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 just do the occasional round of chemo to hold it all at bay for as long as possible. Along the way I have lost a fair bit of weight and one of the consequences of that was that they needed to make me another full face mask to use for targeting the x-rays (or whatever rays they bombard me with). That meant a second CAT scan and the doctor in Alicante commented today, that when they had done that second scan, the swelling in my lymph nodes had subsided significantly - I think that was a sort of snippet of good news.
I don't feel well. I'm not really in such a bad way though I suspect I smell badly. More than anything I feel a bit sorry for myself. I feel cold even when it obviously isn't. I haven't drunk or eaten anything for a whole month now. In fact, at the cinema on Tuesday evening there was an advert for Coca Cola. I'm not a huge Coke fan, it's OK, but, as I was watching that advert I'd swear my tongue was hanging out and I could imagine the taste. I do keep trying to eat or drink. I have a spoonful of yogurt or a mouthful of tea and instead of the expected, pleasant taste I find myself spitting out the acrid fluids and spending the next 10 minutes doing a Barney Rubble impersonationation - urgh, urgh. I'm told to expect another month or two feeding through the stomach tube which often makes me vomit or if it doesn't actually make me vomit it makes me wretch and cough and spit and curse the creation of humankind.
Sleeping is good except that the downside is the state of my mouth when I awake. I've learned that my best bet is to do nothing. No water to lubricate my throat, no brushing my teeth, no mouthwash. Just wait for an hour or so until my mouth is a sort of acceptable cauldron of terrible tastes and then have a go with the brushing, gargling etc. If I don't throw up in the process then that's a definite win. And, just to finish off my neck has started to peel. If you've always lived with factor 50 sun protection you won't understand this but the old style holiday suntan was to peg yourself out, when you got your fortnight off, until your skin turned bright red. You'd try to ameliorate the pain with camomile lotion (long before after sun treatments) but, if you'd overdone it you'd pay with blisters and boils on your skin full of liquid. As those burst your skin would peel off leaving various coloured blotches. The radio has done something similar but the effects have only really shown up big time in the last couple of days.
And that's just me. Living alongside someone who goes to bed at 10 pm, who hasn't done a stroke in the garden or been shopping or done any of the other tens and tens of household upkeep and maintenance jobs for six or seven weeks and who doesn't want to go to get a drink or a meal or to a fiesta must be a little wearing to say the least for my long suffering partner.
