A Statistic - addendum

Just a very, very tiny blog - no, more of a microblog if not a nanoblog to say that this morning's trip to the hospital was entirely successful! The catheter was removed, I sat drinking coffee and water for seemingly an age until I thought "It feels like I want to pee now". It was quite an alien feeling as my bladder had not been stretched in order to trigger the need to pee for a few days. But, weak as it was, the call to drain was definitely there and I was able to pee. What is more, the volume I peed was acceptable as a sign of everything working! With that, I was dicharged with a leaflet in my hand.

Four or five wees later, the novelty still hasn't worn off! I'm lovin' it!

A Statistic - Part 2

 I went in for my operation last Saturday. My admission had been preceded by a couple of pre-operative assessments - one to check I was robust enough to have the surgery and one to take a blood sample purely to identify my blood type should a transfusion be required!

I arrived on the ward at 07:30, food having been denied since 02:30 and water since 06:30. I had a round of questions that seemed to be repeated over and over, the main one being am I diabetic (no, I'm not). Eventually, I was taken to a room to change into the dreaded arse-revealing hospital gown and my clothes were taken off to a ward to await my post-operative return.

In the pre-op chat with the anaethetist, we had discussed the choice between general or spinal block anaesthesia and I'd opted for the latter having twice had it when I'd had the hip replacements, so I knew the form when I was wheeled into the room outside the theatre: sit on the side of the trolley, bend over such that your chest is crushed in on itself and then "breathe normally" while the spinal shot is administered. It's then a case of getting your legs back onto the trolley before the leaden numbness kicks in below the waist. By the time I was wheeled into the theatre, my legs were well away with the fairies. In fact, I was convinced that I could 'feel' that my legs were still stretched out on the trolley whereas the evidence of my eyes told me my calves had been raised up into stirrups ready for the op.

The operation itself was less entertaining than the cystoscopy as I only got to see the back of the TV screen where all the action was happening. There seemed to be a bit of a delay at first as some piece of kit wasn't doing what it was meant to do, but when we got underway, it was fairly quick, probably about 40 minutes in total. I didn't't even take my glasses off! Op over, I was wheeled to the recovery area where, every ten minutes or so I was asked "Can you wiggle your toes?" and the answer was always in the negative. When I finally got moved out of recovery and onto to the ward, I still wasn't toe-wiggling but I could move my left leg from side-to-side by about 2cm (putting my hand under the blanket to feel my totally numbed thigh was weird - it felt like I was touching the arm of an overstuffed leather sofa!). However, recovery wanted the space for others coming out of ops but the ward had no nurses free to take the handover from recovery to ward. It was the first moment the crisis in the NHS was exposed. Getting back to the ward was the second: the guy who had administered my anaesthesia had to wheel me back to the ward as porters apparently don't work at the weekend.

The 'ward' turned out to be a private room which felt like a result until it became clear that they thought I had a risk of falling for some reason: they actually wanted me in a place where they could make sure no one else could get in my way. I didn't care: if they wanted to characterise me as doddery and the price was a private room, so be it!

Finally, at 17:00, I got some food! When I got to the ward after the op, one nurse offered me a sandwich, only for the other one to say there were none left so I made do with a cup of tea at 13:30-ish and hung on until the food was due to arrive. At 17:00 I was administered an bladder full of chemo liquid designed to get rid of any stray cancer cells and at 17:05, my food arrived. The treatment required me to lay for 15 mins on my back, 15 on my right side, 15 on the left and the final 15 on my back again. Trying to eat tea whilst ridiculously hungy but trying to adhere to the necessary body positions was (almost) funny. After I made my first turn, one of the nurses came into the room and whispered that I might want to make sure I was a bit more covered up the next time I turned: I had flashed my bum to nurses' station outside my room!

Later that evening, they came and removed my catheter and told me to pee 'normally'. This was my TWOC (trial without catheter) and, after about two hours and having produced a thimbleful of urine, I was deemed to have failed my trial and the catheter was reinserted.

The next morning around 10:30, the consultant in charge of my case came by to tell me how well the op had gone and that my dreaded catheter would be staying in for around 8 to 10 days! I was more than a bit disappointed as the period of 2 to 3 days had been mentioned and I told him this. He laughed and said that that would probably be how long it took until they phoned to arrange a date for removal. That turned out to be pretty accurate.

So, here I am, a week after the op. The catheter is coming out tomorrow and, providing I don't fail my TWOC this time (please, please, pleeeeease!), it won't be going anywhere near my nether regions any time soon. It will be another 1 to 2 weeks until the biopsy results come back by which time, we will, hopefully, be on holiday. I am grateful for the blood in my pee because I had had no other symptoms to tell me anything was wrong. I'm hoping it was a sufficiently early warning and that things have been stopped before becoming a lot more serious. Anyway, fingers crossed...

