty as apparently that would then allow the bowel to move internally and free up the blockage...but no...'cos that would have been easy wouldn't it...

Then some junior doctors turned up (I'm hooked up to a drip by now but still in a lot of pain at this point) and informed me they were going to stick a line into my stomach via my nose - again I thought this couldn't be worse than the pain I was already in! If you know me then you know I'm quite well endowed in the hooter department and you might have even noticed that said hooter was quite obviously broken at some point and not re-set properly - this is important to remember.

JD no. 1 tells me what's going to happen and 'It wont hurt' - which is a massive fucking lie! It's absolute bastard agony going up my nose and then, when they finally get it through and towards my throat, I start gagging and that line's going nowhere near my stomach! After seeing how it's never going to work and the obvious distress I'm in they do the sensible thing...AND FUCKING TRY AGAIN! After getting exactly the same result they inform me that they'll be back in an hour to try again. After a whole twenty minutes (that's not a fucking hour is it?) they turn up with an even cockier JD who's convinced he can do it and it'll be easy. He can't and it isn't. So they shuffle off telling me they'll have to think of something else, personally I'm just glad they've fucked off. As it turns out my broken nose was never properly sorted leaving me with very narrow nasal cavities, too narrow in fact for tubes to go through - you live and you learn eh.

The main doctor comes back with one of his senior colleagues, they both take another look at my swollen stomach and agonised face then have a conversation that goes like this :-

New doctor - 'Have you tried a catheter in the stoma?'

Original doctor - 'Yeah, got about 800ml out.'

New Doctor, turning to him quizzically 'Why did you stop?'

Original doctor - shrugs and goes to get my stoma nurse.

At this point I'm screaming internally - 'Yeah...why did you fucking stop?'

***

So it's nightime, I'm on a very nice three-bed ward on my own - it's actually the same ward I was in last week (I'm thinking of asking for a loyalty card at this point) - and I've got a catheter stuck in my stoma that drains into a very large bag but nowt's happened for a few hours. I'm hoping the new doctor was correct in his assumption that it'll drain of it's own accord as the alternative might involve tubes elsewhere.

Then at around 22:30 something glorious happens, a massive fart comes down the tube and ripples the bag and I cheer like Newcastle have just scored a goal 'cos I know that if you're passing wind then it's all working and sure enough as the ward is inevitably filled from A&E (and the poor bastards have to listen to me singing LG songs all night in triumph! 😁) I start emptying the bag into bowls for the night staff to measure. At around 02:30 I realise the pain has entirely gone from both my stomach and my kidneys and I feel fucking great. The next morning I get to speak to the number one consultant during the ward rounds, he remembered me from last week, and he tells me I passed over three litres during the night and I can go home today. Which is mint but I hope I'm still there at lunchtime 'cos i'm starving! 

So anyway, I was weighed after all that and we discovered that since the operation I'd lost two stone in just over a week and was weak as a kitten so apologies if I haven't replied to messages but I've basically been building myself back up and managed to hit a milestone about ten days ago when I went to the papershop and had a little walk along the seafront on my own. 

Since then I've had my birthday, I've got much stronger and feel much better (this has involved eating for England!) and have targeted Newcastle's first game of the season for my comeback. I'm waiting to hear from my consultant about both the nodes they took during my operation (and whether I'm in remission or not) and when I can have my reversal op. I couldn't have contemplated any of that when I was stretched out on my settee fighting for breath and expecting to die only a few short weeks ago but it shows how things pass and you should never give up. I nearly did and am ashamed of that but hopefully I've learnt from it and if any of you are reading this and facing something similar then maybe you can take a bit of hope or inspiration from it.

Remember, sometimes down - never out!

UPDATE!!!!

I was writing this on Monday 18th July with a view to tidying it up and publishing on Tuesday 19th. I never got round to it 'cos I had an appointment with my Stoma nurse who took it upon herself to give me some very good news (as my consultant was on holiday) about said nodes and any required further treatment. 

Celebrating! 

They took nine (9) nodes from me during the op and tests revealed that nil (thats fucking ZERO baby!) were cancerous...which means that as the tumour has gone I am now OFFICIALLY CANCER FREE.

Get. The Fuck In. 

It's taken a long time to get here and I'm still shitting into a bag but honestly, if I'd been offered that last August I'd have snatched your hand off. 

I hope these blogs have informed and amused a bit during my journey. I'll probably keep doing the odd one until my reversal and recovery (there's a lot of diaorrhoea involved apparently..smashing!) but for now keep yourselves well, please go to the GP if you suspect anything's wrong and most importantly, enjoy ya lives and stay positive.

See you later

Rivs