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The History Boys

I normally like to go to the theatre in the evenings, as it makes it more of an occasion. These days, however, it’s too tiring to stay up so late; I’m normally in bed by 10pm, if I can even last that long. It seems a shame to give up on theatre trips, though, when the theatre in Malvern gets such a good range of visiting companies. A matinée is a perfect compromise. We have a nice lunch at a local restaurant, and then toddle off to the theatre. In a way it’s even better to go to the matinée, as the gap between lunch and the afternoon performance is significantly longer than that between an early dinner and the evening performance, meaning the meal can be much more leisurely.

The West Yorkshire Playhouse’s production of The History Boys, by Alan Bennett, was today’s treat. It is nominally the story of eight boys preparing for their Oxbridge entrance exam in the 1980s. Really, it is an exploration of the purpose education, comparing their popular teacher Hector’s “education for education’s sake” against Irwin’s “training to be eye-catching” and the Headmaster’s “teaching what is measurable”. Caught is the middle is Mrs Lintott’s attitude that learning the facts and presenting them clearly ought to be enough. The Headmaster is ambitious, and engages Irwin to teach the Oxbridge boys to do well in their entrance exam, which appalls Hector, who finds his methods flashy and journalistic. The field of battle between Hector and Irwin is the boys themselves. By the end of the play we see that one of them has won the battle (I won’t say which, so as not to spoil the plot), but it isn’t clear that the victory is worth the effort.

The play was very funny, for all the seriousness of its theme. For example, Mrs Lintott says of her time at University:

Durham was very good for history. It’s where I had my first pizza. Other things too, of course, but it’s the pizza that stands out.

Not only was the play funny, it resonated with both Gillian and me. We both took the Oxford entrance exam in the 1980s, and a lot of the music that was played brought back strong memories of our own times in school. As an engineer and a mathematician respectively, however, our experience was very different from the History Boys’. All in all, however, we really enjoyed the play, and found it thought provoking too. It provided us with much conversation over dinner, and prompted this blog post, so I have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone who can get to see it as the company tours Britain. You won’t regret it.

Everything can be argued both ways..absolutely everything
17 04 2010 icyjumbo Day out Comments (2) Permalink

Scan Results

Just a quick post tonight to let you know the results of the recent bone and MRI scans. Sadly, I don’t have any pictures yet, but as soon as I get the CD I’ll post some of the key shots. But I do have a verbal report.

The bone scan showed two hot spots on my spine. The clearer of the two was on T8 (the eighth thoracic vertebra) which matched the sclerotic (healing) patch seen in the earlier CT scan. The other was on the left side of L5 (the fifth lumbar vertebra, just at the bottom of my back), which may be a pre-existing condition such as arthritis, but could also be a second healing metastasis. There were no hot spots in the side of the chest wall, where I had reported feeling some pain.

This was pretty inconclusive, but the registrar said that bone scans often were inconclusive. A possible treatment would be radiotherapy, but it isn’t normally done while a patient is receiving epirubicin, so if it happened at all it would be likely to be after the chemotherapy course was complete.

As for the MRI scan, the two word summary is that I have a “slightly wonky” brain, but nothing clinically significant, with no tumours or abnormalities. The big news, of course, is that I did have a brain that day 🙂

15 04 2010 icyjumbo cancer Comments (12) Permalink

Feeling ill and thinking well

I’ve mentioned giving myself a severe talking to recently, and I wanted to write a bit more about that. Last week I had a few days when I was feeling ill and sorry for myself. In fact, it was the worst I had felt since just before the chemotherapy started in January. I had stopped thinking rationally about my situation and was just feeling bad without analysing it, which was not at all helpful. To be fair, when I add up all the symptoms and list them it’s not surprising that I wasn’t feeling too good: I was queasy; my back was really quite painful; I wasn’t sleeping properly; my energy levels were low; I was bored because I was in pain and had no energy. These were all background feelings that made my trip into hospital when my temperature spiked feel all the worse. The blood tests that they did then, and the following Wednesday confirmed that I was anaemic, which was probably contributing to my lack of energy. They also suspected that I had a viral infection, further complicating my situation.

Those physical symptoms had been accompanied by some unpleasant thoughts. For example, “if it’s going to be like this, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to cope…” went through my head. I was definitely depressed about my situation, and not thinking straight at all.

