Blanchardstown. The nurses on the ward I had been in agreed to take care of the dressing at the week ends.
The description of the building as a ‘clinic’ was a joke. It was the modern version of a parish hall. All types of non-medical events took place there. When I got there the place was full of people waiting to see the welfare officer. I sat with them and waited for the nurse. When she arrived she led me into a tiny room with a dentist type chair planted in the middle of it. I had brought the special dressing myself. There was nowhere to lie down and have the dressing changed properly as the registrar had done in Blanchardstown, only the goddamned chair. She changed the dressing as best she could in the cramped, stooped over conditions. I had no doubt that if this was the best available I was in serious trouble. The wound was meant to heal from the inside out, it could take months, maybe longer. There would be lots of painful dressings. How the hell could I avoid infection here? Fifty people or more were on the other side of that door. Fifty people down on their luck, fifty people who had no idea that complicated medical treatment was happening inches away. Food parcels were packed up and handed out from the room next to us. Clinic my arse, every cough I heard made me wince, the shitty toilets in Beaumont were more sterile than this. Third world healthcare is often referred to in this country. For those non believers more used to the Beacon, I advise that you take a look at the primary health care set up in clinics like this. Third world care would be a big step up on what we’ve got.
Twice more that week the dressing was changed, once in the clinic and then thankfully in Blanchardstown at the week end. The other added bonus with Blanchardstown was having someone else administer the bee sting. In the grand scheme of things, a little injection in the belly doesn’t sound like much and lots of diabetics will agree, but trying to inject yourself through already bruised flesh every day has a way of wearing you down.
By the end of the following week I’d had enough of the clinic. I rang my GP. His nurse would change the dressings for me. It was a world of difference, clean and professional. I never again went back to the clinic and never will. You get what you pay for and at fifty bucks a dressing it was worth it for peace of mind.
Thirteen days to the Interferon deadline and I eventually got to oncology out patients. My appointment was for two but so it seemed was everyone else’s. The waiting room was jammed full of people and so was the corridor outside. I was lucky enough to get a seat or at least I thought I was. For two and a half hours I sat on that hard wooden chair. I was in real pain. Having been in the surgeons clinic, I couldn’t understand the kind of mentality that would allow the same basic chair in both but on the private side the chairs were covered and comfortable. Here, in the public outpatients there were no coverings just hard wooden seats. Think about it, some pen pusher somewhere is the HSE decided that the same basic chair be used in private and public but in private it was covered and cushioned. It’s indicative of all that’s wrong in the health service. After two hours I’d reached my limit. I had to stay in the waiting room. If I went for a coffee or just stretched my legs in a walk up the corridor I could lose my place in the waiting hoard. Everyone there had cancer or was with someone who did. Oncology had let me down in Blanchardstown and now, the long wait in a stiflingly hot room on hard unyielding chairs.
A half hour later I was sitting in front of one of the oncology team. It took her two minutes to relay the information. That was it, I was done with oncology, there was nothing more they could do at this stage. I’d have a scan in six months. Two and a half hours to hear this, they could have telephoned me at home and saved me the distress.
“What about interferon?” I asked.
“We can’t give it to you with an open wound”.
I wasn’t expecting that. Interferon was the only pro active course of action at that stage. I didn’t want to cross my fingers and hope for the best. ‘Fighting cancer’ was a something I’d heard many times, how could I fight it by standing still in the headlights. I related in detail the utter disappointment that I felt oncology had been to this point. It took a good ten minutes. I told it all including the shitty toilets.
She ran for cover. I was taken into an office to another oncologist where I gave him an abridged version of what I’d just said. He was unfazed, I could have danced a jig naked on his table and it would have made no difference. I’m sure as far as he was concerned I was in the ‘anger phase’ of cancer. I was but I also had a valid point. The pulmonary embolism kicked all the patience out of me, now I just wanted to be better. The waiting room was as hot, crowded and uncomfortable as a cattle truck. Interferon was an outside chance but it was better than no chance at all. He explained the limited if any effects of interferon. I already knew, with the advent of google there are no mysteries. He told me that some oncologists don’t use it at all. I was sure that I didn’t want that kind of oncologist, I wanted someone who would throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at it. I believe that’s a reasonable expectation not just for me but for everyone with cancer. I gave up with him. An open wound meant no Interferon. I found it hard to accept that nothing could be done to make interferon possible. I left the clinic and decided to call the only person I thought could do something, the surgeon. He agreed to see me the following day.
Twelve days left.
Back in his waiting room, soft chairs, fifteen minute wait and all for one hundred and fifty bucks.
“I can close it with a skin graft” he was talking more to himself than me “you’ll need a vacuum pump, but you don’t have to worry about that”.
Forty eight hours later I was admitted for a day surgery. Recovery would mean that there was no going home that night, but once the surgery was done, they’d have no choice but to find me a bed. I was prepped and ready to go. Wheeled once again into the anaesthetist’s room I thought I knew what was to come and then the shock. I wasn’t going to have a general aesthetic. It was too risky considering the blood clot. I had to sit on the edge of the trolley.
“Stay perfectly still or you could be paralysed” the anaesthetist told me.
It was the wrong thing to say to me at the worst possible time. I immediately began shaking like a leaf. An injection was pushed into my spine in the small of my back. I had just enough time to lie back on the trolley before my legs went dead. I was wheeled into the operating room where everyone else was gowned, gloved and masked. I started shivering, I was so cold. My teeth were chattering. Someone wrapped my torso in a survival type blanket with a blow heater attached. I was light headed, confused. The same someone then injected something into the line in my arm. Instant headache, then not much else. I wasn’t unconscious but neither was I conscious. The job was done in my mental absence.
When it was over I was brought back to the day surgery ward. Skin grafts are an amazing thing. Skin was taken from my left thigh and spread out over the open wound in my left groin. A vacuum pump, a portable one, was placed over the graft to hold it in place and the whole lot was bandaged up airtight. I’d been warned that the area where the skin graft was taken from would be painful but it wasn’t. The nerve damage in the area was so extensive that I felt nothing. I couldn’t believe how quickly the area healed. Now there is only the faintest pink outline to show that a graft had ever been taken. The open wound was sealed. It was still a big hole, but a skin covered big hole, the risk of infection drastically reduced. Two days later I was home. The portable pump is about eighteen inches high and the same in width. I carried it like a satchel for five days.
The noise of the pump irritated Mary. She didn’t want to be around it or so she told me, the real truth was that she didn’t want to be around me, sick and vulnerable. Her body language was her only real communication. She kept her back turned to me almost all the time and that was only if she found herself in the same room. Most of the time she made damn sure she wasn’t. On the fifth day the pump was removed. It only took two minutes. I was ready for interferon, no excuses, no obstacles. Four days to deadline.
Oncology agreed to start me on interferon. It had to be ordered in by my chemist. It’s tricky stuff, it has a short shelf life and has to be kept refrigerated. The other thing is the cost, some where around twenty grand. The course of treatment lasts