The cancer Diaries 27.10.15

Well,  what a week that was – enough to keep the script writers on EastEnders busy for at least Five minutes. Last Monday, just before midnight I had a feeling of indigestion and I thought nothing of it – just after midnight I was sick and got the most frightening breathlessness I have ever experienced – didn’t know what the F–k was going on. Earlier on that morning before I had my chemo therapy the Doctor had told me that they had discovered, thanks to a head scan, that a part of my brain was dead thanks to a stroke that I’d had some time in the past. Chris joked that the part of my brain that had died was the part which remembers where the hoover and washing up liquid are kept. Jim W joked that it explained why I like Hibs. Anyway, I thought it might be another stroke but it became quite obvious that it was something different. Luckily, for me, Julie was in the flat and I knocked her bedroom door and told her I couldn’t breathe. I was in an awfy state by then and Julie phoned for an Ambulance and the rest is quite hard to remember. I was in and out of consciousness for a couple of hours and was close to death a couple of times, then stabilised enough to be transferred to the Infirmary. Luckily, for me, I cant remember the catheter being put in but I had the fucker in for Two days – the first day and night it felt quite uncomfortable, and if I didn’t know better I would’ve thought that they’d put a six cup cafetierre up there instead of a catheter. Anyway, when the time came for the catheter to be removed by the lovely nurse, Leslie, she thought that it was quite wide. All the time I was thinking to myself ‘F–k sake, the first time in years I have a good looking woman anywhere near ma willy and it’s a nurse taking a catheter oot’. After two nights in the Royal infirmary, where I got two stents put in a couple of main arteries I was driven back to St Jocks, not before having to stop at the by pass to monitor my heart after I got a twinge in my heart. That proved to be a false alarm and it was four nights of being wired up to a heart monitor, people farting and talking in their sleep and four days of getting jags on my arms and stomach that made me look as if I’d been battered by Rocky Marciano – whatever they were giving me medicine wise made my piss smell awfy. Honestly, I was starting to dread going to the toilet because peein’ was giving me the dry boke. Dr Jacobs, the heart specialist at St Jocks, told me that his colleague at the royal had never seen as severe a case of arterial/vascular disease as mine and that my arteries are particularly sensitive to smoking. He also said that I am very lucky to be alive and that I was basically walking toward the cliff edge and the heart attack is what stopped me from walking over the edge. Just as well I’m a Pumphy boy, otherwise I’d have been f–ked. So, that’s me survived a massive heart attack , a stroke that I never knew I’d had sometime in the past and now in the middle of my fight against cancer. I’m on quite a few tablets now – morning and night and will be till I die [ of cancer or another heart attack ].