You okay, Robert? Hoping to see a posting from you soon... when you feel up to it. Hang in there!

Hi Melanie and everyone
After the beard ‘shaping’ episode a couple of months ago I’ve had a better time, although I’ve been kept in hospital the weekends, which was a bummer. This is why I haven’t been in touch. I wss fed via tube for delivery of food (and one substance or another - antibiotics, chemotherapy, diuretics, &c., &c.) for several weeks – through an NG tube. I like to think of it as my eNerGy tube. A much better way of looking at it.

On the positive side, I have now completed both the chemotherapy and the radiotherapy.

HOORAH!

Yesterday (Friday 18th) I was released (oops, discharged) from hospital I’m getting there.

-0-0-0-

A sign from the Doctors, at last: Apparently I should be fully fit (for work) (whatever that means) four months after I am discharged from here. (No mention of whether cancer will have gone, although the medics seem confident that it will.)

I can eat again, after a fashion and after about ten days with difficulty swallowing. This has been achieved with the assistance of morphine tablets and liquid. This was the major problem of the previous two weeks (and one that I’m glad to be shot of)

PMA is still up there in my arsenal of weapons to fight this cancer, holding hands very nicely with my Buddhist practice, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and the drug regime of tablets, pills, potions, elixirs and tonics that I ingest in, seemingly, ever increasing numbers.

-0-0-0-

“I got of bed on the right side, on the light side, on the right side; I got of bed on the right side and I’m having a wonderful day”

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The worst thing about radiotherapy and chemotherapy, oddly enough, has been the hiccoughs! Yes.

<hic> bloody <hic> ups!
Nasty <hic> bloody <hic> ups!
<hic> bloody <hic> ups!
Man-eating <hic> bloody <hic> ups!
<hic> bloody <hic> ups!

After several weeks here in St Luke's Hospital, I realised that I was suffering a lot from attacks of hiccoughs. They were cunningly few at first and they went away if I held my breath (as they do). Over the weeks had built up to, typically, at least forty, fifty or even more attacks in a day. During the attacks, the hiccoughs came at intervals of six or seven seconds, so it was vexing rather than painful and frustrating that something like a hiccough suddenly should visit me with such frequency, and once here, should issue at such short intervals.

There was nothing that the doctors were able to do about it. ("Tried holding your breath?") I suppose that the bewildering combination of pills and elixirs that was taking for the cancer, and to counter the side effects of the radiotherapy and chemotherapy, must have some adverse effects or contra indications rattling about in there somewhere. Then the hiccoughs came with an additional threat: instead of the regular coughs, my stomach heaved in a succession of gulps, as though my body was trying to make me vomit. The motion of the coughing settled into a pattern of a series of single hiccoughs leading up to multiple spasms when it felt like my throat was being forced into my windpipe, effectively stopping me breathing, choking me.

On one evening during my evening prayers (still Buddhist, after more than 21 years) I got desperate. I was on a nebuliser for my breathing and the choking was getting to me. I would retch six, eight, ten, a dozen times, becoming more distressed each time. I think that I got to the stage where I couldn't breath until the retching resided. The cycles of retching were getting longer and, to my horror, I realised that I was getting to the stage when the cycle was so long that I was in danger of choking to death.

There's a particular piece of guidance the Buddha wrote directing us "to chant Nam-myoho-renge kyo single-mindedly ....." and "..... to continue our practice without backsliding "until the final moment of your life".

With the spasms threatening to choke me I was very possibly near to the 'last moment' of my life, or at least as near as I want to be for a while yet. What was more, even at this stage, I was chanting Nam-myoho-renge kyo single-mindedly, albeit single-mindedly yearning to get rid of my hiccoughs! So between the spasms I chanted to be rid of the hiccoughs.

Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo
"I no longer want these hiccoughs"
Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo
"By the time I finish these evening prayers"
Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo
"I want the hiccoughs to go,"
Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo

I finished my prayers a few minutes later. The hiccoughs had stopped. With the exception of an occasional 'hic' they have stayed stopped.

My spiritual triumph for the week!


Robert WT

Hello Robert

Good to hear from you. Another plus for postive affirmations and for you. Well done. I wonder if anyone else had these hicccccups after treatment like you did.

Best wishes
Vinod

The angels are not all that angelic....

