Today I see the cancer specialist Dr B. He asks me if I have had the scans. I wonder why he doesn’t already know and it hardly fills me with confidence. He disappears for several minutes to make some phone calls. When he returns he shares the findings with us both. The detailed scans have highlighted five liver tumours. They will give me twelve weeks of treatment before taking more scans. If the tumours have shrunk then they will operate before giving me another three-month course of Chemo. He tells me that he will book me a Chemo appointment in two weeks.
He introduces me to the research nurse who is co-ordinating the trial. I have a week to decide if I want to go ahead. Chris tries to persuade me to volunteer. I am unsure whether to subject my body to even more chemicals. We take away the leaflets to read.
We go and look at the Chemo suite. It is in a remote part of the hospital, on an upper level past long ceiling pipes and strange locked cupboards. We go up in a lift that is more suited to transit than people. The suite itself appears out of place in such strange surroundings, but the waiting room is welcoming. The nurse in charge takes us round. Patients are sitting in comfy recliners. I am relieved to see they are not screaming in agony and that they look peaceful. The charge nurse wants to do an initial assessment a few days prior to the commencement of the first session.
Now that treatment is about to start I am getting cold feet. I am loath to be a guinea pig for new treatment as it involves weekly drips and lots more medical interventions. I want to bottle out.
I wake at 3am when I am at my most vulnerable and the realisation hits me like a sledgehammer. The treatment is going to last twice as long as I had expected. I have to face a major operation and then more of the same. When I had Rubella at aged ten, I was in tears: “But Mummy I don’t want spots!” I feel the same about these five tumours.
The interventions may not work. If there were an injection that I could have right now that would take me away from all this I would opt for it. I talk it through with Chris at dawn. He is understanding, but when I go for a morning swim he is already speculating on what he will say to the police when I don’t return.
“Oh she goes for a swim most days when the tide is right. I would have gone with her but I wanted a lie in. She must have got carried out by the tide.” It had crossed his mind that I might deliberately swim out and keep going. We can laugh about it now, but my feelings of hopelessness swamp me like a dark blanket and I struggle to shake them off. I think I need some time to come to terms with all these changes.
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