A Bad Week
So there I was, minding my business, going to the dreary temp job day after day, admiring the castle, wondering about a job interview I'd had with legal aid, feeling surer about staying here, having fond memories of the previous two weeks, spent with my friend Tamalyn, who came to stay with me for half of April to explore Scotland.
On May 3, I had an appointment for a follow-up test related to an abnormality in my colon, found in x-rays taken in March. I'm lying on an examining table with a camera up my arse (or back passage, as they call it here; one pictures a dark, cobbled alley), looking at an enlarged live view of the inside of my sigmoid colon, in full colour. The room is dark and the doctor's chatting away to the nurses and I'm looking at my colon and checking my heart rate on the monitor, thinking how clean and pink and healthy my insides are.
Doctor, in posh voice and cheerful, chirpy tone: "There's the tumour. Look - you can see the ulcerations. I'd be very surprised if that doesn't come back malignant." This is followed by some light-hearted small talk about how I'll be in the hospital in two weeks, for a 7 to 10 day stay, some of it in intensive care.
Amazingly, my heart rate remains steady while he delivers this news.
Yes, that's right. Tumour and malignant - the words that are always said to some other person, a person you don't know very well, never to you; and while you're thinking it's a terrible shame for that person, you're also relieved it's not happening to you.
Well, boys and girls, it's happening to me right now.
What made it worse for me that day was that I hadn't told people I'd had symptoms and was having diagnostic stuff done, so I had to phone my kids and my sister and break the news to them, while trying to reassure them and tell them not to worry. Buckets of tears were shed that night.
The next day - May 4 - I went to work, told a couple of people, cried a bit, typed a bit and went for a job interview in my lunch hour for a paralegal job created for me by the lawyer I worked for over the winter. I managed to give an award-winning performance and was offered the job (which I didn't want). Back to work, some more crying, not much work getting done, phone call from legal aid telling me I didn't get that job, then to another interview at the end of the day. I didn't want to go - all I wanted to do was was get home and sort out my thoughts. But this was a job I wanted and had been interviewed for in January, and the firm now needed someone. Another award-winning performance and another job offer - with more money than I'd expected and training opportunities I hadn't even considered.
As you can imagine, I was a bit off my head, what with the cancer one day and all the job business the next. So I went on Saturday to stay overnight with my sister, so I'd have some company to take my mind off all the fear. Although my surgeon spoke to me within an hour of Dr Cheerful's blithe announcement and tried to reassure me, I naturally imagined the worst during the six days of waiting to get a full colonoscopy (the first one was a sigmoidoscopy, looking at only a small part of the colon). My biggest fear at that point was that the colonoscopy would reveal more tumours.
On May 9, I spent the day in the hospital after having a colonoscopy and internal ultrasound. The news was good - only the one tumour and the rest of the colon looks healthy. A CT scan is next, on May 17, to get a cross-section of the entire bowel. Then surgery on May 24, to remove 30 to 40 cm of bowel. Seven days in hospital, followed by six weeks recovery. Provided there are no cancer cells in the lymph nodes and other tissue removed during surgery, no further treatment should be necessary.
My new job - as an insolvency administrator with a small accountancy firm, working with people who've declared bankruptcy - will be held for me until I'm ready to start work, hopefully in July, if all goes well.
I've held on very well, for the most part, but have begun to have a bit of a meltdown as I start to absorb all this and have been having a bad time over the last couple of days. I'm afraid of what's happening to me, and dreading the surgery and being in the hospital. The waiting and the uncertainty are terrible and I'm reduced to tears frequently because it's always on my mind. Fortunately, my kids were already scheduled to arrive here next week and I'll have a week to show them Edinburgh before going into hospital. However, Evan's UK passport, although applied for months ago, still hasn't arrived and Ottawa tells him it hasn't been processed (although they took the payment from my Mastercard two weeks ago), so we don't know if he'll be coming. His plan was to stay in Edinburgh for a few months to work, and we'd thought he'd be able to help me when I get home from hospital as Meredith is only here for two weeks. The airline won't allow Meredith to reschedule her return flight, telling her she'll have to buy a new ticket, and Evan's ticket will be forfeited if he doesn't have his passport. He's going to the British Consulate in Vancouver on Monday morning to chain himself to their legs until they give him something authorizing his entry to the UK. If I need her, Meredith's mother-in-law, Saint Shirley, will come over and look after me. My sister doesn't live near enough to be able to do that full-time.
If this had happened last year, before I left Vancouver, I would only be worrying about the cancer and the surgery. I would have had the physical presence of my family and friends and the reassurance of continued income during hospitalization and recovery. I've made a few friends here and they're very supportive, as is my sister, but I'm no longer enjoying coming home alone to an empty house. I've been very lucky to have lots of phone calls and emails to distract me but it's not the same as having an actual person in the house with me (the cats are a comfort though).
I'm also bogged down with all the details involved in getting information about applying for housing benefits and income support to get my rent paid while I'm off work. Because I've been temping, there's no income when I'm not at work and I've lost about a week's wages in total already because of statutory holidays and medical stuff.
So there's my sad story (but with a bit of good news about my new job). I'm feeling rather sorry for myself these days, but, like everything else in life, this will pass and I'll be back to my usual bossy, happy self in no time. The indignity and discomfort of 8,517,398 bits of medical equipment interfering with my back passage will soon be a distant memory.
Today, I took myself out for distraction purposes and, while having a wee cup of tea in a cafe, picked up a trashy newspaper I wouldn't normally bother with. I'm flipping through it and a full-page spread hits me - some guy who went into hospital with a boil on his bum (or something similarly minor) and ended up infected by the new MRSA superbug that's been felling hospital patients right, left and centre, according to the media frenzy.
