The phrase above was the title of a sitcom on British television during the 1960’s and the only reason I am using it as a title is that the words came to my mind this morning for no reason at all. It did, however, make me consider one or two things which have happened to me during the past 18 months of my life.
During these months I have been diagnosed with poly myalgia rheumatic, prostate cancer and have also had to undergo a major operation for aneurysms in my aorta and renal arteries, not the nicest of things to have to put up with, but the operation was a success and I am still here to tell the tale. The cancer is another thing all together.
The first part of my treatment, which is still ongoing, was to have a hormone implant which would drip feed the hormone into my body for a period of three months. This should have been then repeated every three months for a fairly indefinite period. Almost as soon as the implant was stuck into me I started to develop what can only be described politely as ‘mood changes’. This severely impinged upon the lives of the people I was then living with to such an extent that I was made an outcast in my own home. In retrospect, I think I can understand and accept what happened to me, but not the underlying reason behind it, but that is another story of infidelity and lying which I do not intend to discuss in this article.
During the course of the first of the three month periods of treatment I complained about the side effects to my oncologist and asked that she find a suitable alternative when the period came to an end and was due for renewal. She agreed, and at the start of December last year I started on a course of tablets which would perform the same role as the implant, and all went well from that point of view.
The difficulty lay with the effect this was having on my partner and my relationship. In a nutshell it fell apart and she asked me to leave the house in March declaring that she could not cope with the mood swings any longer. The truth is a bit more prosaic.
Which brings me round nicely to discuss ‘Never Mind The Quality, Feel The Width’.
Which is more important to us, the length of life or the quality of that life?
From a purely philosophical point of view I suppose it is an argument which has been discussed many time, certainly I have had this discussion many times with many different people. It has always provoked interesting thoughts.
So, which is more important, to enjoy a long life, or to have a good enjoyable life?
When I was faced with the prospect of having to stick with the hormone treatment for several years and possibly having the mood swings go with it, one of my first thoughts was that it was not even worth considering. My life had taken a massive unpredictable turn for the worse and I was no longer in control of what was going on around me. Not only that, the people I loved were turning against me because of the terrible way in which I was behaving. For many nights I lay in my bed thinking of what to do, the same questions churning over and over in my mind.
If I continued with the hormone treatment then would I continue to suffer the problems of the moods?
Would my body get accustomed to the hormones and settle back into whatever was normal?
If I stopped taking the hormones would I become my normal self again?
If I did stop taking the hormones would I then be able to go on and have the radio therapy treatment which the oncologist was suggesting?
Did I really want to put myself through the radio therapy treatment, knowing that it would probably leave me feeling weak and miserable towards the end?
Who was I doing this for, in view of my partners’ intention to completely finish our relationship?
What was the point in it at all?
During an appointment with the oncologist I asked her what the life span prognosis was if I took the treatment to the end of its 37 doses of radio therapy. She told me that there was a good chance I would live for a further ten years after the end of treatment. “And if I
stop the treatment here and now?” I asked. “Five years at the most” she replied.
So, yet another problem. Do I take the hormones and then the radio therapy and more hormones at the end of it for a further ‘guaranteed’ ten years of life, or do I stop the whole merry go round now and take my chances?
I took the cowards way out. My partner threw me out for someone else, and I am taking the pills and will start the radio therapy in a few weeks time, hopefully to live until 2021, by which time I will be 74 years of age, and what will life have for me then?
Something to look forward to?
There is a slightly humorous side to all this, as there usually, if you look for it.
Last week I had to go to the cancer treatment clinic at my local hospital. The purpose was to give me an MRI scan and discuss the start date for the treatment. This is something I had been looking forward to for some weeks and read all the literature I had been sent by the clinic prior to arrival at the front door. One of the things it was fairly insistent upon was that my bladder should be full, and went on in some detail to explain why and how long before my visit I should drink liquid to fill up my bladder.
On my arrival at the clinic I was asked if I had emptied my bowels that day, I replied that I had and felt at first it was just a rather personal question the staff used in order to get to know the patient a bit better and put them on a friendly footing. I asked the nurse if she had emptied hers that day. For some reason she did not reply.
She then asked me if my bladder was empty. “Ah, “ I thought, “I know why this is important”. “No, “I said, “I have filled it with water in preparation for my visit”. I smiled at her, thinking “What a clever boy I am”.
“It needs to be empty then” she said. I looked at her slightly nonplussed and asked why that should be as the literature I had been sent made it clear that my bladder had to be full before the MRI scan could be taken, as this would then be used as a ‘norm’ guide for future visits for the radio therapy. It is rather like painting a bullseye on a balloon filled with one litre of water. If you put one litre in the balloon and then paint a bullseye on the side of the balloon the bullseye will still be there the next time you fill the balloon with one litre of water. Simple really.
The nurse told me I had to go to the toilet, empty my bladder and then drink two 300 mls of water, and then in twenty minutes she would come and get me.
I went to the toilet, emptied my bladder, then drank the two cups of water. Everyone in the waiting area was watching and I felt a complete fool. But, hey ho. So what? Nobody who was in there was in there waiting for a bus, they had all come in for cancer treatment of some kind or other.
So, after a wait of twenty minutes the nurse came back and took me into the MRI scanning room and asked me to lie down on the scanning bed. She and her technician then went into an adjacent glass fronted room and pushed a few buttons, and lo and behold, that was me scanned. All done and dusted, so to speak. Not so.
The two of them came from the goldfish bowl and approached me. “We have a problem” said the nurse. “In order to get a good clear scan of your lower abdomen we need to have your bowel empty and your bladder containing only a small amount of water.
There is too much matter in your bowel, and so we need to do the scan again in two weeks time after you have taken some medication to ensure your bowel is empty”.
I told friends later of the outcome and the universal opinion of the whole incident was that they were not at all surprised as they had always thought that I was full of shit.
Nice friends eh?
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