Tag: ERCP

#53 The squirrel comes home, again

That stent in the liver has worked a treat so the first line of this blog finishes with a, fuck yeah!

I knew before anyone that the endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) was a success because my first wife was getting more growlier by the day.  

Hospital this time around was actually quite a pleasant experience. Apart from regular interruptions by doctors, nurses, cleaners and room service, I kinda hogged Marjana for her entire stay. Well, me in person and our Croatian family back home via video, of course.

Mama time

Was kinda nice hanging with her all day every day over the last week. Nothing we ain’t been doing for the last 25 years, just in a different environment. Kind of a forced holiday so to speak, but in hospital. Lucky we don’t hate each other I s’pose.

So yeah, sorry ’bout not sharing her much lately but she’s improving day by day. By that, I mean her liver not working has changed to working mode. Not that cunty cancer though. Nah she’s still fucked from that big time but with the immediate liver issue sorted, she’s fading back to her more olive coloured skin colour. Dalmatian olive, as in the colour I just made up and not the stone fruit.

Actual real life photo of how yellow my first wife got before liver ERCP

Once we’re home and settled we’re hoping for bit more of an opportunity to share her around with y’all but there’s a couple of issues though.

She’s been so fucked up over the last few months that she hasn’t been able to get vaxed. I mean, she wanted to but hasn’t been healthy enough to actually get it done. That means she’s vulnerable as fuck to COVID and should she become infected, it won’t end well.

We like all kinds of happy endings but when we know an ending ain’t gunna be happy, we’re kinda going with the happy part being the ride towards the end.

That’s all compounded now that our borders are open and COVID positive numbers are growing faster than my nostril hairs (ok, maybe not that fast). The chance of our star character in these stories becoming infected is almost as high as Cheech in that Up in Smoke car scene after picking up Chong.

My sleeping beauty (apparently one can still be a beauty when snoring and doing saxaphone sounding farts when asleep next to me) will be leaving hospital today to return home. Just in time too as the house is a mess and really could do with a vacuum.

Basically, her bilirubin count (liver) is down (that’s good) but her haemoglobin was also down (not good), so she’s waiting on another blood transfusion before custody release papers will be signed.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. It’s taken us 25 years to work out Marjana’s spirit animal is a fucking squirrel of all things. She stores all her hospital room service food like she’s living during WWII food stamp era. A modern day prepper of the stage four metastised bowel cancer prepping homies gang. Seriously man, I turn up to hang for the day and she’s offering her hoarded cheese and cracker snacks to fatten me up. If I didn’t have to drive home every night, I’d be bringing a nice merlot to compliment the cheeses.

Inside a squirrel’s den in the early stages of hoarding

We’re gunna need a bit of a game plan going forward because basically, we’ve been given a use by date. More on that topic in the next blog, hopefully.

We had a very real chat with our palliative care doctor and the last thing we really want is to cut short the already fleeting time we’ve got left because of a COVID infection.

Conversations with the palliative care dude, whose a real good cunt by the way, included confronting topics like whether to die at home or in a hospice. It’s kinda an ugly topic to ponder, as are many others for us right now but fuck man, ya gotta look at it from a positive angle and having the option to choose where ya take ya last breath is very much a blessing compared to an unexpected death.

Since our squirrel’s hospital admission, I’ve been spending the day with her. Leave home about 7.30am and usually get home about 9pm. Sort dinner and all that shit, go to bed and wake up to do it all again. Either the first or second morning though, I freaked out big time.

I was woken by a phone call from my first wife… you know, the squirrel one. She said the doctors had reviewed one of her scans, that she’d been in pain overnight, wasn’t too flash and finished by saying ‘Brendon, I think I’m fucked.’

Oh man, my heart sank and I felt sick. Not angry sick like I get from All Black Rugby World Cup losses but just as sad… maybe even worse. I had a piss, brushed my teeth and drove one of the longest 30 minute drives to find out exactly how fucked with the worst possible scenarios taking centre stage in what ‘fucked’ actually meant. Oh yeah, I also got dressed first too.

We ain’t doctors and not really in the know as to how long some cunt can live when their liver’s rooted but with that and that cunty cancer, Marjana felt she didn’t have long at all. I’d like to say that’s all changed now with the liver stent so a little battle was won that buys us more alive time. We prefer alive times, especially compared to dead times.

We are still losing ground on the cunty cancer front though. The cancer is the war too and not just a battle. At least now though, there are options on the table like getting chemo again. Everyone neds a working liver to process all shit that goes into ya body, including of course, poisons such as chemo. In fact, hopefully even have chemo this Wednesday.

When ya not home to enjoy ya Christmas tree after Christmas, just leave it up till next Christmas and drink a beer because beer is good or just put it in another room with a rubbish bag over it aye Michelle

Just in case anyone’s wondering, sponge baths are a good timing way to break up cheese and cracker picnics in Mater Private’s Ward 8, especially if you’re the recipient. Not quite as much fun when you’re the one giving them but still, better than a punch in the head.