Great. A NEW complication to worry about. I might as well add flesh-eating disease to the list too.
On May 3, I had an appointment for a follow-up test related to an abnormality in my colon, found in x-rays taken in March. I'm lying on an examining table with a camera up my arse (or back passage, as they call it here; one pictures a dark, cobbled alley), looking at an enlarged live view of the inside of my sigmoid colon, in full colour. The room is dark and the doctor's chatting away to the nurses and I'm looking at my colon and checking my heart rate on the monitor, thinking how clean and pink and healthy my insides are.
Doctor, in posh voice and cheerful, chirpy tone: "There's the tumour. Look - you can see the ulcerations. I'd be very surprised if that doesn't come back malignant." This is followed by some light-hearted small talk about how I'll be in the hospital in two weeks, for a 7 to 10 day stay, some of it in intensive care.
Amazingly, my heart rate remains steady while he delivers this news.
Yes, that's right. Tumour and malignant - the words that are always said to some other person, a person you don't know very well, never to you; and while you're thinking it's a terrible shame for that person, you're also relieved it's not happening to you.
Well, boys and girls, it's happening to me right now.
What made it worse for me that day was that I hadn't told people I'd had symptoms and was having diagnostic stuff done, so I had to phone my kids and my sister and break the news to them, while trying to reassure them and tell them not to worry. Buckets of tears were shed that night.
The next day - May 4 - I went to work, told a couple of people, cried a bit, typed a bit and went for a job interview in my lunch hour for a paralegal job created for me by the lawyer I worked for over the winter. I managed to give an award-winning performance and was offered the job (which I didn't want). Back to work, some more crying, not much work getting done, phone call from legal aid telling me I didn't get that job, then to another interview at the end of the day. I didn't want to go - all I wanted to do was was get home and sort out my thoughts. But this was a job I wanted and had been interviewed for in January, and the firm now needed someone. Another award-winning performance and another job offer - with more money than I'd expected and training opportunities I hadn't even considered.
As you can imagine, I was a bit off my head, what with the cancer one day and all the job business the next. So I went on Saturday to stay overnight with my sister, so I'd have some company to take my mind off all the fear. Although my surgeon spoke to me within an hour of Dr Cheerful's blithe announcement and tried to reassure me, I naturally imagined the worst during the six days of waiting to get a full colonoscopy (the first one was a sigmoidoscopy, looking at only a small part of the colon). My biggest fear at that point was that the colonoscopy would reveal more tumours.
On May 9, I spent the day in the hospital after having a colonoscopy and internal ultrasound. The news was good - only the one tumour and the rest of the colon looks healthy. A CT scan is next, on May 17, to get a cross-section of the entire bowel. Then surgery on May 24, to remove 30 to 40 cm of bowel. Seven days in hospital, followed by six weeks recovery. Provided there are no cancer cells in the lymph nodes and other tissue removed during surgery, no further treatment should be necessary.
My new job - as an insolvency administrator with a small accountancy firm, working with people who've declared bankruptcy - will be held for me until I'm ready to start work, hopefully in July, if all goes well.
I've held on very well, for the most part, but have begun to have a bit of a meltdown as I start to absorb all this and have been having a bad time over the last couple of days. I'm afraid of what's happening to me, and dreading the surgery and being in the hospital. The waiting and the uncertainty are terrible and I'm reduced to tears frequently because it's always on my mind. Fortunately, my kids were already scheduled to arrive here next week and I'll have a week to show them Edinburgh before going into hospital. However, Evan's UK passport, although applied for months ago, still hasn't arrived and Ottawa tells him it hasn't been processed (although they took the payment from my Mastercard two weeks ago), so we don't know if he'll be coming. His plan was to stay in Edinburgh for a few months to work, and we'd thought he'd be able to help me when I get home from hospital as Meredith is only here for two weeks. The airline won't allow Meredith to reschedule her return flight, telling her she'll have to buy a new ticket, and Evan's ticket will be forfeited if he doesn't have his passport. He's going to the British Consulate in Vancouver on Monday morning to chain himself to their legs until they give him something authorizing his entry to the UK. If I need her, Meredith's mother-in-law, Saint Shirley, will come over and look after me. My sister doesn't live near enough to be able to do that full-time.
If this had happened last year, before I left Vancouver, I would only be worrying about the cancer and the surgery. I would have had the physical presence of my family and friends and the reassurance of continued income during hospitalization and recovery. I've made a few friends here and they're very supportive, as is my sister, but I'm no longer enjoying coming home alone to an empty house. I've been very lucky to have lots of phone calls and emails to distract me but it's not the same as having an actual person in the house with me (the cats are a comfort though).
I'm also bogged down with all the details involved in getting information about applying for housing benefits and income support to get my rent paid while I'm off work. Because I've been temping, there's no income when I'm not at work and I've lost about a week's wages in total already because of statutory holidays and medical stuff.
So there's my sad story (but with a bit of good news about my new job). I'm feeling rather sorry for myself these days, but, like everything else in life, this will pass and I'll be back to my usual bossy, happy self in no time. The indignity and discomfort of 8,517,398 bits of medical equipment interfering with my back passage will soon be a distant memory.
Today, I took myself out for distraction purposes and, while having a wee cup of tea in a cafe, picked up a trashy newspaper I wouldn't normally bother with. I'm flipping through it and a full-page spread hits me - some guy who went into hospital with a boil on his bum (or something similarly minor) and ended up infected by the new MRSA superbug that's been felling hospital patients right, left and centre, according to the media frenzy.
Great. A NEW complication to worry about. I might as well add flesh-eating disease to the list too.
Labels: health
posted by Jacki | 4:07 PM
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