If you’re ever going to find a silver lining, it’s got to be a cloudy day…

(I’ve stolen that from a song, but I think it’s very apt. And all in a good cause eh?).

Problem is though, it’s almost bloody impossible to find that silver lining when we’re in the middle of a heatwave and you’re lying in a hospital bed (for the umpteenth time) looking outside at a cloudless blue sky. But, we know I’m not one to dwell, and we also know that this being England, it’s only a matter of days before it clouds over again and silver linings are ten a penny.

Chemo this time is hard. Bloody hard. I don’t know how I did it last time – going to work the day after my treatment, going out for dinner, nipping off to see friends around the country. Maybe it’s because I was weaker when I started this time (I had two fully functioning lungs first time round lest we forget), maybe it’s because my body is wondering why the hell I’m putting it through all this nonsense again. Maybe it’s because I generally feel a bit queasy in 30 degree heat so if you bung drugs on top of that it’s only going to make me feel shoddy. Whatever it is, it’s harder.

Last time round, I didn’t get admitted to hospital once. I couldn’t even entertain the idea that I would, so intent was I on proving to the world and his wife that this cancer business wasn’t going to affect MY life. I was going to be normal – I was going to drink red wine and eat burgers, work as much as I could (it wasn’t every day by any stretch, but still…), make time for everyone I heard from, reply to every text, and prove to everyone that I was JUST FINE. Woe betide anyone who approached me with a pitying head tilt. I had cancer and it wasn’t going to make a jot of difference.

This time, I have nothing to prove. I got it wrong last time and when you get it wrong, those pesky little cells take full advantage. If I’m knackered, I go to bed. I’m appalling at replying to messages (please, please don’t take offence if you’ve been in touch and I haven’t replied – yet). For the first weekend after the first chemo when I hadn’t been downstairs in two days other than to go to the loo, Ma Booth popped upstairs to tell me she was worried I was withdrawing from society (which did, to be honest, sound a little Pride and Prejudice. She had a point though). If I lie in bed til 1 in the afternoon watching box sets, I couldn’t give a toss. My diet is revamped - I now have the dubious honour of being a vegan tee-totaller... (not a sentence I ever thought I'd write...). This time it’s about me, and listening to my innards, and if they’re telling me to sleep, I will jolly well sleep. I love seeing people, I love having visitors, but if I decide I just want to hole up and bury my head, I have no qualms whatsoever changing my plans. Most tellingly though, if I feel dodgy, I’m straight back up to that hospital. Sometimes I feel like a right wimp for doing it – like I’m failing myself somehow by not managing to stay out of hospital, but as we now know, sometimes I’m not right about all things. Galling as that may be.

Each time I’m admitted, it seems to be for something that I’m completely unaware of. I go in with one thing and they poke and prod me and announce another. The first time I went in feeling sick and a bit short of breath and convinced my lung had filled up again, and the doctors admitted me because my pulse rate was insanely high and they were worried about infection. Turns out my heart rate tends towards that of a slightly panicked woodland creature even when I’m feeling fine. The second time I went in with a pain in my side, which I was convinced was my lung filling up (there’s a pattern). Turns out my liver was inflamed, I was insanely dehydrated, I had ridiculously low blood pressure and neutropenic sepsis so I was whisked into a private room for a week and hooked up on IV antibiotics and fluids until my temperature stopped going bonkers and I began to feel vaguely human again.

This time round, after the third chemo, I was DETERMINED not to go back in. I was convinced we’d nailed it – Dr S had put me on injections to boost my white blood cells so I could fight any infection, and that’s what hit me last time, so I figured if we nailed that we were covered. I wasn’t prepared for the heat though. Bloody hell. By Friday evening, after a lovely day of feeling normal and going for lunch with my godmother, I was stretched on the sofa feeling roasting hot, but shivering cos my skin felt cold. I think last time it’s what I knew as itchy skin day, and I ignored it, but this time I took my temperature like a good girl, watched it hit 38 and headed in for an evening in A&E.

