Christmas, At Last!

It’s Christmas at last!

Back in May when my cancer was diagnosed and it was likely that I would have to undergo radical surgery to remove my bladder I dreaded the next few months and wished I could sleep until Christmas when, hopefully, I would be well on the way to recovery. As it’s turned out I’ve been able to avoid that surgery, so far at least, and, although much of the last few months has been pretty rough, I still feel I’m well on the way to recovery.

I had my radiotherapy follow-up appointment about ten days ago and so now I’m officially finished with the Christie and presumably handed back to the consultant at Trafford General. No doubt I will be hearing from them early in the new year to arrange my first bladder inspection, an event I am rather dreading partly because of the procedure itself and also because if the results show the cancer is still present then surgery is back on the agenda.

In the meantime we had Christmas and it was absolutely wonderfull My side-effects are now slight leaving me with some fatigue but a bladder which is not causing me pain and which is performing the way it should acting as a storage vessel for several hours rather than a tube with a five-minute delay switch built into it.

I now get up only once or twice a night which should mean that I awake much more refreshed than I have for ages. However it isn’t quite working like that as my sleep is very “active” owing to the quite powerful dreams I experience every night.

I have always dreamed just as most people do and they are an important part of sleep. Indeed, dream-deprivation can do more psychological damage than simple sleep deprivation but my dreams are so powerful that I am not getting as much really refreshing sleep as I should.

Obviously when I was up many times in the night I was deprived of much of my dreaming as every time I sank into REM sleep my bladder would wake me and end the dream.

I thought at first that I was simply making up for lost time and making up some sort of “dream shortfall” but the intensive dreaming is continuing every night.

It isn’t that the dreams are unpleasant though they do all seem to be placing me in frustrating situations where I am unable to influence events or make progress towards whatever outcome I set out to achieve. Maybe this reflects my worry that I am no longer wholly in charge of my destiny and am unhappy that so much of my future is being handed over to the medical profession.

If – no, when my check up comes up with a clean bill of health I hope this anxiety will reduce and the dreams will diminish. I should know in early February.

Cancer Survival Rates

I know this has been my first note for some weeks but really there has been little to report except for a progress report on the side-effects of my treatment and I doubt if anybody really wants a blow by blow account of those. Suffice it to say that I still get very tired and that my digestive system still isn’t back to normal though both of those are improving. However every day is different and a pattern is ard to identify.

This item in the news this morning has really got my blood up, however.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/#startcontent


I’m very pleased to hear that cancer survival rates are greatly improved in the UK though still not as good as most of Western Europe’s. The differences in one year survival rates across different parts of the country is disturbing and it doesn’t appear to relate solely to prosperous or deprived areas as one might expect.

The biggest problem seems to be in diagnosis. Patients aren’t taking their symptoms to their GP early enough and GPs aren’t referring their patients to specialists promptly enough. This makes me a bit angry.

I went to my GP with symptoms of a urinary problem in the Summer of 2007 and, because there was no sign of an infection, she quite rightly, referred me to a urologist whom I saw in August that year. He diagnosed my problem as a non-malignant enlarged prostate and began treating me for it despite the presence of leukocytes in my urine sample. I learnt much later that this is a marker for, amongst other conditions, bladder cancer.

My condition was not finally diagnosed until May 2009. Hardly my fault or my GPs!