A statistic - Part 1

"Ah! There it is"

With those four words, I joined the numbers that make up the statistic that is often quoted on TV and newspaper adverts for cancer research fundraising : 1 in 2 of us will develop cancer in our lifetimes.

For me, the 'C' word was always a Schrödingers-type of affair: every year that went by without it made it somehow (irrationally) less likely I would get it but, at the same time in my horribly fatalist heart, I knew I was counting down to it, an inevitability. As much as I tried to ignore the high probability that I would get involved in some way, shape or form with cancer (remember the 1 in 2 statistic? plus my less than ideal lifestyle), that thought lived alongside a parallel thought train that had me convinced it would never happen to me. Utter realism mixed with magical thinking. One of these was going to be proved wrong.

Six weeks ago, having a Thursday mid-morning pee, I noticed that I seemed to be dispensing a lovely rosé wine into the toilet bowl. I called Elaine up to confirm my opinion that this was not a normal state of affairs. Once we had agreed that blood was definitely involved in my pee, I got in contact with my GP. There were no slots available for that day but they promised to phone back ASAP with the next available appointment. They phoned the next day as we were on our way to Birmingham to dogsit for my brother-in-law and gave me an appointment for the following Monday. By now, my pee was the colour of a nice claret and was definitely worrying me. The colour faded back to a light rosé over the weekend but was stiil there in the sample I took to my appointment on the Monday.

I was seen by the nurse practitioner who, after talking me through all the potential reasons for blood in the pee ("Any trauma to the abdomen or lower back? Any pains in the groin or lower back?") or the pink colour ("Eaten beetroot?"), she made the first mention of the 'C' word: she raised the possibility of kidney cancer because she didn't want the first time I heard the phrase to be the point where I was diagnosed. As far as lowering expectations/getting real went, it wasn't exactly a gut punch as I'd already thought that's what it might be (from thinking I'd never get near the disease to going all in on the worst possible outcome is just so me!). Anyhow, I was told that the urine sample would be sent away for cultures and further analysis and I would either be told I had a bladder infection (most common cause of blood in the pee) or need further investigation.

The following week I was called back to the GP surgery. There was no evidence of bladder infection so something else was to blame. I had blood samples taken and a manual check on my prostate (yep, the finger up the bum delivered by the nurse practitioner who admitted that she might need to call a male doctor in, purely because his fingers were longer!). The next day, I got notice of a date to attend the Rochdale Infirmary for a cystoscopy. If the finger up the bum is a little 'eek!' inducing, the cystoscope is worse: the camera inserted all the way along the urethra until it emerges in the bladder where the interior can be checked for nasties. It was a week or so away so I had time to come to terms with my latest dignity-stripping investigation.

That weekend, I went down to see my mum and, on the Monday, in the middle of the square in the centre of Crawley, I got a call from booking at the Royal Oldham Hospital asking me to come in for a CT scan of my kidneys and bladder. This was duly arranged for the Thursday, the day after I got home from mum's. It was explained that by having the CT scan in advance of the cystoscopy, all the results could be given to me at the same time, the latter test producing results on the spot.

The CT scan out of the way, it was a few days later that I travelled to hospital for my cystoscopy. Sitting down with the doctor before the procedure, my spirits were bouyed up when he said that my kidneys were fine. I didn't realise that there was still anotherr shoe that hadn't fallen. We began the cystoscopy, a slightly surreal experience as I could see the screen where the inside of my urethra and bladder were displayed in vibrant colour. "Large prostate" the doctor remarked  as the camera moved towards the bladder, just as if we were admiring a church as we drove through a pretty village in the countryside. Inside the bladder, the camera moved over all the surfaces until the doctor announced "Ah! There it is". Whilst the CT had ruled out kidney problems, it seems it had shown a growth within the bladder and, indeed, there it was on screen: what looked to be a little patch of pink anemones or pink broccoli standing out against the rather more drab bladder wall. The tumour.

The doctor was very laid back about it ("Only small - around 1cm and superficial") and was confident it would be easily removed. Even the slightly alarming words "large prostate" were dismissed when I asked if I should be worried ("Do you have any obvious sighns of prostate problems? No? Then sometimes a large prostate is just that - a large prostate").

Tests all over, I got a call to arrange the date for removal of the tumour - June 2nd. That seemed like an absolute age away and also meant that our trip to France would have to be rearranged because of the recovery time involved. It gave me totally mixed feelings: happy it was going to be done and I had a definite date, but worried that it gave me more time to brood and get into a negative headspace. A day later I got another call: a cancellation meant I could have the op on Saturday, only three days ahead! I definitely felt I was back in a positive place!

