is bad enough, but when you find it covered in excrement in the middle of the night it’s unnerving. I don’t blame the ill men, I don’t blame the overworked nursing staff, I blame an administration that doesn’t have the foresight to have toilets cleaned more regularly or at the very least, to leave some means where the patients can clean the toilets for themselves.
When I was discharged, I was more than glad to go. The general consensus between patients is that hospital is risky, infections a real possibility. Beaumont is so big, with so much through traffic, it has to be practically impossible to prevent outbreaks such as the winter vomiting bug or worse. I was out and it was over.
But it wasn’t, not even close.
I still wanted to go on holidays. The kids were looking forward to it. The imperative I felt to keep everything ticking over as normal outweighed anything else. It was with that frame of mind that I spoke to the surgeon a week later.
“The biopsy came back positive” he didn’t mince his words, that was ok with me.
“Surgery?”
“Lymph nodes in your left groin have to come out” he continued to explain what was going to happen.
My head nodded but my mind was a million miles away. I hadn’t dodged the bullet. Ok, look for the positive, what is it? Mind blank for a moment……. There it is, it might only have spread to the main or sentinel node. I fixed my thoughts on that one place, sloppy luck I told myself, lose a fiver to find a tenner, I’d get through it.
“I have a holiday booked next week” I told him “can I go?”
The surgeon knew I had kids, I hadn’t crumbled with the news he had just given me. He mulled it over for a moment or two.
“Yes, but take care of that wound”.
Despite my best efforts, that holiday was a nervous time. I tried to focus on giving the kids a good time. I had arranged to come back a day earlier than Mary and the kids. It was too much of a risk to fly home on the same day I was scheduled to go into Beaumont. I arrived at Malaga airport in plenty of time. I checked my luggage and walked to the boarding gate area. It was only then that a delay was announced. For the next twelve hours I was stuck in Malaga. A tyre had burst on the incoming flight. A replacement tyre had to be flown in. All that day I kept in touch with Mary by phone. I can honestly say it was the last day she ever pretended that she cared about what happened to me.
It was in the early hours when I got home. I didn’t sleep much and early the next day Mary and the kids arrived home. I saw them only for a couple of hours before my dad collected me and I set off for Beaumont. I don’t like goodbyes at the hospital door, it’s too fraught. I had given the kids a hug and told them I would see them soon. I had tried to with Mary, but she held her hands up to stop me. It hurt, but I was accustomed to her little hurts, ‘it’s just her way of coping’ I told myself. I had other things on my mind. Again with the shitty toilets.
The surgery was over. This was a much bigger operation. Its impact much harder than the previous one. ‘Get up, get on your feet’ I told myself and I did. My left leg hurt badly. Below the belt line, I was bandaged on my ass and now crotch. It all felt weird, jumbo weird. I’d expected some nerve damage, but the reality felt oh so strange. When I touched just above my left knee, I felt a tingling sensation in my hip. The area between hip and knee was numb most of the time, but occasionally there was a flood of pinprick sensations. I didn’t dwell on it and it has remained more or less the same ever since. To me it was a small price to pay. In the initial days, I wasn’t freely mobile. I needed the support of a crutch.
Oncology came to see me. I was still under the care of surgery. The oncologist arranged an appointment for me to see him two weeks hence. He talked about options. There were damn few. It was do nothing and wait or have a somewhat experimental treatment called interferon. The evidence for interferon is weak. Some study somewhere showed that it had a marginal, and I mean marginal, two maybe five percent chance of being beneficial to the patient. There is no substantial evidence that interferon makes any real difference to the grim statistics. That said, I wanted it. I knew it was expensive with tough side effects, but it might make a difference. Might was enough for me. The other fact I gleaned from googling was the timetable. To have any chance of making a difference, interferon has to be administered within sixty days of surgery. Some oncologists will differ on the details but the core truth remains, advanced melanoma is a greedy, destructive son of a bitch. Surgery and interferon don’t git rid of it, the best they can do is hold it at bay but eventually it wins, always.
By the fifth day post op, I was eager to be home. I missed the kids a lot. I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to spend so much time with my kids. Working shift has advantages, particularly before children are old enough for school. Over the years I got to spend good quality time with first Leah and then Judy. Even when I worked night shift I got the best of time with the kids. I will always remember Leah’s little head peeping through her bedroom curtains at just after seven every morning. She was watching for me, when she saw me her face lit up and she would scuttle down the stairs. We’d have breakfast together and she would chatter. I was always amazed and grateful that this little person was so eager to share her thoughts and feelings with me. I was and am very conscious that I don’t own my kids, they are individuals in their own right, the best I can do is watch out for them. Guide and protect them, but I don’t own them. Lots of dads only see their kids briefly if at all on a day to day basis, not so for me. I was with my children at least as much as was Mary. My time with them was more important to me than time spent doing anything else. I was privileged to share so much with them.
The other thing that happened on the fifth day post op was pain. It started slowly in my testicles, left side. It built gradually over half an hour. It felt like the pain a man gets following a good kick in the nuts. I had a definite sensation of the pain moving slowly upwards. All in all it lasted for about two hours. I told the nurse on the ward and she in turn told the on call doctor. By the time he got to see me the pain had passed. It did worry me and I definitely thought blood clot, but I felt reassured that the pain ceased.
The following morning one of the surgical team came to see me during rounds. I was asked if I wanted to go home. I nodded vigorously.
“Ok then” the doctor agreed.
I rang Mary and my dad. It was still early maybe eight thirty am. The August bank holiday was looming and the weather was good. It would be ten or so before I could leave. I needed a prescription for painkillers and an appointment for out patients. Dad arranged to collect me around ten thirty.
I got dressed as much as I could. I was going to have to wear pj bottoms because anything like jeans would be unbearably painful. I dressed, packed and was ready to go when the doctor arrived with what I needed. The bed was already stripped, cleaned and ready for the next patient. I said goodbye to the nurses and made my way to the ground floor entrance. Dad was waiting for me in the car outside.
I was relieved to be home. I was also exhausted. When dad left I went upstairs to my own beautiful bed. Mary carried the bag I had used in hospital up with me. As I lay in the bed she unpacked the bag and threw the nightgown across the foot of the bed.
“Ouch” I said half joking.
“Yeah, well it’s a learning curve for us both”.
It was the way she said it, it was so cold, so hostile that I thought she was joking. I laughed.
“God your quick” I said.
She
