Marjana had her first PET scan last Friday. She’d had a bunch of CT scans but this was her very first PET scan. For normal people who have no need to know the difference, a PET scan basically shows things in more detail than a CT so we were a little anxious to say the least.
Now would be an ideal time to give y’all some good news about recovery and shit but real life ain’t always perfect. I mean even the All Blacks don’t always win.
In fact, life can sometimes be a real cunt!
Colours are cool including all those rainbow colours the gay community proudly wear (not sure if there’s a crossover to my tie-dyed clothed Deadhead days at Grateful Dead concerts) but… we don’t definitely didn’t like all the bright colours that glowed in this PET scan. Nup, they’re a little bit fucked actually.
Basically, the guts of the matter is that these Chernobyl sessions have kept the cancer mostly at bay for a year except for a lesion in her liver and some ugly Chernobyl-ish looking bright colours at the same spot she had the operation in her bowel to remove some tumours.
Our surgeon Peter Yuide said from the start that they couldn’t get all the cancer out in the operation so we knew it was still there to be managed with the likes of chemo, prayers and taking the piss. The fact it didn’t just give up like I’d like teams to do when playing the All Blacks really sucked.
For you regular readers, you may recall me saying the ol’ girl has been a bit rooted over the last couple months with fatigue, well it looks like this may be a result of internal bleeding and the cancer growing.
Oh, another term for a little bit rooted is anaemic.
Marjana gets blood tests done every fortnight just before chemo and for the last couple/few months they’ve come back with numbers lower than an Aussie cricketer’s batting score. Her haemoglobin in her last blood test for example was 72 and although I think 100 is sufficient, ideal is above 120 (I think).
Plus her iron count was only nine and (again, I think) it’s supposed to be around 40. Fuck, I need to stop this thinking shit.
If I was writing a blog about other shit I’d like to write about then it would make for very different reading. But these are The Cancer Chronicles and we tend to call it how it is even if it’s an ugly cunt of a thing because that’s exactly what it is (bowel cancer) and anyone grossed out can go read Karen on Facebook.
No cancer is cool but bowel cancer certainly ain’t the most romantic of cancers because it inevitably involves shit.
Some of my very best times in my life ever have involved shit though. A myriad of you have already heard a few of my real life stories about faeces (both mine and that fucken Slovenian cunt) but there is nothing worse than being in public knowing you’re about to shit your pants, unless you’re not wearing pants. Don’t try and deny it either as I know y’all been there at some stage.
To the contrary though, there’s nothing better than successfully sucking that grogan and it’s turtlehead back up inside as far as you can and making it to a toilet just in time for that pressure release. Not sure about you fellas but personally I always hope that they people watching me beeline to the toilet doing some spastic squeezy kind of walk have left when I come out. But that’s just me.
Sorry, I got a little excited and side-tracked there but tend to do that when telling tales about shits.
Where was I… oh yeah, the first wife and her war with bowel cancer has got a few of her own shit stories. Her relationship with various versions of blood infused diarrhoea aint exactly what she likes to call a good time, especially after chemo when it feels like it’s ripping her insides out. As much as it hurts me to see how that affects her, it’s nothing compared to her living it in the first person.
So following a combo of black blooded diarrhoea, low iron, vitamin D and an extraordinary low haemoglobin count Wednesday’s Chernobyl day was kind of cancelled, but not really. Our oncologist who I’m not allowed to call a gnome even though he looks like one gave her a week off chemo but ordered my first wife a couple more pints of blood and a pint of iron. Lately, she’s been going through blood bags like I go through piss (for you Americans, I mean beer, not urine). If ol mate’s gunna order pints I could do with a few of my own. Beer though, not blood.
A few hours later my first wife came out feeling a bit more energetic… not energetic enough to vacuum though but energetic enough to compete with our dog Bella about who gives me the most kisses.
Although she felt better from her blood transfusions and the iron infusion, this was actually a cunt of a day. We’ve had a few of them and they don’t certainly don’t get any easier.
The PET scan shows heaps but they still need to check internally and rather than just do a colonoscopy (up the ass), they need to do an endoscopy (down the throat) as well. Sounds a lot more erotic than what this one is, believe me. I think my first wife is hoping they use different equipment or at least do the endoscopy before the colonoscopy. With the amount of kisses she gives me, I’m actually hoping that too.
She’s booked in for both procedures this afternoon.
Now I know what you’re thinking right. She just loves operations and shit like suffering the pre op diets, the pain, the inconvenience to life and the financial cost of being a as crook as a dog but nah man. She’s gotta have these procedures because quite simple, cancer is a cunt.
Following our Wednesday day came our Wednesday night when our surgeon Peter Yuide phoned to have a very real conversation. Just because we both reckon he’s a good cunt, doesn’t mean we have to enjoy what he says and what was said during that phone call didn’t exactly fill us with elation.
I know he follows these blogs because even great surgeons deserve to see their name and laugh at the same time. He, more than most fully appreciates our situation and by situation, I mean the cards we’ve been dealt and how we’ve tried to deal with them.
Although not the full conversation, your first quote of the day goes against the norm as isn’t funny but gets a mention because it is what it is.
Peter the surgeon: This is not the first time you’ve received news like this and you must be almost used to it by now. We’ll know more after your procedures on Friday but another operation isn’t off the table. Ideally we do not want to go back in to that part of the bowel and will look at options after reviewing Friday’s procedures. But over this last year Marjana, you haven’t dwelt upon the bad parts or given up and just died. Instead, you’ve rolled with the punches and basically lived life to the fullest, which I’m sure you will continue to do thanks to that crazy husband of yours.
Those that have had colonoscopies can appreciate the prep involved. You have to drink heaps of gross shit that makes you shit out absolutely everything inside you and believe me it ain’t fun. Actually, when I put it like that it reminds me of my partying days pre first wife.
My first wife made me have a colonoscopy because she was scared for me after she was diagnosed. Either that, or she wanted me to suffer like she does. As gross as the prep drink shit is, I just open throat skulled most of it so the pain from the taste is short and sharp. But my first wife wasn’t born a Winslow and doesn’t have those skulling genes from birth like I had and our boys have. She married into it and therein lies the difference.
It’s hard not to laugh. Too hard in fact so I overtly laughed at her when she tried to drink that shit. She actually tortures herself by making the pain last longer and sipping ever so daintily, even with pinky in the air.
Me: It’s not a fine wine wife. Just skull that shit, man!
She didn’t but she did make me laugh again when she started gagging and coughing and spluttering. My laughing made her laugh which in turn made her gag, cough, splutter and laugh at the same time. This snowballed making me laugh even harder. Now that’s living right.
And your last quote of the day…
Marjana (immediately after she sneezed in bed after drinking prep drink): Oh good, I didn’t shit the bed.
Today is a crucial day for us as to where we go forward from here so if you’re the praying kind, do your thing please.
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