Living with cancer by David In Ireland (best books for 7th graders .TXT) 📕

/> With the increased energy I am able to do things like go for a short walk, go to the shops for food, tidy up after myself. These all seem like small things but to me right now they are big things.

I am not enjoying the way people stare at me, the lack of eyebrows and eyelashes mixed with grey skin and a bald head (even with hat) seems to be like carrying a big sign with CANCER PATIENT written in bold letters.

Radiotherapy begins in a week or two, then its seven weeks and I am done, I hope. My energy levels are pretty good, I am getting out for a walk most days (weather permitting) which I am enjoying. The nausia is almost gone, I still get strange feelings in my stomach and a bad taste in my mouth but it does not last that long and I am getting them less frequently.

I was in St.Lukes for verfication of my initial radiotherapy measurements a few days ago. I was on the machine for about 2 hours in quite an uncomfortable position. Sometime soon I will get a phone call to let me know when the radiotherapy begins, it will last for 7 weeks and I have to go there 5 days a week. Radiotherapy..... I have finally started radiotherapy. I have now completed the first two treatments of radiotherapy. The process of radiotherapy is that you go for what they call a 'verification' which usually takes 30-40 minutes. For me this was two hours. The machine is similar to an x-ray machine, just bigger and with more moving parts. Due to the sarcoma being on my upper, inner thigh, the position that I have to get into is quite difficult. My left leg is placed into a mould so that the treatment is in the same place each day. Once the verification was done I was told I would be contacted shortly with the date of my first treatment. A few weeks later I got the phone call to go in for my first treatment. This did not work as planned, the angles needed to penetrate the radiotherapy into my leg were not being achieved. After 1 hour on the machine they decided to give me a break as my legs were twitching and cramping. Then back on for another 30 minutes when it was finally decided that it was not going to work. I was sent home with no treatment done. It was disappointing but I knew that it was important for them to get everything right.

A week later and I was called in again, but this time they decided to only go through a 'dry run' and allow the doctors to decide if they were happy with everything. One of the problems they were having was due the fact that the radiation is positioned from my knee up to my groin. They wanted to protect my testes with the most primitive thing I have ever seen. Picture if you can a tennis ball sized cannon ball in solid steel, this ball opens into two pieces and the centre is hollow. The idea is that you place your testes into the ball and close the two pieces together. The reality is that you try and try to get the testes inside fully before putting on the top half. This very heavy metal closes to a very tight fit and any of the scrotum that has not fit in correctly will be pinched. The ball weighs so much that they have to sit it on a stand, otherwise it would pull your testes until you cry. Every time I moved it would pull my testes until tears would appear in my eyes. The pain was quite awful. But they could not get me into a position that worked, so they kept moving me, just a little to the left, and a little to the right, each time pulling and tugging one of the most sensitive parts of my body. After being in this horrendous position for a couple of hours I was close to fainting. I could not believe that I was going to have to do this every day for 7 weeks.

Eventually, it was decided that it was not possible to protect my testes, the radiation machine needed to get closer to my leg and the cannon ball stand was in the way. So it was decided that I would not have any more children and my testes would have to be exposed to the radiation. The following day I began the treatment. This treatment will be done 5 days a week for 7 weeks. The process is similar to going for an x-ray, I have up to 5 or 6 different people doing there little bit in the set-up of the machine, once everyone is happy they hit a button which sets of a warning alarm, they all leave the room, doors automatically lock behind them. I lie there motionless, then the warning alarm is taken over by a loud buzzing noise which goes on for 40 seconds, yes I counted. Then silence. One or two of the radiotherapists come back into me and help me down off the table, dressed and off I go for another day. I am told to expect the wound to begin to burn, like sunburn, but that there is a chance of a complete breakdown of the flesh (uuuuuhhh). I am also to expect to be very tired. Sunburn and tiredness I can handle, once there is no nausea I will be fine. I have done two radiotherapy treatments now, my third one will be in about 2 hours, it takes about 3 hours each day including the drive there and back. Some days the traffic is not so bad. The staff in St.Lukes are wonderful, kind and caring. It is a strange hospital, everyone has cancer. Many bald heads, head scarves and wigs. When I was in Tallaght Hospital I notice how everyone stared at me, but in St.Lukes nobody stares, they might look at you, smile and say Hi, but they do not stare.