Joy

A few weeks ago, we attended the wedding of our nephew, my brother-in-law's son. As would be hoped with such an occasion, happiness - joy- abounded because, after all, weddings are happy occasions. Some time removed from the actual event, it makes me think what exactly is the thing that makes a wedding a happy event. We are conditioned, in effect, to know that weddings are happy occasions and, consequently, we should feel happy through our attendance.But why should our mere attendance make us feel happiness? Surely there must be more? Well, I think there is.

The father of the bride was a career military man, someone who, on paper, might have been the buzzkill act when it came to speeches at the wedding breakfast: one too many references to 'duty' and all things espousing conformity might have been expected. Instead, he embraced the concept of a wedding being more than just the joining of two people, but instead being the joining of two families. He beautifully celebrated the fact that his family had just been expanded through the wedding we were all enjoying. And it suddenly, it made me realise that I'd never seen it that way before: marriage is, of course about two people,  but it is also two about families coming together. His words were so optimistic about that wider union, so filled with sentiments that brought joy to my cynical old heart.

A couple of weeks before the wedding, I had attended the funeral of a customer of the bar that I worked at.  On one night I had been speaking to him and a few hours later he had died. It was a shocking loss. Whilst he hadn't been without health issues, he was not displaying the signs of any distress that night so I will regard it as a death that came out of the blue and really affected the staff and regulars at the bar. When I attended his funeral, the accounts given by family, friends and work colleagues in the chapel at the crematorium were filled with lovely memories just as I would have expected. It wasn't until we all met up at the wake where a continual loop of family photos were being projected onto a screen did I suddenly feel the joy of this man in the life he had lived and the family that surrounded him. The wordless photos said so, so much more about that person than a ten hour speech. The faces in the photos told a story of love and happiness in a way that words could probably never do so.

Who would have thought that joy could be found in such a place, yet there it was.

Alfie

I want to feel better. I keep telling myself I should feel better but it's not yet working. A week on and the absence of Alfie still feels raw. As much as his presence in the world was loud and very physical with his in-your-face ways, the sudden withdrawal of all that energy is just so noticeable. I am sitting in the office as I type this and for some time I have been expecting him to trot into the room and jump on the desk, parading in front of the screen until I give in and attend to him by pushing the keyboard out of the way, laying him down and stroking him while he purrs and purrs. When I wiped the counter tops in the kitchen, Alfie would try to catch the cloth or sponge I was using as if it was a game I had invented with him. And his love of the laser pointer was unbounded: he never tired of running after that red dot and even two days before he left us, he was still chasing that dot.

He was our little panther, our sweet little boy cat and I miss him terribly. I hope there are laser pointers over the Rainbow Bridge.

I Nearly Stole a Cat

Cats are sociable animals. I know many will dispute this fact thinking them to be stand-offish, sly and, often, confrontational balls of fur and in many ways I would have to agree: they have their moments when they can be anything but sociable. However, even the most difficult, feisty cat will, at times, need a stroke, a cuddle and gentle words accompanying scritches under the chin. Feral cats can be won round to appreciate that purring next to a human is infinitely preferable to spitting and hissing at them. I know this to be the case from personal experience. Many moons ago when my late dad worked at Gatwick Airport, there was a colony of feral cats on site. Eventually, the airport management decided that the cats needed to be 'cleared out' (i.e.  rounded up and killed), so the guys that my dad worked with decided to rehome at least some of them. Thus, my dad brought home Pushkin, a tiny tortoiseshell kitten. When he opened the box and put his hand in to take her out, she turned into a land-based piranha lacerating his hand and forearm with her tiny teeth and claws. Throughout her early years she remained very much a loner and didn't really interact with us or with our other cat. However, little by little, she decided that ignoring or fighting us was a lot less fun than getting strokes and being fussed over and the second half of her life was entirely different: she would jump on my bed a night for strokes and cuddles, all the while purring her little head off. Love won through in the end.

Not all cats need such a long term approach to winning them over, The fact that Pushkin was feral made it a more difficult job but most kittens, coming from cats that are already house cats, are ready to receive love from day one. Ninety-nine percent of cats want to be adored and, in receiving that love, they will love their owner back. That's why it breaks my heart when you hear stories of people moving house and just leaving their cat behind with no arrangements for someone to take it in. Or kittens left in a sealed box by the side of the road who, only by some miracle of chance, were found and rescued. How many others were not found? From the moment you take on a pet of any kind, you are responsible for that little life, not only in terms of feeding it, but also in terms of its welfare, its wellbeing. Just keeping a dog or a cat alive is not enough, you also need to ineract with it, to show it love and allow it to show you love too.

