The first week of being a Cancer patient was very odd indeed. A lot of it was spent with assorted doctors prodding me in various states of undress.
A lot of the people coming to visit me were visibly shocked by what was going on, not least because the last time most of them had seen me I was throwing some shapes on the dancefloor in the student union. At one point I was up on Charlie's shoulders while the DJ fired the dry ice machine in our direction. We were the only people on the dancefloor right then.
This was on the night before diagnosis, when I had decided just to go and enjoy myself and not to worry about blood results.
There were so many people coming to visit me that we had to commandeer the relatives room on a few occasions as you can only have a few people round a bed. That was also where I was allowed to and use my mobile phone to keep in touch with everyone at home.
So all the tests and treatments began with the leukopheresis I had on the saturday to harvest the excess white blood cells from my blood. On the monday I had my first ever bone marrow aspirate and trephine. The former of these is where they use a rather large needle to pierce your hip bone and collect a sample of your bone marrow, and the latter is where they chip a piece of your bone off from the same site. It's not a nice process and one which the other patients in my room told me most people ask for sedation before going through it. It's also not nice for the doctor performing it as there's a certain amount of brute force required to get a chip of bone out. I think sedation for this sort of procedure would be beneficial to both the patient and the doctor. The reason for these procedures was to confirm the diagnosis of Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia.
What they are looking for first and foremost is what is known as the Philadelphia Chromosome as it is this abnormality that causes the repetitive cycle of cell division that is CML. It involves the translocation of genetic material, which in turn leads to faulty proteins being formed. It's a mutation and nobody knows what the trigger is.
I spent a lot of time wondering if it were perhaps an environmental trigger as I have spent a lot of time in chemical labs. Of course there is little chance that had any effect as Health & Safety rules regarding the chemicals I had used are very strict. The other thing to wonder was that it really was blind chance that this mutation occurred in me.
No ability to heal faster, manipulate metal, ability to control the weather or telepathic powers for me. No, I was a shit X-Man. My abilities were rubbish.
As soon as the confirmation that I did indeed express the Philadelphia chromosome was confirmed we began to talk about what the treatments available were. There were many, but only two interested me. The first was a bone marrow transplant which was dependent on one of my siblings being a tissue type match with me, and the other was on a clinical trial for a drug called STI-571 (now known as Gleevec). The clinical trial was interesting because it's a drug that, when it works well, simply renders the condition as manageable so that you can just go on with your life as normal. Think of it as being akin to someone dealing with diabetes for instance - they have a condition that needs managed over their life. There is a certain appeal to this but it has something missing that only the former of those choices has, the word cure.
A BMT could cure me so that was the one for me.
So, that decided we then set about getting me well enough to go home. For that we needed to get my white cell count down to a sensible level, which meant a course of hydroxyurea. Before we could start that though I had to address something. The treatments I was about to undertake would almost undoubtedly make me sterile so for their to be any chance of me fathering any offspring I would have to put my best swimmers in storage.
The first time I was to go I made the mistake of telling my friend Hayley, who had done some clothes washing and brought stuff up for me, that this was to happen the next day. In my bag I found she had left a pair of crotchless knockers for a laugh. She's a very odd girl but wee things like that made me giggle the whole week or so I was a patient there. On the morning itself I got text messages from about 20 different people all telling me to have a good one or to think of them when visiting the clinic. It was exactly the sort of thing that needed to happen to let me not take it too seriously.
The fertility clinic is one of the most depressing places I've ever been because nobody wants to make eye contact with anyone else so I must have looked a right idiot casually wandering down in my sandals and shorts and t-shirt. There's an incredibly odd feeling of pride when a nurse tells you that's a very good sample, although deep down you know she probably says that to all the guys.
I had to do this twice as they like to have two different samples from you before they're put in the wank bank for safe keeping. The second time it wasn't that my peers knew where I was going that made it difficult, it was the fact that I had to explain to my mother why I wouldn't be there if they visited at a certain time. I'll be down putting your potential grandchildren under ice was how I described it I think.
When they came down my supervisor Colin had put them up at his place in Caerphilly which was just typical of the man. He is an absolute gentleman and I hope he has some realisation of how much those actions made things easier on the parenting team but for me as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment