THE LADY FROM ONCOLOGY SHE SAY:

YES

THUS AND ALSO SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA

What I am doing here today my lovelies is apologising.   Sometimes I think I am too clever by half, though I do swear this has only happened lately with my new best friends [and which are gradually being weaned off me me lest I get too big-headed].  See, I don't think. 

Having upset someone for whom that is unthinkable I pondered some and realised that just because a doctrine doesn't suit me I have no right to diss another's devotion dedication and true belief.  Enough dreariness here already so I'll not go back into the past and drag all that muck out again; I'm a very big girl and never had nightmares, just didn't want any part of organised religion. 

But, BUT...BUT ! Were I to go that route I think old Zara might fit the bill...bit bonkers. I see my God like a large Nebulous  cloud...d'you know what I mean? Clouds of colour swirling across Universes and old Zar's beards and whiskers mixed up inside and a sign says FIND ZARA.  He know he didn't get it right first time round...not enough in the planning stages. But one thing my God would be...along with Bonkers, would be fair, none of this spinning round and pointing the finger and saying 'it's youhoo'.

Or perchance I might go the route of the many gods, the gods of minutia; of water, fire, earth and wind, chocolate cake and Tesco.

What I do know is that I am open ready and willing to suck on anything anyone sends me...I even still cannot believe this is happening or that you should give a monkeys behind.  

Just don't please tell me it is GOD'S WILL

I now have appointment to see the Oncologist.

FRIDAY NEXT

1pm

with a little bit of blooming luck...

and a lot of help I may now be able to talk to you without the page looking as if it has been edited by psychedelic spiders.  Whilst in the hospital and, under the influence of quite a few, new to me, drugs, well and strange experiences, I would find myself wide awake in the middle of the night and would write furiously on any piece of paper to hand, or a sheet or my thigh....all these bits to be delivered to Sazzie who, amazingly managed to make some sort of sense from them, edit and print them, for which dedication I am truly etc..

I must say though that my story about my nine chapters on Hedonism? was a lot funnier in the original Lesbianism version.  So this is where I start putting in the mad meanderings of my midnights thoughts.

So here you are my people, waiting with bated breath this morning, evening, night of the pre biopsy of the bleeding, bloody blight that bites and burns and burrows it’s many headed back-sides in my space. Today we are naming and shaming you, yes? er, no.

Bright-eyed and bushy tailed, scrubbed up and gleaming brightly, their futures glow from the dark Iris, the so white teeth and faux faux very expensively designed to look like Top Shop leggings and casuals....the acolytes tumble onto the ward.  It is perfectly evident to anyone with an eye for nuance to recognise the quietly unprepared-think fur coat and no knickers so that when small man...[who I know has very big place in my particular bit of ‘biz) all I know is lovely smile possibly Sr lanken...a lot of's ‘I have decided’s’ even as around and beside him his ineffectual (as it turned out) words are being recorded by his PA’s and er...people. ‘So very sorry, Mrs. er, Mrs...’ waving frantically brought forward...’Annie, but ‘der has bin some confusion...’

Me: No...and no and no. I was promised, it was written,  reserved BOOKED.

 

‘Let me explain.’

‘No.’ I am actually sulking, and glowering, I feel my face lowering and I want to charge him, like a bull. 'Allez you blithering idiot.'  With all due respect [oh how those words can wither] for all the many people around you [and I am sorry but I do not know who you are - or what part you are playing in this saga [I am beginning to enjoy this as my dear new steroid friends jog me up a gear in the old thought proccesses ] 3 acolytes begin to speak at once, and I understand that he is the Geriatrics Consultant [Geriatric...moi?] attached to my GP and he it is who alerted this man to my parlous state of wicked Shrek witch [see pics if you think you are hard  enough]and pointed out that the swellings involved were not caused by my new best friends the Steroids, but sumpen much more deadly  was about to separate brain and body or some such and above and beyond a nasty Geriatric cough.......elevating me onto a higher more interesting plane. Seems I have another Consultant, female, Greek, walks on Mount Olympus, and who, somewhere in this Universe is fed bits and pieces by these Handmaidens, and she will decide in the course of rapidly running out of time, whether or not I live or die.

