On to the Marsden

Shortly after my transgression I’m transferred to The Royal Marsden Hospital’s rehabilitation ward for occupational therapy and physio. The staff are friendly, and the food is excellent. Its nice to have my own room, and I’m soon to form a lasting friendship with a chap called Colin, a patient in his twenties with a similar set of circumstances to my own, i.e. diagnosis of brain tumour, surgery, some initial mobility problems followed by radiotherapy and the onset of temozolomide oral chemotherapy, which I am still fighting for at the time. Initially, I am introduced to the delights of the wheelchair and commode, and after a number of weeks, I progress to crutches, and eventually a grandpa style walking stick. Physio sessions are laborious, and I push myself hard all the time with all manner of exercises, which eventually pay off dividends. Even Special Agent Jack Bauer helps me get feeling and movement in my left hand. Well not personally. More a case of I’m lying in bed watching episode after episode of 24 on my portable DVD player, manually exercising my fingers with my other hand, and monitoring and building upon minuscule levels of response in the tips of my fingers as I scrape the fresh cotton linen of the bed sheet under my arm for feedback. Support from my ‘big family’, read: THE MET. POLICE is strong. I have a constant stream of visitors with their own welcome brand of inimitable humour. They’re priceless, and more than a couple of nurses become besotted with my ‘rough diamond’ brothers.

Shower Room Shenanigans

A few days later my wicked sense of humour gets the better of me. The two nubile blonde twenty-something physiotherapists tasked with getting me mobile again decide to wheel me down to one of the ward’s shower rooms and introduce me to the delights of the ‘raspberry’ wash. Sorry, for all you non-Met types out there’ raspberry’ is shortened Cockney rhyme for raspberry ripple, which is cripple, which is basically moi! Anyway, I jump, not literally, at the chance of getting into a lather with these two babes, so it’s a huge beaming smile and a head full of 1970’s porn flick images, and off we trundle. Damn, I need a ‘tache! Upon entering the completely tiled room, one of the babes turns around and locks the door, the other starts to unfasten the knots at the rear of my hospital gown. Bonza! With a wily old sneer and a flick of what’s left of my fringe I pronounce, in the best Swiss Tony accent, ‘I’d pay a fortune for this in Thailand’. Oh is that a pin I hear dropping in reception? Okaay, they’re not amused. Never mind, in for a penny in for a pound. ‘Look ladies, its about to get very wet and warm, you might consider removing an item or two?!’ “ We’ll be outside if you need us, any problems just pull the orange cord”. I snigger quietly to myself; it’s the little things in life that help you get through the day. However, six weeks later, when a friendly doctor lets me look over my medical records, I see the two 'health professionals' have entered, “Made inappropriate comments”. Don’t you just love the politically correct culture we are forced to live in?!

What is a free gift? Aren't all gifts free? Sorry, thats been bothering me for a while!

Over the next few days my neurosurgeon, Mr Henry Marsh or one of his cohorts visits me frequently, and despite scoring very very low on the Glasgow coma scale, he assures me that my mobility will return in a few weeks. Apparently, this sort of hemi-paresis is common and transient. Yeah, who are you kiddin’?
But I got bigger worries at the moment, my bowels haven’t moved since the morning of my last surgery. I’m constantly urged to go by the nursing staff, but lying horizontal on a cardboard bedpan with nothing but a flimsy curtain between you and a ward full of mix sexed visitors kind of contracts one’s anal sphincter, if you know what I mean! Where’s the amyl nitrate when you need it? Being pumped with codeine and liquid morphine doesn’t help much either. The codeine is naturally constipation causing on its own, but the morphine is causing me to be extra lethargic and apathetic. Must say though, it is an interesting sensation being eaten alive by your mattress. Now I know what it feels like to be a ‘smack head’. If I ever get out of this shit in one piece I’ll certainly be able to relate with the prisoners I interrogate back at the ‘nick’. I momentarily contemplate asking one of my visiting colleague friends/family to bring a COZART Rapiscan test in for a laugh. Imagine, he’s a serving police officer, well half of him is, and he fails the opiate part of the standard drug test for prisoners. What a hoot that would be!
On the eighth day I put my foot down and demand the works, multiple hi-potency enemas, after all the visitors have gone home. I’ve been preparing for this for the last few days. I’ve been turning my nose up at the bowel impacting crap they call dinner and have been secretly gorging on fresh fruit, bran flakes and senokot. Yeah, I’m in pain, so much so in fact that I’m convinced the Devil himself must have conjured it up especially for me, Private Hell number 56,170866 I’m also pretty confident that the catheter isn’t helping my bowels much either. So much so in fact, that I actually tried to rip it out the previous day whilst squatting on the toilet. Despite repeated tugs it didn’t budge, lucky for me. According to the nurse, if I had been successful I would have ripped my prostrate gland and bladder out through my piss aperture. Mmm, nice! Probably would have looked a lot like a frog vomiting his own stomach up. Now there’s an image if you haven’t already eaten your dinner tonight.
Suffice to say the industrial strength enemas were successful, “CLEANER, CUBICLE THREE!”

As promised

And just as I promised yesterday, isn't that a nice long entry?

Stay tuned sports fans...

From this...

to this. Yes its possible, and I'm living proof. Anyway, apologies for the lack of update for a while. I've been a little distracted by other projects. However, I promise to make a nice long entry soon.

Moio sudno na vozdušnoy poduške polno ugrey

Sorry about that, I’m learning Russian at the moment.

