COLON CANCER SCAN RESULTS

COLON CANCER SCAN RESULTS

The heading itself is enough to scare most people witless. You are going, voluntarily, to have a chat with someone who will give you the results of your recent live/die test. Excellent, average, could do better more effort required, or shows little promise, are all possible responses. I’m beginning to wonder if I have a whole bunch of short circuited synapses because I get no more stressed or emotional about these visits, than ones to the local supermarket. What made me aware of this was my return home this afternoon after my cancer wizard had told me that nothing dire was happening yet and that I might be doing the breathing in and out thing for quite a while. I was telling Kim about the chemo and what it was trying to do and what the side effects were and blah blah blah and it never occurred to me to mention the results of the scans. I now know she was nervous about the response, so she was reluctant to actually ask me, but it honestly never entered my head that it was important or relevant. That wasn’t just because it was in the "good news" category, I would have reacted in the same way if it had been in the "Oh shit" category because I have no control over it and I really wanted a sandwich and some coffee and was hacked off that the internet was playing up. Am I erecting the kind of mental barrier which some people use to avoid discussing or accepting reality? I really don’t think so. I’ll talk to anyone about the subject and spend most of my time writing about it and I know that "in zee ed" I’m completely comfortable with it. I genuinely didn’t think it was anywhere near the top of the things to discuss list, when there was coffee brewing. On reflection this is very selfish and I’ve come up with a revolutionary solution. Has anyone seen, or can they remember, the old scoreboards for snooker. They were traditionally a wooden affair with little sliders which you moved up the numbers as you scored. I thought I could have something similar in the kitchen, broken down into weeks months and years with the simple heading –I expect to be dead in….. I could then adjust this quickly whenever I had visited the hospital (if it’s a routine I’m very reliable) and all the stress would be taken away from everyone.

I guess just about everyone reading this has guessed what is coming next. By my estimate, the NHS could save 1.5% of its annual budget if they were to invest in my idea (NB to me. contact patents office tomorrow morning to register the "deadometer"). Oncology specialists must spend a major percentage of their time explaining prognoses to patients. They have to go through all the civilities associated with breaking bad news before they eventually get around to the "how long before you croak" estimate, so if a deadometer was set up with your numbers, before you entered the consulting room, the doctor could nonchalantly refer to it as you sat down and then get on with discussing treatment and other such trivia: it could also replace those unnecessarily complex charts and things which they hang from the bottom of your bed when you are in hospital. Not only would there be massive savings in funds, it would release these highly competent doctors so that they could concentrate on more important things like their golf handicap. I don’t know if my wizard actually plays golf but I bet he will be very pleased.