So- no- not today but tomorrow.

 

The night has been very interesting - and it is all in texts flying in between Sazzie and  I perhaps she can sort them out.

Till we meet again.

 

Back at home: Wednesday 9 November

Bit of an update here folks.

 

I am in the hands of my darling and he had it all sussed out. Up most of the day, all the excitement of, well unlimited tv, sulky dog who no longer loves me best...crash course in Apple Mac and I would be ready to sleep at eight. So we’re all geared up...mac out of reach as are phones which tend to be busy with my  middle-night meanderings.  After half an hour of talking he says, okay, I’m going to read my newspaper, you obviously are not ready to sleep. Actually I am.  

I listen as he reads, shuffling the paper, rustling it’s leaves provocatively. Then I’m sure he is eating...surely that is chocolate paper. I accuse him...JP Ja’accuse...or words to that effect, certainly spelt  better. Then, suddenly, and I mean just like that, as if knocked on the head, he is asleep. 11pm, good time to go...bit of luck 4 hours...and he is sleep and I not.  I text Sazzie on the mean ness of it but the batteries are dead...and there is no  free plug in this room which appears to be ready for take off.  I listen with bared teeth, I  truly want to sleep but...my head itches...I usually have to sleep upright to stop the wheezes driving me bonkers but tonight Im going to lie down and wheeze for England, but, here's another bloody but...I’m imagining, at least I hope I’m imagining, that there are fleas in my mass of pilows.

 

Surely not, yet my head and neck and my wrists are going some.  Steroids? Let’s blame them.

He calls out, quite surly, as if he hasn’t had a good two and  half hours of shut eye...’Don’t move anymore, I’m coming in.’

 

I start to laugh and at first I hear irritation when he says not to get excited or I’ll have to have a Tina special [more of which another time, this aside has gone on long enough and you will have all left me by now].

 

‘What I really would love is one of your special nectars and...did I not spy scones in the kitchen? He agreed that the idea was good, fixed my pillows bought me mr. mac and that is why we both had a mid-night feast instead of a good nights sleep.

You are not going to like this but I’m moving backwards.  I shall tell you that you haven’t missed anything as, at the time of scratching this out in a midnight ramble, I had not been processed of the liver. I have now...but...oh dear those wretched buts.

 

No, what I’m doing is a bit of The Ronnie Corbutts [sp]  Well known is our Ronnie for never being able to tell a story in a straight line.

 

Some mighty strange things have been a happening to me and don’t any of you go jumping on the ‘God’ theme just yet ‘cos you should know, I’ve certainly never tried to hide it but from five to nine years of age in an extremely rigid Anglo-Catholic system is gonna kill or cure one.

Odd thing number one.

I think it is my second day on the ward. Two new patients arrive to fill our four bays. The woman in the bed opposite is very ill...her neighbour walking wounded as am I. I never learn the name of my neighbour and she leaves that afternoon.

Later, we talk, exchange names and I feel rather strange when I learn there is an Iris and a June...My mother’s name was Iris and, when she danced professionaly called herself June. ‘All we need now is an Eleanor’ I laughed...now that woud be really weird.’

 

‘I’m Aleanor..will that do?’ asked the darling girl who plays Soccer for Canterbury and cleans and pours us tea and sympathy popping her head up from her trolley.

Can anyone calculate the chances of that happening?  Iris eleanor/June all in my room in a time of crisis?

Thought not.

I’m ready for you.

 

Come on boots...start walkin’

Second odd thing, and you have been warned...not a godloving word, do you hear.

Last night, finally I slept, after a fashion you understand...guided and protected by one quarter of Tina’s magic pill [really got you going on this one, haven’t  I?]  I slept anyway.  I had said goodnight to my loved ones by way of the badly written texts, sent NOAO son home and had completely come to the conclusion that Palliative care was going to be it..the turned heads, the lowered look, the pat phrases...l just thought Oh well.

But I did sleep and awoke in a tangled dissaray. Time? perhaps five hours later...Tina’s pills are the biz...and for a girl such as l, a drug free space filled only with the lovely deadly nicotine, any pill will send me.

