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February 2011

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My Hospital Nightmare

Monday, February 28, 2011 in drugs, medical care by admin | 1 comment

Suddenly one night I got very sick.  I was alone in the apartment, and just managed to call a neighbor, who came over immediately.  I put in an emergency call to my oncologist Dr Spittle, but there was no room at the hospital till the next day.  So I had a hallucinogenic evening, just me and my morphine together, and I went to hospital the next morning.

morphine, cannula, penguins - they're all the same to me

The day was the same day as my best friend for over 65 years went to Antarctica, on an anniversary trip with her husband.  The only good thing I could think of, reading her blog, was to realize I was happier in hospital than riding the big waves coming out of Drake’s Passage.  I was really sick, being attacked by a bunch of nurses and doctors; they all seemed like penguins to me in my morphine haze. I’ve never known a time when I was angrier, more belligerent, sicker.  I was sure I was going to die.  Angry at everybody who walked and talked and came into my vicinity. Too angry to blog. My friend Martin Sexton put his head in his hands as I berated a nurse for being ten minutes late with pain control medication, the she-devil in me surprised him.

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross may have been right about the angry stage which takes over right before you die.

From Wikipedia:

“Her extensive work with the dying led to the book On Death and Dying in 1969. In this work she proposed the now famous Five Stages of Grief as a pattern of adjustment. These five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In general, individuals experience most of these stages, though in no defined sequence, after being faced with the reality of their impending death.”

On the second day of my gaol sentence, I was deeply into the anger stage when a tall fit physio appeared, waiting to take me on a hike.  Behind him came a speech therapist.  I took one look at them; I wasn’t interested and sent them away.  That took all my strength – I had to sleep for the rest of the day.

Beyond the usual cancer symptoms – nausea, diarrhoea, and horrible pain – I had also developed pneumonia.  They gave me courses of antibiotics, though I was amazed that I had pneumonia, because I never coughed.  And I was so tired, too tired to read, too tired to talk, too tired to watch television.  This lasted about 5 days.

The nurse would come in to change my cannula (the tube which delivered the antibiotics intravenously) and I would keep mixing it up, and calling it a catheter. She would look at me strangely and wonder why I would want my catheter changed, when it was working very nicely, taking care of things the other end. Finally I would end up going through the words – catheter, canister, canola, cannoli – and never coming up with the right word, cannula.  So I was the hospital idiot, and I would end up getting three or four pricks on my thin veins as I looked for the right word.

Finally my very black knight in white armor came charging in and noticed I had been crying, which is something I never do.  But in this instance he was right, I had totally given up all hope.  The only thing that made me smile was to think of my friend Susan paddling among the penguin dung, instead of the dung I was dealing with – and believe me after six days of nothing I produced some amazing dung.  It looked like something from open sewers I remember from my travels.

Back in the pristine hospital bed, I was accosted with a bevy of pills. I gave up looking up each additional pill on the internet to find out side effects.  What did it matter anyway? I was on my way out.  I did sneak a look at one of the constipation pills and in my drug haze I think it said for terminal cancer.  When the message is depressing go off line.

Morphine and oxycottin carry constipation as their outstanding side effect. I want to say a word about the pills they give you to counteract and how they don’t work. I guess if you spend your life in clubs not using the bathroom is a big advantage.  Personally the ineffectiveness of these drugs scares me.  I find prunes, cabbage, licorice help; but sometimes even I lose my faith completely. A quick trip to a developing country might do it, all I can say is the western world is not up to the task.  Where is Delhi belly when you need it?

But by now I had reached the bargaining stage: I would take any pill whatever in order to feel better and get out of hospital.  The food suddenly became awful, after I had put up with it for years – even liked it –  I think it was just my perception.

After 10 days I could deny my impending death enough to get out of hospital.  I even let the tall fit physio take me ‘round the hallways so I could get good marks.  By the time my friend Jane Hamlyn appeared at the hospital, and organized carers for me at home, I was ready to accept any advice.

After going through anger, and compromise, I was able to contemplate acceptance, so home I went.

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The Birthday Party – Part 2

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 in cancer prognosis by admin | Add a comment...