Niamh Ni Lunaghi is the first and only wholly incompetent person I have met in St Luke’s. She has absolutely no gorm whatsoever, in that she is one of nature’s truly gormless individuals. Her gormlessness reaches heights of ignorance seldom before recorded. She flusters and makes decisions based on an ignorance that at times seems no less than bordering on the breathtakingly colossal.
I went in search of a form for recording what I eat. It seemed a reasonable thing to do so I asked her for the form.
“Why do you want that?”
“To record what I eat.” That wasn’t a trick question, was it?
“But why?”
“So that my daily food intake can be recorded.” Can I make this clearer?
“Who asked you to do this? Beaumont?”
“No. The doctors here.”
“and I’ve been recording my urine volumes too. Again, as requested.”
“Why”
“To record my urine volumes” is this woman naturally dense or is she trying hard?
“That’s the wrong form.” It would be, of course.
“… and you don’t need to do them anyway …”
“Look, just give me the correct form and I’ll record my urine levels. If it isn’t necessary, I will stop. I’ve been doing it for the last six days ….”
“You don’t need to do it” and with that she dives into the toilet.
“This isn’t necessary” and she tips the contents of a jug of urine down the toilet.
“Well done. That wasn’t mine. It was Sean’s and he is being measured … ”
But Niamh Ni Lunaghi isn’t listening. She’s seen an infraction of another of her rules.
“Why are those drip metres unplugged?”
She makes a bee-line for one of two metres.
“they should be plugged in at all times”.
Don’t tell us now! This is a nursing issue. It certainly isn’t a Patients issue. If equipment is to be plugged in and we are expected to do it, we should be told to do it. We’re bloody patients, not staff. Don’t criticise us for our ignorance!
I was beginning to get irritated by her blinkered attitude.
“There” and the first one is plugged in by Sean’s bed. My metre is due for special treatment.
“There’s plenty of room here.” I gesture in the direction of the space behind my locker, convenient for plugging in tomorrow evening.
Niamh Ni Lunaghi is having none of it and wheels the metre first to the corridor out of the ward, fails to find a convenient socket then changes her mind and takes it to the bed next to mine, by the window and plugs it in. This is wasted effort as when the metre next will be in use tomorrow, it will need to be plugged in at my bed.
Niamh Ni Lunaghi leaves the ward, leaving Sean and myself shaking our heads at what we have witnessed. When she returns I have my lunch in front of me. I have eaten some of the main course, which is rather dry.
“How are you doing with your lunch?”
“Fine. It’s a bit dry.”
“Can we get you anything else?”
“No, I’ll be fine with what I’ve got”
“Milk. You should try some milk”. I point at the glass of milk on the table.
“Oh. A tin of diet supplement?”
“No, really, this is OK”. To show her that I know what I’m talking about, I take out my blood glucose chart and show her, risking it’s confiscation as being on the wrong form..
“See. My glucoses are, well, perfect. If I was wildly adrift I would be worried about my food intake.”
“Where’s this chap?” Sean has replaced my dietary requirements as the hot topic.
“He’s in the loo.”
“Gone for his treatment?”
“In the loo.”
“His lunch will be stone cold!” Not likely – it had only been delivered about two minutes before.
“I’ll go and heat it up”
She is walking away with Sean’s lunch as he exits the toilet.
“I’m going to heat up your lunch” ….a brave man would have added “whether I want you to or not!” Personally, I would go spare if someone messed about with my meal in this cavalier manner.
She returns from the kitchen less than thirty seconds after heading in that direction. Assuming ten seconds travelling time, each way, the meal was blessed with a full ten seconds in the microwave. Long enough to warm it slightly, but not to heat it.
When she returns Sean is waiting for his lunch, delivery of which is delayed by another problem for Supernurse Niamh.
“This floor is sticky”. I make no comment on the state of the floor.
“Why is this floor sticky? I am sticking to this floor. Why is it sticky?” Is this a really a question you need to ask the patients, Niamh?
We ignore an obvious retort, about the spillage of a sticky substance.
“Where are the cleaning staff? Why is this floor sticky?”
She leaves the ward, presumably to contact someone in cleaning. Which she will do Unless she gets distracted en route.
It is Wednesday, two days later, before the sticky on the floor is swept clean.
I guess she got distracted!


(Name changed to protect the hapess.