Life in Culebrón

Just a quick update on my throat cancer. For new readers, during the summer, I got to see an otorrino (Ear Nose and Throat specialist) and, after a few tests he said I had a throat cancer. He passed me to an oncólogo (Cancer specialist). They ordered up a few tests, decided that the cancer was just in my throat and lymph nodes and set me up for a course of 33 sessions of radiotherapy and three of chemotherapy. The radio sessions were in Alicante and the ambulance service took me there for most of the sessions. The chemo was in Elda. Along the way I had a picc port installed in my arm so they could take blood from my veins and put other liquids in. They also put in a PEG tube so I could put "milk shake" type food directly into my stomach when my throat became too inflamed to eat through my mouth. There have been a couple of snags along the way; I ended up on a hospital ward for three or four days because I kept throwing up and the dehydration was damaging my kidneys, but, gene...

Done it then. The prescribed treatment for my throat cancer and inflamed lymph nodes was three sessions of chemotherapy in Elda and thirty three sessions of radiotherapy in Alicante. Today I had the last session - everything finished. The medics tell me that I'll still feel sick, not be able to eat through my mouth, continue to have skin peeling off my neck, and whatnot, for a month or two yet. My next appointment with the oncologist isn't until 11 November (not at 11am) and the next time to speak to the ear nose and throat people who did the original biopsy isn't until mid December. But, for the moment I won't have to get up at 5.30 am to be ready for the ambulance to take me to Alicante every weekday and nobody is going to poison me with vile chemicals or bombard me with particles for a while. Of course nobody has suggested what will happen if it hasn't worked. I don't know whether they wade in with more of the same or if they give it up as a lost game and jus...

I've been riding around a lot in ambulances recently. I remebered an earlier blog about ambulances, back in 2019. I re-read it and it's much better than this one. It flows more easily and it's reasonably interesting in a Big Chief I-Spy sort of way. The sort of simple information with which you can amaze your friends and confound your enemies. So far as I can see there have been no basic changes to the legislation since I wrote that blog but that didn't stop me publishing this rewrite. This piece is about the ambulances that are contracted by the Generalitat Valenciana, the Regional Government in, the region I live in. Every now and again Valencia put a contract out to tender and anyone interested enough to bid has the potential for providing the ambulance fleet for the requirements of the region. There are other ambulances, private and NGO ((Non Governmental Organisation). The private clinics and hospitals need ambulances to move their customer/patients around and othe...

I wasn't going to do this again. Not for a while. In fact I have a very slight blog ready to go about ambulances, but a number of people have asked or sent me messages so, I'll do my best to make it short and sweet. Yet another update on me and throat cancer. Nothing has changed in the treatment stakes. I've now done 25 of the 33 sessions of radiotherapy. An ambulance collects me from home and deposits me back here a few hours later. It can be as few as four hours from start to finish and as many as six and a half. The treatment takes about twenty minutes and the rest of it is waiting or travelling time and the occasional medical Q&A. Yesterday the ambulance from Alicante brought me home via Biar. Locals can gasp and chortle.  I've done two of the three chemotherapy sessions. The third and, hopefully, final session is on Monday 14th provided that there is no medical reason for not going ahead - apparently things like anaemia, lack of platelets, reduced kidney functi...

We were following an ambulance. It wasn't in a hurry and neither were we. On the back door was the symbol of the Generalitat, the Regional Government, and the name of a private firm. Along the side, in big letters, SAMU, obligingly decoded for us even in Valenciano (Servei d'Ajuda Mèdica Urgent), the English would be something like Emergency Medical Care Service. I think, though I'm not absolutely sure, that just as people in care homes wear name tags in their cardigans, writing SAMU on an ambulance says who they are and where they belong. Use SAMU or SAMUR (which is the service for the emergency ambulances in Madrid) and you mean ambulance: the sort of ambulance that comes for heart attacks and road traffic accidents and not the sort of ambulance that comes to take you for your appointment with the urologist. Health Services in Spain are devolved to the seventeen Regional Governments. Ours, in Valencia, is called the Generalitat Valenciana. Hence the logo on the ambu...