wobbly steps around the room. She pronounces herself satisfied and helps to lever me back into bed. I resolve never to move again.
Hospital stays are like being a vampireâs house-guestâsomeone is always coming at you asking for blood. Iâm getting so conditioned that I grit my teeth, roll up my sleeve and offer my arm the minute a strange face enters the room. Occasionally, the strange face turns out to be the cleaner.
The cleaners, overall, are the friendliest staff members. My nurse and her successor are still into the Sturm und Drang method of care-taking. An Irish nurse has been assigned to patients in the rooms opposite mine. I hear her cheery morning voice saying, âAnd what can I do for you mâdarlinâ?â as if she really means it. I lie there silently thinking, âI want you ! I want you !â willing my thought-beam to invade the nursing roster and bring her to my side. One afternoon for a brief two hours, the universe accedes. I am in seventh heaven as my fantasy nurse helps me up and disentangles me from my drip with gentle, loving care.
The pathology results are supposed to be due back on Friday. I look up hopefully when Greg enters the room, but thereâs been a delay. The same story is repeated on Monday. On Tuesday, Greg comes in grinning. Theyâre clearâitâs a confirmed stage 1. âWow!â I say, with stunning eloquence. The tumour was twelve centimetres, grapefruit size, and grade 3âmeaning it was large and very aggressiveâbut somehow it hadnât spread. I have a vision of it as a big, overgrown bully-boy, who is secretly agoraphobic and doesnât want to leave home. I am also to discover that grapefruits will never again look the same to me. Beside myself with excitement, I ring everyone I know to tell them the news.
Twice a day, I haul myself up and go for a little stagger around the ward. The first few days of this are agony. Any movement involving my abdomen sets off sensations that feel like the classic torturerâs implements. I shuffle a few feet around the ward and return to bed feeling as if Iâve completed six marathons. I am stunned by how weak I am. Itâs as if Iâve aged ahundred years in a few days. I set myself a goal of a few more minutes, a few more yards each day and enter into the challenge with the machismo of an elderly Schwarzenegger.
One morning, a middle-aged woman tentatively enters my room. I figure she has come in by accident, looking for someone else. But no, she sits herself down by the side of the bed and smiles at me. I smile back, wondering who the hell she is. âIâm a chaplain,â she says. And smiles again. I smile back. Silence. I smile again. She smiles back. Silence. I am sure that chaplains are supposed to speak comforting words to their patients. Perhaps she got confused and went to psychoanalysis school by mistake? She smiles again. I smile back. I deduce that she is actually very nervous and doesnât know what to say. She must be a trainee chaplain. I decide to put her out of her misery. Iâm feeling fine, I tell her. I donât really need to talk. She sighs with relief and becomes positively expansive. âThatâs wonderful,â she says. And leaves. I feel exhausted.
I have to decide what to do about chemotherapy. From the outset, I have been expecting to have it, but Greg tells me that itâs not considered necessary for a stage 1a. He knows that I was presuming I would have it, so heâs gone ahead and got a second opinion from another oncologist. He, too, says no chemo necessary. An oncologist friend of mine agrees with him and consults another colleague as well. Yet another voice saying no chemo. And so I figure that with four oncologists saying I donât need chemo, it would be verging on masochistic to go ahead.
Australia follows the European line; that chemotherapy isnât needed for 1as. America takes a different position.
Hospital stays are like being a vampireâs house-guestâsomeone is always coming at you asking for blood. Iâm getting so conditioned that I grit my teeth, roll up my sleeve and offer my arm the minute a strange face enters the room. Occasionally, the strange face turns out to be the cleaner.
The cleaners, overall, are the friendliest staff members. My nurse and her successor are still into the Sturm und Drang method of care-taking. An Irish nurse has been assigned to patients in the rooms opposite mine. I hear her cheery morning voice saying, âAnd what can I do for you mâdarlinâ?â as if she really means it. I lie there silently thinking, âI want you ! I want you !â willing my thought-beam to invade the nursing roster and bring her to my side. One afternoon for a brief two hours, the universe accedes. I am in seventh heaven as my fantasy nurse helps me up and disentangles me from my drip with gentle, loving care.
The pathology results are supposed to be due back on Friday. I look up hopefully when Greg enters the room, but thereâs been a delay. The same story is repeated on Monday. On Tuesday, Greg comes in grinning. Theyâre clearâitâs a confirmed stage 1. âWow!â I say, with stunning eloquence. The tumour was twelve centimetres, grapefruit size, and grade 3âmeaning it was large and very aggressiveâbut somehow it hadnât spread. I have a vision of it as a big, overgrown bully-boy, who is secretly agoraphobic and doesnât want to leave home. I am also to discover that grapefruits will never again look the same to me. Beside myself with excitement, I ring everyone I know to tell them the news.
Twice a day, I haul myself up and go for a little stagger around the ward. The first few days of this are agony. Any movement involving my abdomen sets off sensations that feel like the classic torturerâs implements. I shuffle a few feet around the ward and return to bed feeling as if Iâve completed six marathons. I am stunned by how weak I am. Itâs as if Iâve aged ahundred years in a few days. I set myself a goal of a few more minutes, a few more yards each day and enter into the challenge with the machismo of an elderly Schwarzenegger.
One morning, a middle-aged woman tentatively enters my room. I figure she has come in by accident, looking for someone else. But no, she sits herself down by the side of the bed and smiles at me. I smile back, wondering who the hell she is. âIâm a chaplain,â she says. And smiles again. I smile back. Silence. I smile again. She smiles back. Silence. I am sure that chaplains are supposed to speak comforting words to their patients. Perhaps she got confused and went to psychoanalysis school by mistake? She smiles again. I smile back. I deduce that she is actually very nervous and doesnât know what to say. She must be a trainee chaplain. I decide to put her out of her misery. Iâm feeling fine, I tell her. I donât really need to talk. She sighs with relief and becomes positively expansive. âThatâs wonderful,â she says. And leaves. I feel exhausted.
I have to decide what to do about chemotherapy. From the outset, I have been expecting to have it, but Greg tells me that itâs not considered necessary for a stage 1a. He knows that I was presuming I would have it, so heâs gone ahead and got a second opinion from another oncologist. He, too, says no chemo necessary. An oncologist friend of mine agrees with him and consults another colleague as well. Yet another voice saying no chemo. And so I figure that with four oncologists saying I donât need chemo, it would be verging on masochistic to go ahead.
Australia follows the European line; that chemotherapy isnât needed for 1as. America takes a different position.
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