After nearly a week of feeling sorry for myself, I decided on Wednesday that I wasn’t going to let that happen any longer. I have written — and I still strongly believe — that I can choose to be positive about my situation, no matter how bad it appears to be. That had been relatively easy while things were going well; now I had a challenge to face. Looking at my situation squarely I realized that a root cause of my problems was the pain in my back, which was preventing me from sleeping during the night, contributing to my lack of energy. During the day the pain was another drain on my energy. If I could do something about the pain then a lot of the other stuff would also improve.

The “problem” was that the pain killer I would use was morphine, off which I was very proud to have weaned myself. Moreover, morphine tends to make me constipated, which then makes me feel nauseous, another reason for avoiding it. Never mind, I have drugs to counter the constipation, so I should start taking the morphine and get rid of the pain in my back.

That night I slept properly for the first time in over a week, and woke on Thursday feeling much better. As the days wore on, and I was in less pain, my mood improved, and the nausea and queasiness went away too. I think now that I had managed to fight off the infection, which seems likely to have caused the queasiness, and it was just a coincidence that that happened at the same time as I changed my attitude, but the coincidence was a powerful reinforcement, encouraging me in my new attitude. I’m glad it happened when it did.

Looking back I can see that a collection of physical circumstances had combined to make me tired and depressed, and I had stopped thinking rationally about my situation. My only thoughts seemed to be automatically triggered by what was happening to me, and my rational mind wasn’t involved in that process at all. One of the poor decisions I made was a reluctance to take pain killers, which only made my situation worse. As soon as I thought rationally, rather than simply emoting about how I felt, I was able to do something about the pain, which made many of the other problems start to disappear, and rapidly improved my mood. Granted, the end of the infection may also have made me feel better too, but I choose to ascribe most of the improvement to taking an active part in managing my pain and attitude. The feeling that I could control my symptoms is a powerful one and I ought not to have forgotten it.

This episode was a powerful lesson for me. I hope I remember it in the future when another collection of bad symptoms combines to attack me. I’m sure I will, with this example behind me.

14 04 2010 icyjumbo cancer Comments (6) Permalink

Food, glorious food!

By Gillian

I’ve had comments that this blog seems to be nearly as much about food as it is about living with cancer. I’ve looked back over some of our posts, and I take the point – but I’m not going to apologise! Food has always been important to us both, and being able to enjoy good food is one of the the things that really helps with our quality of life, and hence with coping with all the unpleasant things that are going on.

But although we’ve both written about food quite a lot to date, I think it’s really worth mentioning all the help we’ve had in tempting jaded appetites and helping Chris (and as a side effect, me too!) to put weight back on and keep it there.

It all started way back in January when Chris was really bad, it was snowing heavily outside, and I was so stressed that I wasn’t eating much more than he was, namely hardly anything. There was a knock on the door, and it was our neighbour Elspeth with some still-warm drop scones for my tea. I hadn’t realised how ravenous I was and polished them off!

Once Chris was eating better, and able to move off soups to “proper food”, a friend made up some batches of bolognese sauce which I’ve frozen in small quantities for his lunches. Chris can defrost a single portion, and have it with pasta, or a jacket potato, or jazz it up with chili. That way I know that he can make himself a proper lunch when I’m at work, even if he’s not feeling up to cooking from scratch.

Of course, it’s well known to our friends that Chris has something of a sweet tooth, and indeed he’s mentioned on this blog how he’s currently finding sweet things more palatable than savoury. We have had a whole procession of friends bearing a variety of cakes, biscuits, chocolate brownies, apple tarts and most recently some jars of home-made marmalade from an old family friend of Christopher’s. We have thoroughly enjoyed them all.

Perhaps the most exotic food-offering arrived last week, air-mail from up-state New York. It was a jar of maple syrup, made by Christopher’s cousin Ben from his own maple trees. We had to test it out of course, on some pancakes for Sunday breakfast. It was delicious – perhaps less sweet than the mass produced maple syrup that we can get in the shops here, and with wonderful smokey overtones, due to being boiled down over an open fire.

So this is a big thank you to you all. We have been really touched by your thoughtfulness and friendship – and we’ve definitely enjoyed eating the results!