My hair is beginning to grow again, I had to shave the other day! I have the finest, slightly fluffy, hair on my head, but as it is only about 2mm long I am still wearing the hats, it stops the staring (a bit) and it keeps me warm. The normality of radiotherapy. .. .. I completed my 8th treatment of radiotherapy today. I am starting to get into the swing of it. I drive for an hour to get there. I wait for up to an hour as the department is extremely busy and constantly plagued by technical problems. Then I have an hours drive home again. The radiotherapists are very nice. They understand the gravity of the patients situations. They appreciate how time delays effect peoples lives and plans. They are a kind and caring group of amazing workers. St.Lukes is a specialist hospital in the cancer field. Every patient has some sort of cancer. Every visitor is visiting someone with some type of cancer. All of the staff are working with cancer patients all day, every day. It is cancer central. Yet there is something different about St.Lukes, the visitors, patients and staff are all different compared to a general hospital. I found that being stared at in a general hospital really irritated me, but in St.Lukes the visitors don't stare, they are too wrapped up in their own 'cancer story'. Their loved one needs the attention so they are there for them. Even the children visiting are better behaved. Child patients are the hardest to think about. Almost every day I see children with various forms of cancer. I try to imagine what their parents are going through but it is not easy to do. Whilst we all sit together in the waiting area, with similar diseases, we hardly ever discuss anything other than the usual topical Irish events such as 'the weather' or whatever big news event comes on the TV in the corner. The one topic I hear people mentioning that is related to their situation would be how many sessions they have done and how many left to go. Some people have 4 treatments, some have 12, a few have 20 and the rest of us have 30 or more. .. .. When you sit waiting your turn, you can't help but notice how hard and fast the radiotherapists work. In fact every staff member has that same element of hard work. .. .. Every department is busy. Every body is moving quickly. It is an amazing sight, one which you rarely see in modern business. It makes me wonder how badly managed the top end of the health system is when they have such amazing staff working as hard as humans can work, under severe pressure. It does not make any sense to me, those that went to college, studied for years, trained in hospitals, now work in a field where their bosses appear to have not gone to college, not studied for years (in the right subject), not trained in hospitals.

Its friday!!! Friday's have become special to me. Most of my life I have worked on Saturday's, I always hated it, but it was always part of the job, so I did it. It basically means you can never do the late night on Friday, with job buddies etc. Since cancer I have not been working, which is financially concerning, but has one amazing plus point, on the weekends we are all free, my wife and children are all able to be together and take it easy together. So on Friday's I get that 'Friday feeling'. It is quite new to me, so I enjoy it. Its a small thing, but it is worthy of a smile. I had an appointment for radiotherapy this morning, but they phoned me to let me know that the machine was 'down'. So I am booked in for treatment at 7pm this evening past half-way point with radiation I have passed the half-way point with radiation, I have another 3 weeks to go. Then I will have a week off before some scans, x-ray's and tests. At that stage I will know if I have the first 'all clear'. I did not notice how subtly my leg slowly turned red, just like sunburn, but it is now a very angry red. On Friday my doctor noticed that my leg was beginning to swell, I have been given some cream to try and get it down over the weekend. They want to see it before I get radiation on Monday. He is talking about stopping my treatment if it gets any worse so I have to take it very easy and do as little walking as possible, keeping the let raised. It is worth it though, I do not want to have to stop radiotherapy and wait until the leg improves then starting the treatment again. I see two issues, this will drag on longer, but more importantly, the effectiveness of the treatment will be reduced if I have to take a break from it. But, that said, everything is going well.

The treatments are not taking as long now that the radiotherapists are more used to my set up. The waiting time was not too bad during the past week, never waited more than an hour! The machines did not break down once this week! I am meeting, or more to the point, seeing, the same patients each day. There are about 70 of us using the same machine so every day I sit with a variety of them. I am one of the youngest, but there are two others about my age, and a couple of children. It