We got to the hospital at half 7, I was in a bed on a ward at midnight. Turns out I’m not the only one who can’t handle the heat – the A&E department was stuffed with people who’d fainted, and an incredible number of football playing boys with their right foot in plaster. And despite the whole place constantly ebbing and flowing and nurses running from one patient to another to another while being told they should really be seeing another, they manage to maintain this incredible feeling of calm and competence. Still, after 4 hours, you’ve had all the calm and competence you can handle, and a bed next to the window with a fan is, quite literally, just what the doctor ordered.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t my lung (it never is my lung), and despite the temperature my white blood cells were up and working and there was no infection to be seen. This time, my calcium had decided to take a little dip so I had to lie there (now feeling completely fine) while they filled me up with the calcium that had been over-zealously sucked back into my bones only 3 days previously. I know it’s not the most grown up attitude, but I really do feel like I should sometimes just shut my trap (Ma and Pa B, for the record, I won’t…).

But now, I’m out. And I’m feeling fine. And fingers crossed I’ll be feeling fine for the next two weeks until chemo number 4 (four!). And I’ll forget all the horrors and waltz back into the chemo like the whole thing’s an absolute doddle. And if those horrors hit, when they hit, and I’m feeling completely, appallingly, bone-achingly horrid, then SURELY it means the chemo has to be working. And that must be brightest, shiniest silver lining of them all.

Being admitted… for the first time

I was going to write this whole thing chronologically, but it turns out I keep getting re-admitted, so for now let’s just talk hospital admissions. So far, I’ve been admitted three times. The first was the most eventful, so I’ll stick to that for now. So, in the time-honoured words of Jim Bowen…

Aaaaaand 1…

So…. Dr S and Vivienne came to see me at about half 9. I’d been in A&E since about 1am, and the bed manager was still looking for somewhere to put me. I barely had a clue what was going on, so doped up was I on pain killers and lack of sleep. Poor old Fanners though, had another five hours ahead of her and she knew exactly where she was and how long she’d been there. How she wasn’t swaying rhythmically on the spot and banging her head against a blood pressure monitor I’ll never know.

About 2ish, they came to get me and take me up to a ward, after a stonking 11 hours in my little A&E bunk. Walks had come to the rescue once more and appeared at the hospital with Fanners’ toothbrush and the like, and the three of us were taken upstairs. To a private room. A lovely private room with it’s own bathroom. Where a nice nurse called Nick came and told me he’d be looking after me, and a nice doctor called Jonathan came and told me he’d be popping me with a pin* and draining the fluid from my chest (*not his exact words) in about half an hour. Fanners and Walks unpacked my bits, tucked me up under the cashmere and all was well.

For about 10 minutes. Turns out it’s much more important to keep these private rooms for people who are infectious or susceptible to infection, rather than just sleepy and sore – something I got to find out firsthand a month later. So I was turfed out onto the main ward with the normal people. And when I got turfed out onto the main ward with the normal people, I got lost. Not physically (I couldn’t move), but y’know... They lost my notes, so the nurse refused to give me any pain-killers. Jonathan and his pin went AWOL. Fanners went mental. In the nicest, politest way possible, the way that implies that if things aren’t sorted NOW, it’s all going to kick off. I was essentially oblivious, but there’s a certain way of closing a hospital curtain with a whisk that even I knew meant that someone was gonna get it. I have no idea how long it took, but eventually one of the crisis care team arrived and seconds later a syringe of morphine was being jabbed into my arm.

About 4ish, Jonathan re-appeared in a flurry of abject apology. For all my whinging and claiming at the time he’d abandoned me, he’d found the one person in the hospital who could supervise him inserting my drain and stuck to her for the past two hours like glue. Where she went, he went. And where she went, he told her that she should really be heading in my direction. He must’ve been beyond irritating. But it worked, and the two of them appeared in my little cubicle with an ultrasound and a handful** of tramadol (**not a handful).