Anyway, leading on from the last entry… the next few days are lifted straight out of a David Cronenberg film festival. Nightmares on a scale I could never have imagined.
As I’m being wheeled down from recovery I’m hallucinating like crazy. As I stare up at the passing ceiling tiles, I see their corners lift and swarms of crawling insects pour through the gaps. I close my eyes to escape the horror and vivid excerpts of the last few hours flash through my mind. I see everything compartmentalised, my personality, my memories, my thoughts and feelings, all neatly arranged in DFS like displays. It’s hard to explain, but I’m looking in on my mind and how it’s arranged from a third person perspective. Surreal yet terrifying!

I drift in and out of consciousness punctuated by fits of uncontrollable nausea. My wife holds my head while I vomit, tears of despair roll down her soft cheeks.

I wake to find myself sharing a room with another recent post-operative patient. I attempt the most basic of conversations in an effort to establish some form of normality. Big mistake. ‘Great, they’ve stuck me in with a lunatic from Tooting’, if this was on the ‘outside’ I’d be clamping his wrists in quick-cuffs and carting him off to the nearest psych-ward. Where’s my Asp when I need it? I drift off again.

My sleep is interspersed with visits from nurses taking temperatures, blood pressures and urging me to drink and pee. As one of them leaves at around 2am I strain my eyes in the semi-dark, and stare across the room to my manically depressed roommate. I’m startled by the presence of a small fiery demon hovering over his bed. I squint my eyes, still there. Well he is from Tooting after all. Am I seeing things, or have structural changes taken place within my brain that enables me to tune in on a different wavelength?

The medical staff are not happy with my recovery and decide to move me into the main ward for closer observation. It’s been at least 10 hours since I pissed last, and I’m constantly being coaxed to pass urine. However, I can’t pee into a paper bottle lying on my side, I need to be vertical. I attempt to raise myself, but the movement of the mattress and my left side paralysis make it impossible. By now the pain in my bladder is becoming unbearable, so grabbing my left leg with my right hand I pull my self over to the right hand side of the bed. With one deft movement I swing my legs over the side, touch the floor, heave my self-upright with the ‘good’ leg, and grab the paper bottle. Great plan, except I haven’t factored in the ineffectual left arm that won’t be able to hold me steady while the right hand is holding the piss bottle. I collapse in a heap, flailing in the dark in an impromptu bath of my own piss and shattered pride.
Before I know it I’m surrounded by scowling Philippino nurses. In about as much time as it takes to say, ‘are you taking the piss?’ I’ve got a catheter strapped to the side of my bed. I never thought I’d be so pleased as to have a pipe with a kink passed through my urethra. Wonders never cease.

So many cats, so few recipes.

Okay, the title's got your attention. First of all, sorry dear patient reader, I've been pretty remiss with my blog entries of late. I promise to put things right. So here goes...

Seven days pass quickly, and I’m soon being wheeled back down to the operating theatre. For some reason to do with expedience, I have been informed by the anaesthetist that I’ll be wide-awake for absolutely everything this time around. This includes the stitches from the last op being pried out and my scalp being ripped back. If I’m ‘lucky’ I’ll even hear the ‘schlock’ noise as my skull is popped back open. These people must think I’m some sort of unfeeling cyborg for me to take this much battering without batting an eyelid. Personally, I feel like a cross between Ray Liotta’s character in the closing scenes of Hannibal and a Terminator unit.

One of my surgeons prior to scrubbing up

I was beginning to think that I wished I never had found out about the bloody tumour in the first place. Ah well, If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?
Despite being in theatre for four or five hours, I remember very little of the procedure. It’s strange how the human psyche blocks out memories that are too distressing. Indeed, repressed memory is one of the most controversial subjects in the history of psychology and psychiatry. A repressed memory, according to some, is a memory (often traumatic) of an event, which is stored by the unconscious mind but outside the awareness of the conscious mind. Some theorize that these memories may be recovered (that is, integrated into consciousness) years or decades after the event, often via therapy or in dreams. I hope to God that this isn’t the case.
Another hypothesis is that cortisol, a chemical released during trauma, may induce forgetting. Cortisol appears to have the ability to erase details and possibly induce amnesia.
On the other hand, I may have experienced a form of organic amnesia, whereby damage to the medial or anterior temporal regions caused by either the surgery, or the incidental stroke I suffered, brought about a loss of cognitive processing while I was under the knife.
Alternatively, it could be the case that I was so dosed up on Rohypnol its surprising that I even remembered waking up that morning.
Whatever the case, one thing is for certain; you didn’t tune in for a clinicalneuropsychology lecture! Well you can take the boy out of academia, but you can’t take academia out of the boy!
What I do remember is lying on my left side, propped up at a 50 degree angle, the anaesthetist standing in front of me. Every couple of minutes she asks me to wiggle the fingers of my left hand as if I’m playing the piano. Happy with my performance, she asks me to do the same with the toes on my left foot. I see no one else, as they’re probably all behind me ‘scooping’ away. I feel no pain.
Next thing I know is I’m awake in the Recovery Unit again. I’m thirsty, I’m prodded, I’m poked, I’m used to it. After a while some doctors come to see me. They go through the Glasgow Coma Scale, and are sorely disappointed with the performance of my left hand side. Not as much as I am though.
“Hemiparesis”, they call it. ‘FUCKING PARALYSED DOWN ONE FUCKING SIDE’, I call it!
Yeah, The trouble with life is there's no background music. At that moment in time I could have really done with some!

As you can see, my hospital bed was rather hard. I didn't like pyjamas.