Getting a shower

It turned out to be a bit of a porky. They told me I'd be in hospital for about 24 hours to fit a peg  - a stomach feeding tube. It's nothing more than a plastic tube that leads directly into my stomach. It will be needed when my throat has closed up so much with the radiotherapy that I can no longer eat through my mouth. In fact I'm here till Monday.

I thought this was the last of the pre-treatment things to be done before the real fun starts. I've been running around the province getting bloods done here, a talk to a dietician there and CAT scan at another place. The talk with the radiotherapy hospital in Alicante actually turned into quite a session. Information given, they made a sort of death mask (and I'm not being maudling, it's just what it reminded me of) by shaping a heated plastic mesh around the contours of my face. The idea is that I will be held in place by the mask as they blast me with rays and the grid, just like in a game of battleships, will allow them to direct their fire at the target. They also did a scan, with the mask in place, to locate my tumours against the grid.

Anyway I'm now wearing, rather fetching, Generalitat Valenciana pyjamas and sitting in my room along with my temporary bunkmate Stefan, who has hepatitis, in Elda Hospital. This is the third day I've been here and since the peg was put in I've been catching on to the everyday routines a little better.

That's why, daringly, I asked them if I could take a shower. The answer was of course but I hadn't anticipated the obstacles.

The first was that the peg has to be washed in the shower and that would mean I would have to apply new dressings, afterwards. I had no gauze, no tape. I asked. I got.

But I'd forgotten that the gauze needs to have a slit cut into it so I had to flag down a passing nurse anew. And, just as the nurse was about to go I remembered that I was tethered to a saline drip which meant I needed to be unhobbled. He disconnected me.

Finally ready to get soapy and damp and breakfast arrived. The instructions from on high have put me on a liquid diet. That is so the liquids can be injected into my stomach via the feeding tube but, at the moment, chowing down at a hog roast or eating fancy buns at the Savoy would cost me nothing but financial or digestive harm. The nurses and kitchen people said they'd see what they could do. I have to be honest  and say that after 43 hours of fasting being given a luke warm mint tea and a pineapple juice yesterday was just slightly disappointing.

It was camomile tea for breakfast.

Then back to the showering and apart from the minor flooding, the strangeness of washing around a plastic tube hanging from my stomach and trying to keep the dressing around the cannula dry it was fine.