The tramadol were mental. I was propped up on the table facing the wall. First of all I kept telling Analie to look at the way the paint was moving on the wall. Then I’d slump and start snoring. Then I’d jerk awake and get a fit of the giggles at the poor old lady in the next cubicle who was having a few… let’s just say… bowel problems. Loud bowel problems. Then back to the paint, slump to sleep, wake to giggles. This carried on throughout, with poor old Jonathan fighting to keep me in one position so he could actually get the drain in and hit the fluid, and Analie trying to loosen the death grip I had on her hand. From what I could tell, he was inserting needles in the same place, each with a bigger and bigger bore, until it was big enough to fit a tube through. All while looking at my chest under the ultrasound to make sure it was hitting the right spot. All while I was wriggling about off my box on tramadol.

When he did hit the right spot, it went everywhere. Yellow liquid at high pressure - all over my feet, all over the floor. Another fit of the giggles and an announcement to all who would listen that I’d essentially weed *** on my own feet (*** without tramadol, I’m well aware my bladder and lung are in entirely different places). I think it was at this point lovely doctor Jonathan was beginning to wish he’d spent a bit longer finding his partner in crime.

Drain in, a squirt of oral morphine, a completely mis-timed (and probably highly inaccurate) question and answer session with a couple of medical students (“Are you in pain?” was greeted with a snort, quickly followed by a wince), and off to bed. At this point, the cashmere was taken home (better safe than sorry) and off I drifted for the night.

Next morning and Fanners had the horrendous job of ringing Ma and Pa on their jollies to tell them that muggins had gone and got herself another hit of the Big C. (We didn’t want to ring them the day before when they’d have no choice but to dwell on the news overnight before being able to get a flight back in the morning). And that phone call led to a Planes, Trains and Automobiles-esque voyage across Greece to get to the airport and back to Stansted where Walks was waiting to whisk them down to the hospital. Analie rang them at 7.30 in the morning and they were by my bed by half five. Luckily they appeared with a “What the bloody hell are you doing back here?” – not sure I could’ve handled anything else…

Meanwhile I was scooped up and taken to another ward, one that was to be my home for the next week and a half. A window spot with a view of London and the loveliest of nurses to pull me upright when needed (couldn’t manage it on my tod) and I was settled. I can’t even describe how much respect I have for the nurses – they have to do what I would consider to be the most revolting of things, and throughout they have smiles on their faces and time to come and give you a hug when you’re staring out of the window in tears and visiting hours and a Ma Booth cuddle are still three hours away.

And from that point, the days passed, as they surely do. Once in a while a CT scan or a chest X-ray to provide a point of excitement (I made new best friends with 3 of the porters who had to wheel me round from A to B and back again). On one horrendous day, the ward consultant (a man who knew nothing about me or my history or my prognosis) took it upon himself to come into my cubicle and force his registrar to tell me that the CT scan had shown cancer in my liver. This was the first we’d heard of cancer in my liver, my oncologist hadn’t been told, and this muppet had no idea whether it was another metastatisation of the breast cancer or how it would be treated. I went mental (there was a lot of swearing – sorry Ma B), and a lot of “Get OUT. Get out NOW. I DON’T want to see you in here AGAIN”. We were a mess. I mean, really, what do you do when someone announces that kind of news out of the blue? Other than shout, swear and cry, obvs. A lot. Of all of those three. For a good half hour.

Luckily, Vivienne (breast care nurse) appeared to pour oil on our troubled waters – it had appeared in the liver, but it was another manifestation of what was in my bones and round the lung, so would be treated in exactly the same way and was eminently treatable. While she was explaining Fanners appeared, whisked the curtain closed in that special way of hers, and the pair of them trotted off to find the two doctors who’d considered this to be the world’s best way of announcing a diagnosis and tell them exactly what they (and we) thought of them. Luckily, the poor chap who was tasked with telling me realized that things could’ve been handled a touch better, and has since become one of my favourites. The other bloke though, the ward consultant who as far as I’m concerned bullied him into it, can do one.

More boring days, a touch of pneumonia and a bleed from my liver biopsy that caused me to do a weird faint thing, and finally, finally I was allowed home. It helped my cause that Ma and Pa B arrived in my cubicle at the same time as Dr S to announce that they’d hilariously fed the wrong cat the night before and encouraged him on to the sofa for cuddles, only to look up and see poor old Oliver at the window looking on in abject disbelief… It was time to go home. Home for one night in my own bed before heading back in in the morning for chemo to start all over again…