12 04 2010 Gillian cancer Comments (8) Permalink

Cycle 4 week 2 status

I’ve had quite a boring and dull week this week, although it definitely improved as it wore on. It started badly with me experiencing a temperature spike and being taken into hospital. They found nothing too alarming, which was ecouraging, so they sent me home again with instructions to Gillian to keep a sharp eye on me. But I still felt pretty bad for another couple of days, which limited what I felt able to do. With back pain added to general unwellness, I was not at all happy at the beginning of the week.

The interest level took a turn for the better when I had an MRI scan in the middle of the week, and finally fed up with feeling grotty, gave myself a talking to about my attitude. That was the turning point in the week for me.

Towards the end of this week we’ve been on a couple of small local excursions. In one, we went to see a local sight, a bee shelter that we pass every time we go to Cheltenham and have been determined to see for about two months now. Having finally seen it, however, we were surprised at quite how small and insignificant it was. The second excursion was for a short local walk, or rather about one tenth of it. It seems to me that it was the first exercise I have taken for an awfully long time, and although it left me tired, it also exhilarated me, and I’m determined to try to do more walking over the coming months.

My back remains painful, but well controlled by the pain killers. I think that the underlying condition is slowly improving, so I hope soon to be able to cut down on the pain killers. We’ll see what the results of the bone scan are on Wednesday this coming week, which will probably have a bearing on the situation.

11 04 2010 icyjumbo status Comments (7) Permalink

Scans

A couple of days ago I went in as usual to have my bag changed, except that between detaching the old bag and re-attaching the new bag I was scheduled to have an MRI scan. Not only that, the previous week I had had a bone scan, whose results I hoped to talk about with the consultant. The day did not go exactly as planned.

I arrived about half-an-hour early to make sure that there was as much time as possible to squeeze me in for detaching the bag. But even as I arrived, I could tell that things were odd. It turned out that the consultant was sick, and had sent two deputies in his place. Naturally, they were taking longer to see to people than the consultant would, as they had to understand each patient’s history in detail before they could start the consultation proper. A nuisance, but unavoidable in the circumstances. But to make matters worse things seemed to be going slowly in the treatment room, which meant that we patients were piling up in the waiting room, getting more and more restless.

I was bumped up the order, because of my MRI scan, so I saw one of the deputies fairly quickly. I zipped through the previous history as fast as I could because I wanted to talk about the bone scan, so you can imagine my disappointment when it turned out that the results hadn’t yet been posted. We guessed that the two intervening Public Holidays (Good Friday and Easter Monday) had been the cause of the delay. Again, unfortunate but unavoidable. Never mind, it meant that there was plenty of time for my bag to be detached before I had to go for the MRI scan.

You may be wondering why it was necessary to detach the bag. Actually it was the pump that was the issue. It contains metal and a battery, which definitely don’t mix with the enormously strong magnets that are used in MRI scanning. I had had an MRI scan scheduled for the same day as the bone scan the previous week, and it had been postponed to this day because of this very issue.

The time for my MRI scan was drawing near, but I was still attached to my pump. Eventually I decided that I had to go and let them know that I was around, but I couldn’t make the appointment yet because the pump hadn’t yet been detached. I told the MRI staff the situation, and they were very understanding, telling me to come along as soon as I could. I went back to the clinic to wait a little longer. One and a quarter hours later it was finally my turn to be seen. I checked that the nurse knew I was only being detached — she did, phew! — and within an hour and a half of the scheduled time I was back at the MRI scanner getting ready.

I had heard some scary things about MRI scans, namely that they were extremely claustrophobic and noisy, so I was somewhat nervous when I arrived. But it was all very different from what I was expecting. Maybe it would have been different if they had been scanning more than just my head. I removed all the metal objects from my pockets, as well as my watch and glasses, but I was not asked to remove my wedding ring. I was asked to lie down on my back, with my lower legs slightly raised on a pillow to take pressure off my back. My head went into a half-cylinder to hold it as still as possible, and a pair of ear-defenders was put on. I was given a bulb to squeeze if I got into any distress. The staff were kind, but quite matter-of-fact, as though this was all very ordinary, and by now it certainly began to feel quite unexceptional. After I was horizontal a small cage was put over my head, through the widely-spaced bars of which I could see an angled mirror. That was to allow me to see out of the tube that housed the scanner, but as I could see nothing without my glasses, it was an empty courtesy as far as I was concerned.