This is me welcoming everyone to my party

As my lovely goddaughter Georgia said, when she was helping me send out invitations to my birthday party, it was unlikely that all 60 plus would come.  But very nearly all did, battling through the snow, to my delight; all ages, from 3 months (Stella’s babe) through to sprightly 80-year-olds.

The chefs at the Royal China Club outdid themselves, piling on the dim sum, and the duck and all its important trimmings (I’m getting hungry just thinking about it, despite my current nausea).  Even my friend, infamous for his strange tastes – he’ll only eat seaweed at Chinese restaurants – was personally accommodated with enough to drown in.

We wrote a seating plan – not me, I was too sick, but Georgia and a friend did, almost entirely at random, because they didn’t know who many people were.  So a lot of shuffling together happened, and friends of mine going back decades met other friends who go back decades but in a separate strand.   They could have been at a masquerade party, because guests only knew a few other guests, and the chances of their being sat together were slim.  It made for some interesting conversations.

Fortunately, my friends are from a broad enough sweep that no one was in danger of running into their enemies or their ex-partners.

But all the young people were sat together, because it’s important to me: this is where friendships of the future are formed, here at Chinese restaurants celebrating an ancient friend’s birthday, rather than the usual, school and uni and the rest.

The most touching part of the evening was a Robert Frost poem recited by the actor and dear friend of mine, Richard Griffiths, who substituted my name for that of Frost’s daughter, Lesley:

The actor Richard Griffiths reciting a Robert Frost poem at my birthday party

The last word of a Blue Bird

As I went out a Crow

In a low voice said, “Oh,

I was looking for you.

How do you do?

I just came to tell you

To tell Margie (will you?)

That her little Bluebird

Wanted me to bring word

That the north wind last night

That made the stars bright

And made ice on the trough

Almost made him cough

His tail feathers off.

He just had to fly!

But he sent her Good-by,

And said to be good,

And wear her red hood,

And look for skunk tracks

In the snow with an ax -

And do everything!

And perhaps in the spring

He would come back and sing.”

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Birthday Party – Part 1

Thursday, February 10, 2011 in cancer prognosis, remission from cancer by admin | Add a comment...

[This was begun December 2010, but not completed or posted because I’ve been too sick, my right hand paralysed, and in much pain.  But having spent 3 weeks out of the last month in hospital, I’m now home and I’m beginning to smell the daisies rather than think of being buried under them (daisies don’t smell, and I’m going to be cremated, so much for reality).]

Snow plays havoc with my birthday plans

It is 6 in the morning on the day of my 72nd birthday party. This is the second annual party I have had since the return of my cancer.

At the first party (held at the same time and place with most of the same people), I had good reason to think that I might not be around for a rematch. Last year I had just gotten over three operations, was very tired and had completely lost my voice. Five months of this year was spent in remission and the rest of the year in treatment for my recurring cancer.

December 2010, party number two, I was taking chemotherapy orally, and had just finished my last session of radiation on that day, a birthday present.

The amazing thing was that I felt better this year.  I had more energy, I could speak; yet the prognosis for my cancer is still terminal.

So it is 6 in the morning and I’m rifling through files and emails trying to find my sense of humor.  I feel seasick, though nowhere does that come up in side effects of oral chemo.  This is what happened yesterday which has led to both the tragic sense of humor loss and this terrible woozy feeling:  my son called to say that his flight from JFK had been cancelled.  I looked up the flight’s status and indeed it had been cancelled. Several hours later I checked again (as mothers and grandmothers do), this time it said in the small print to disregard the prior notice: the flight was not cancelled.

It takes several hours to get to JFK from Long Island so the family (Juno 5, Clara 10, mother and father) had settled into the idea of not coming to London, and made other plans for the day.

My son is writing, producing and directing a low budget independent film, due to start shooting two weeks in to the new year.  Not coming to London gave him two extra pre-production weeks, and he wasted no time.  He was already in New York City looking at locations when the flight was called on again.  I could have shot him rather than the film but never mind.  At that point it was impossible for him to get to JFK in time.

He promised he would bring everyone in February, but I did something I wish I hadn’t done.  I used the ‘C’ word and said I might not be around in February.  I hated myself for doing it, but part of me thinks that way.

This was the bad news: as far as I was concerned, they were the stars of my birthday party, as they had been the year before.  But there was good news too - more on the party in the next blog.

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