 

So I’m awake and so disorientated. I sit up, untangle the clothes and stagger to the floor. A nurse appears, a dim fugure taking care of a true patient. ‘Go back to bed...’ she says.

‘Yes, I will, ‘ I say...but l need to tell her. ‘I’m fine, truly Im ok.’ No that she appears  to mind whether I am ok or not...she’s is misty, odd.

 

But I am fine, I truly am.

I know.

I have no pain.

I am not confused or scared.

Whatever the outcome l KNOW all is well.

Weird or what?
Made the mistake of telling someone - it was as if someone's hand had been put  on my head.

Night night

 

[most of this was written in the semi-dark, in the middle of the night and disorientated awakenings - and I felt it justified to replicate without too much editing or cleaning up,  there are a few more coming up, after which we will be back in real time - Moannie]

A few hours later...

Tomorrow (Monday) I will have the biopsy which will decide my fate.


but first this side bar...

it is Sunday. I was admitted Tuesday and have been pricked and bled, rayed and scanned and in those few days I have gone from  nasty cough to nasty shadow to needing a stent to open the blood supply to some vital organs.

(Mum writes this as if it were a nothing- it was in fact critical- some perspective please Mum. btw I do have her permission to interject at will)

And I have been so sleep deprived that I had begun to believe I was invisible! Thanks in part to the steroid high.

With decision day looming NOAOSon decided that if I couldn't sleep and he couldn't either, he would come and sit with me until I slept. A lovely idea.

However we did rather misbehave.

Complaints were apparently made and we were stonily asked to please keep the noise down. I was sorry and docile but NOAOSon said that we only kept our noise to the level of the ward - why was there for example a bell continuously ringng, machines buzzing, a nebulizer which had not been turned off and a trauma inpatient  fretfully looking for his wife?

Staff Nurse left to consult the Sister and returned with the offer of a private sideroom, complete with en-suite and cable telly. Bizarre or what!

I moved in with suitable gratitude thinking of the silence - the absolute bliss of silence - I would sleep at last - for the first time in 5 days I might get more than 3 hours.

well NOAOSon left at 12.40am and it is now 2.35am. the silence is so complete that my wheeze is deafening and frightening - a spider is playing Cirque de Soleil acrobatics above my head and I thin there is a ghost in the corridor.

I hope tomorrows news will get me home.

                                 Milou is lost.
                                               and JP is getting too settled with half the village looking after him.

Moannie x
(Mum has asked me to tell you, that she is so grateful and overwhelmed by your support, love and words of kindness in the last week. I am feeding her your comments and emails. She probably will not be writing here herself for now, she prefers to give me her words to post on her behalf. But she has every word you send in her heart, filling her with strength and courage. Mum thanks you and  I and my siblings thank you. Saz)

Sunday....

There is a humour, quick, hot, RAW, cruel, hilarious in a cancer ward; at least there is in mine - or perhaps it is an unquenchable bubble of the ridiculous in me that sees humour in most things that are taboo to others.

Dignity goes by the west window - boundaries stretch like Popeye's biceps - no gentrified metaphors - no euphemisms but the cancer word is always accompanied by descriptive names, angry adjectives and the vilest epithets.

We survive

A woman screams next door and in the ward behind me a man calls loudly,
'Murder! Murder!,

'Call the Police' she screams, he calls the Police.

June and I - cohorts, funny bones in sync; exchange side glances and begin to giggle - just a slight shaking of shoulders, bobbing movement of the hips. I tell June my theory of sound and mind pictures; a theory expanded by twice daily ingestion of the miracle of steroids, which seem to boost whatever bare minimum of talent you never have shown an interest in.

For example; one night shortly after my first dose. I wrote - in my head and in the middle of the night while all around slept- nine chapters of a thesis on the joys, perils, rights and wrongs of hedonism - a subject on which, I swear to God, I know nothing more than seen in 'the velvet something or other'

One night I solved an equation, 'DUH!!' and another I began a sitcom situated in a  cancer ward and so it was not a great stretch to explain how one can or cannot live with weird sounds:

'It goes a bit like this....'