I was visiting my mum this week. She has recently taken on a cat that was being ignored by its owners and had taken to hanging out at her place. She did the responsible thing and spoke to the owners and asked if it was OK if she took on the role of 'owner' of the cat (though I'm not sure that anyone ever 'owns' a cat: I think they probably own us) and they were happy for her to do so. He was a little cautious at first, but her constant takling to him led to strokes and purrs. He's by no means a lap cat but he has come on so much in a relatively short space of time. He now realises there is more to interacting with humans than just getting fed.

Anyway, I digress slightly. Mum's next-door neighbour has a small ginger tom cat which is probably still classed as a kitten as it is probably around 9 months old. Again, this is a cat that is fed and watered but is seemingly not given anything else. There is no one home during the day and he is locked outside and he is often alone outside in the evening. I just don't see the point in having a pet if you are not going to pet it. I was taking stuff out to the car, getting ready to leave and the little ginger chap was making little forays into mum's hallway, rubbing up against my shins, miaowing and purring, then rolling over for strokes and belly rubs. He was such a little love sponge and it just depressed me that most of his life was spent on his own without the love he deserves. And for one moment, as I opened the door of my car to throw a coat on the back seat, I found myself thinkng "If he jumps up into the car, I'm just going to close the door and drive off with him!" (Full disclosure, we had lost our beautiful cat, Alfie, the previous Friday so my catnapping urges and, indeed, this whole blog, is probably motivated by the still raw emotions surrounding loss). In the end, the cat didn't jump in, I didn't steal a cat and I left him with his rightful owner. I really, really hope he gets much, much more love in his life. It's the one thing I can say, hand on heart: Alfie never went short of love, not even for one day of his nine years with us.

The Lincoln Highway -Three and a third thousand miles: Part 3

 Well, that intermission was a little longer than I intended! Anyhow, let’s get back to the job in hand.

Lost in America

Most people are aware of this thing called 'Route 66' even if they are vague on the details: where it starts; where it ends; how long it is. Many people want to drive along Route 66 because it is somehow understood to be an experience that is quintessentially American. That was one of the factors that made me want to "get [my] kicks on Route 66": seeing the US up close and personal rather than as a blur passing by at 85 mph in a soulless rush along an interstate.When I heard that there was an older transcontinental road, the Lincoln Highway, that was truly coast-to-coast and, therefore, even longer, I knew I had to experience that too. Another chance to engage with small town USA sir? Don't mind if I do! Unfortunately, the romantic notion in my head was to get lost somewhere along the huge meander that constitutes the Lincoln Highway.

About half way into our Lincoln Highway drive we had a shared moment of revelation: we had probably set ourselves too tough a target and, in doing so, had rendered the ‘holiday’ less enjoyable than it could/should have been. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to have completed the drive, to have travelled (for 85-90% of it) on the original LH route(s) and to have enjoyed a version of the US that many who visit places such as New York, LA, San Fran and Miami will never see. But what we realised half way across the continent was that, when we drove Route 66 five years ago, while that trip contained its own challenges, it was mapped out for us in a turn-by-turn guide of the original route, it included a greater concentration of attractions along the way (a tribute to the great marketing that has been done on behalf of Route 66 in recent years) and it was a thousand miles shorter drive but done in the same 12 day period. The LH, although older than than 66, is pretty much forgotten or at best, only just on the verge of being rediscovered. As a consequence, there are no turn by turn guides although there are books that will detail the history of the road whilke other books list some of the diners along the way and one even gives you an idea what it was like in  to drive it in 1928 (the latter book is a bit of a favourite: a reprint of a driver’s guide from that time detailing the towns en route, their populations and garage and hotel facilities (some are still there!). As a consequence, the LH requires a greater degree of *work* to drive: work by the driver (3,300 miles) and by the navigator who has to try and recreate a turn by turn guide for each day from a combination of an LH phone app and Google Maps. Every night in a new motel, I was knackered and Elaine had to plot the route for the next day. On top of that, stretches of the LH are unmade road and when you’ve agreed via signed agreement not to drive your hire car on gravel roads, it meant that alternative routes were constantly being researched on the fly. All in all  a tough drive.

Along the way - and even more so reflecting afterwards - I realised I’d engaged us in a task, a chore. Rather than embarking on an adventure, I’d sent us out on an endurance test. Consequently, we have made a pact: any future fly/drive trips to the US, indeed anywhere, will be concentrated on a much smaller area with a chance to stay in places for more than one night. I’m not sure that there are any more US road trips based on historic roads but, even if they do exist, we will not be driving them. In future the rule will be no more than four hours driving in a day. That allows for plenty of mileage to be covered but also plenty of time get out and explore places properly rather than worrying about getting to our next destination in daylight!

Bucket list-wise, it is now ticked off so we can finally put the need for marathon drives to bed. That said, I recently heard about the Pan-American Highway that runs from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Ushuaia in Argentina, a distance of around 15,000 miles. Should I mention it to Elaine? ;)