The bed was raised and pushed into the tube, and then the noises began. More than anything I was reminded of an experimental percussion piece. There were loud and quiet bangs, buzzes, and hums. The bangs would be quite rhythmical, sometimes six at a time, sometimes four. Often the quieter bangs appeared to be echoes of the louder ones. BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG bang-bang-bang-bang. Repeat three times. Bang bang buzzzzzzzzzzzz. Repeat several times. The buzzes would sometimes be at the same time as the bangs and sometimes after. It felt to me as though it lasted for about ten to fifteen minutes, although I was expecting it to be about twenty minutes total. Because it was more like some avant garde musical performance it wasn’t at all distressing or upsetting. Most of the time I kept my eyes closed, so there was no opportunity for claustrophobia to affect me. In fact, rather the opposite of being distressing, it was quite a calming and relaxing experience. Strange, I know, but absolutely true. Towards the end of the scan I was briefly pulled out to be given an injection of a contrast dye, then pushed back in again for about two more minutes of bangs, buzzes and hums. And that was it, scan over. I gathered my stuff and went back to the clinic.

By now we were reaching the end of the list of patients, so I didn’t have to wait long for the new bag to be attached, and then I went home. It felt like quite an anti-climax to what was otherwise quite an interesting, if at times prolonged day.

At least I should have two sets of scan results to discuss with the oncologist next week. I’m really looking forward to that. This MRI scan will provide the final proof that I do have a brain. Or at least, had something that looked like a brain that day…

09 04 2010 icyjumbo cancer Comments (7) Permalink

Solidarity

Two of my cancer blogger friends have posted recently that things aren’t going too well for them. Joan is in the middle of an unpleasant cycle, suffering from unpleasant tinglings and loss of taste, while Jeanne has had a nasty GI infection that left her with no appetite, and eventually dehydrated her enough that she needed treatment at her cancer clinic. These things must come in threes, I think, as I too have been feeling particularly under the weather. I have what we think is a virus infection that is sapping my energy, along with the recent back/rib pain that makes it hard to sleep for long at a time, all of which means that my mood is lower than I am used to.

As Joan says, however, enough whingeing! At the clinic today I found that I was slightly anaemic, which probably has something to do with how I feel, but we know from Monday that my neutrophil levels are good (5.5 is a normal healthy level, apparently) which means that I should be able to fight off this infection without external help.

I notice that all three of us try to maintain a positive attitude. That has been reasonably easy for me during the last couple of months, and I think I have taken it for granted. That stops now. The positive attitude is something that I firmly believe one chooses to have. When I feel sorry for myself, I am choosing a less than positive attitude, and I want to take inspiration from Joan and Jeanne, get back on the wagon and stop feeling sorry for myself. Even feeling under the weather there are things I can do that I enjoy, so I’ll seek them out and enjoy them as much as I can. They just happen to be different things from those I have recently been used to doing.

One example is that Gillian and I enjoyed watching a couple of episodes of Shaun the Sheep this evening, from a new DVD that we bought last week. It’s childish humour — naturally, as it’s made for children by Nick Park’s company Aardman Animations — but we enjoy it hugely. That reminds me how much I enjoy watching movies, so perhaps tomorrow I’ll be a bit more passive than I usually am and sit down in front of one of my favourite films. We’ll see what I feel like tomorrow. Serenity beckons, I think. At the very least, that will be two hours away from my less positive thoughts, which I will enjoy.

07 04 2010 icyjumbo cancer Comments (9) Permalink

Spending the evening in hospital

By Gillian

Today (or technically, I suppose, yesterday since it’s now gone midnight) was Easter Monday, a public holiday, so I had a day off work. We had talked about going out for the day, visiting a local place of interest or even just going for a walk on the Malvern Hills. However, Chris felt so grotty that was out of the question and he actually spent most of the day lying on the sofa. He’s not actually been sick, but he clearly was far from well and was fighting off some sort of infection.

We kept a close eye on his temperature, and when it hit 38 degrees at 6:45 this evening I phoned the Cheltenham Chemotherapy Helpline and they asked me to take him to the hospital. Once we got there, around 8pm, the nursing staff ran the usual tests, and found that his temperature had come down a bit (probably due to the paracetamol he had taken) and his blood pressure and heart rate were fine, though he was still feeling really grotty. They took some blood samples and we then had to wait an hour for the lab to analyse them. Fortunately I’ve learnt the hard way to keep a book in my handbag for all the waiting around!