I began, already feeling the thrill of the laugh we were about to have,

'Mrs Tourettes of the mouth goes -
'la baba, la baba, la baba'

and I mean ad infinitum - and we are going mad, needing sleep more than a druggy needs his fix

' It is possible to survive this June', I say,
'What you do is this: you close your eyes and listen for the rhythm; doobly, doobly, dooble dum, repeated at a constant pace in that low voice she is using. Now it is possible to envisage a small herd of Pyrenean mountain goats running across a wooden bridge...'

June's head tips to the side and gives it some thought.

'Yep i can visualise that; small, furry, horny, rough wood. Got it!  (Double entendre) ... doobly, doobly, dooble dum, "   "    "   "  A HA!!!!'

but then, just as you are about to drop off, lulled by this visual and aural comfort, she suddenly changes tack,
and doobly, doobly, dooble dum, suddenly goes dolacky, dolacky, dolacky ad infinitum.

Bringing us back from the arms of Morpheus just in time to hear Nora scream again and the man yells
' Bloody Murder call the police!'

It is about now that June and I erupt. Squirming with tightly crossed legs and streaming eyes and to finish off the whole debacle off to perfection: Nellie- a rather prim and quaint lady who has been listening with increasing wonderment, sneezes loudly and fires off the loudest 3 gun fart I have ever heard.

Collapse of 3 stout ladies.

( more of this sunday post to come shortly.. don't go away)

Moannie

(posts are chronological, but may be a few days later as I receive them, handwritten then decipher. And yes as I have been asked, if you wish email me  I will try and update you as I am able, Saz)

And so...

The x-ray led the way to a scan that showed it clearly. A nasty stranger had invaded me! Invited.

Next step - identify.We thought in our grasping ignorance.

Our particular god is Greek. She is guarded and protected by her acolytes, who poke, prod and probe her young clean and clear of bug or germ or age or fear! They smile, nod and pass through words back to the messenger, who take down every word on her Apple-mac.

                                        They tell me nothing.

                                                     But Toni does.

I've swollen face, neck and throat - I look like my mother times 3. A Shrek monster, pale green and grey hair, thin and lifeless, My arms and hands stiff with oedema, bear testimony to fruitless searches for veins. I blame the massive dose of steroids - my friend now because it soothes the beast that clings with dirty nails to my tender bronchi and lung tissue. Even as it gives me huge appetite (I see beauty all around me) and keeps me awake all night. But it was the beast blocking the major artery, Toni tells me; so the biopsy must wait - a blow. For the beast is quick to grow, aggressive and greedy.

So I have a stent inserted by a team of demi gods drilled to perfection.

I trained in '55 which is to 2011 as the invention of the wheel is to mapping of the human genome.

I watch as a catheter is inserted into the artery in my thigh and passing, painlessly up to a major cloud of white that's blocking and compressing the dark artery- deep in my chest. 

The surgeon patiently, kindly answers my questions and seems to be as enthralled as I at the magic he performs when the stent opens and blood gushes through - he takes my hand and asks,

'Can you feel any difference?'

and I think that I must say something encouraging - a small white lie would surely be allowed! I touch my face and start to say,

'It feels less taut, stretched...!'

and then I say, in wonder, 'It is!' -  the tenderness has gone, the skin is softer, I swear.

By the time NOAOSon and Lita Mona appear, they are shocked and delighted that I am a deal less scary and Sara, who arrives later - a wonderful surprise - appears to have been drawn down here on false pretences.

And as I am drawn back into the world by my push me/ pull me duo of porters, I ride high on my bed delighted to fighting back.

      The first fecking blow.

                           Take that!

Goodnight my loves.

Moannie x

My thoughts...

I had thought it best to just say 'bye' - let you go.

Let you down easily - but the more I considered, the more I felt that those of you who cared - really cared in this odd universe, where total strangers become loved ones - deserved to be treated as such.

And so I shall be chronicling this new - last journey with you - the truth as it happens, with clarity and humour

- for even the gallows' humour is a necessity.

Moannie

(whilst Mum is in hospital I shall be posting her words here and recounting your words to her in turn. Saz)