The duty oncologist had a number of other patients to see in the assessment unit, one of whom was clearly in a much worse condition than Chris was, so we had to wait for the priority cases to be dealt with first. Then it was our turn. The good news is that his blood counts were fine, and in particular his white blood cell count was good, which means that his immune system should be capable of fighting off an infection. If he had been “neutropenic” (i.e. with low numbers of white blood cells) they would have admitted him immediately. The bad news is that it is probably a viral infection, so antibiotics wouldn’t help and might well make matters worse. The decision was taken to send him home to sleep it off in his own bed. We got home just after midnight (fortunately the roads had hardly any traffic, as I hate driving at night) and he went straight to bed. However, I’ve been asked to keep a close eye on him and to call the helpline again tomorrow if he gets any worse. The oncologist thinks that it would be a good idea if I can work from home tomorrow so that he’s not left on his own. I’ll have to see if I can rearrange any meetings so that I can do so.

06 04 2010 Gillian cancer Comments (1) Permalink

Cycle 4 week 1 status

I think the kindest description for this week is that it has been rough but with some good points.

There was the terrible uncertainty of when, and sometimes even whether cycle 4 would ever start. Of course it did, and I went into hospital on Tuesday evening, kindly driven by Fabienne, which took a burden off Gillian, thank heavens. She felt the effects of the uncertainty rather more than I did, and had had an early start on business that day, so we were both very grateful for Fabienne’s support.

That evening the pain in my ribs and back flared up again, until I was eventually forced to ask for 10 mg of morphine simply so that I could get some sleep. The pain seemed to back off during the chemotherapy treatment, which went well, so I was quite dismayed when it returned again once I got home, and I was once again forced to take some more doses of morphine. Although the morphine helped me cope with the pain, it did have some side effects on my digestive system, which made me feel somewhat queasy for the last few days. That was probably the most troublesome part of the week for me as my energy levels drooped somewhat.

We are moderately sure that the back pain is being caused by healing tumours on my spine and/or ribs. To make sure, I had a bone scan on Thursday, immediately after finishing the chemotherapy. We’ll get the results next Wednesday.

Fortunately we were able to overcome those drooping energy levels with naps and fun things to do. We went to a Saturday Matinee and had a lot of fun and laughter, and then followed it up with a stonking chicken and pomegranate tagine. As is always the case with stews and casseroles it was even better the second day when Gillian made it into an even more stonking risotto for today’s lunch. And then this evening we ate one of the softest, tastiest bubble and squeaks I have ever had. A Nigel Slater recipe involved first cooking sliced sausages in goose fat, then pressing the potato, cabbage and ginger mixture around the sausages and cooking the whole as one large cake. It was delicious, especially when served with asparagus, as we did.

With all that food, it should come as no surprise that my weight has gone up again, and is now a shade under 12 st (168 lb, 76 kg).

04 04 2010 icyjumbo cancer
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A trip to the theatre

By Gillian

I was reading our local paper last night, and saw that there was a good review of a play at the Malvern Theatres. Tom Conti (of Shirley Valentine fame for those of us of a certain age) was starring in a comedy “Wife after Death” by Eric Chappell. I thought that we could do with a good laugh, but was worried that we would be too tired to enjoy an evening performance, as we both tend to flag in the evenings at the moment. However, we looked on-line and saw that there were some tickets still available for today’s matinee, so we spent this afternoon thoroughly enjoying ourselves at the theatre.

The play was very light, almost a farce in fact. It revolved around the funeral of a comedian, with his widow, his agent, the script-writer and their wives all mourning (or not) the loss of their friend, and perhaps more importantly the income stream he represented to them all. There was the obligatory revelation of a strange woman from his past with the light of blackmail in her eye, and some readily-anticipated accidents with the urn containing the comedian’s ashes. Written down in black-and-white it doesn’t sound particularly hilarious, but there were some laugh-out-loud one-liners, as well as some rather funny physical comedy (especially the look on the agent’s face when he got some of the ashes in his mouth after they were thrown over him).

It was well worth making the effort to go to, and it was really nice to have a “date” with Chris, even though the outing on top of the chemotherapy has left him exhausted, and he went to bed at 7:30 this evening to sleep off his busy week. He’s asked me to wake him up at 9pm so that he can take the rest of today’s pills before going back to bed.

03 04 2010 Gillian cancer
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