Tell ya what though, this cunty cancer journey is like fighting a whole heap of different battles on different fronts. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Much like our Mother Earth all being connected and intertwined, so is the human body. If a particular organ is a bit rooted it usually affects another part of the body that may need sorting before the primary issue. That means going places and organising shit and that too now tends to be similarly connected with absolutely everything COVID. Pressure builds and with it stress and the subsequent connected flow-on from that.

But all is not lost people because there’s another interconnected piece to the puzzle that helps counter that entire previous paragraph. It’s the love and support from y’all and that right there is medicinal as fuck. It has helped get us this far. You’re a bunch of real good cunts who’ve made our lives better over the last year and a half. Never enough thank yous for this so I do hope y’all are blessed with an unlimited amount of orgasms.

Me and my squirrel didn’t get to be together at the strike of midnight crossing from 2021 to 2022 but she did survive the year so was nice to see her with a beating heart early on January 1, 2022.

No cunt pissed me off on New Years eve as was only me there to argue with

The above I wrote over the last couple days and since then we’ve made it home.

Should’ve seen when the first wife was being wheeled out of hospital though. Anyone watching could’ve been forgiven for thinking she was doing an Olympic victory lap as most of the nurses came out to see her off. She was waving and smiling, as were all the sheilas who’d looked after her. Did everything except sign autographs. Was nice to see her so loved, even by people that only recently met her.

Not sure how many chemos she’s got left in her but game on again tomorrow… actually game on now as didn’t publish this until now and we’re currently doing the Chernobyl thing.

Doing the squirrel move to coincide with sirens

#52 Enter the stent

At this stage I can’t tell y’all how my first wife’s little stent procedure went as they only just took her down to have the procedure.

Bye she says as she’s wheeled off for stent procedure

Apparently she should be back within a couple hours. Funnily enough, that’s also what my ol’ Piha Pop said to my Nana once upon a time, when he went down the road to buy some milk but got caught up whorin’ for a few days instead. Thinkin’ my Mrs won’t get so side-tracked as has different priorities… like staying alive. Actually, Piha Pop probably should’ve worried about staying alive when he got back home too.

It’s kinda weird having to blog as often as I am now as it’s like similar to when we started this journey with daily updates. Looks like we’ve gone full circle in that things are changing for good or bad, almost by the hour, rather than by the month.

It’s a little sad but she ain’t fucken dead yet and doesn’t intend to be for a while yet. Whether her (and our) intentions become reality depends a lot on how this endoscopy unfolds. Well, I’ll call it an endoscopy now but after googling it I think the correct term is actually Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangio-Pancreatography (ERCP).

One of many pics taken by Miriam Ackroyd at Lifeisbeautiful.com.au

Tonight will be Marjana’s third night in hospital and fuck man, what a difference having a primo room makes. For her mental health as much as anything but also for me visiting all day. It’s heaps better being comfortable compared to the contrary like last time we were in hospital. Plus the fact, she’s got natural sunlight which we used on jaundiced Dilan when he was born nearly 18 years ago. Fuck man, he was as orange as a really orange coloured orange but in all honesty, I’m thinkin’ no amount of sunlight was gunna un-yellow the first wife. We’re sure hoping this ERCP will do the trick though.

Nothing against The Simpsons or Asian sheilas but I travelled through most continents, including Asia and even passed by the odd Simpson here and there (admittedly, that was their last name and not a cartoon character) and not once did I marry even one of ’em. Don’t get me wrong though, I like the colour yellow but my favourite shit navigator looks sick as fuck from the bile building up in her liver and making her yellow.

For the record too, one of Marjana’s changing the radio station as soon as certain bands come on bands, is Coldplay, so even the song ‘Yellow’ can go fuck off now too. Besides, when was the last time the Yellow Pages were used by any cunt that wasn’t part of the old cop v baddie interview technique? So right now when it comes to yellow, we’re like ‘meh’.

And before any cunt brings that political correctness whinging shit up saying ya can’t call Asians yellow, fuck off please. They ain’t. I even call my former fiancé yellow and she ain’t even one of the Simpsons so maybe it’s the fact that you’re actually the racist cunts picking on the poor colour yellow. I mean, what did yellow ever do to you huh?

Being all inclusive and shit, personally I’d say I’m more of a white-ish, yellow-ish, pink-ish, beige-ish, brown-ish, khaki-ish, ivory-ish fella whose a bit bald and seems to be growing a fat guts. For ease though, I’m gunna self identify as a fat white bald cunt. Golly gosh, I really hope that also don’t upset any literate fairies with sensitive feelings. Just checked with myself too and nup, didn’t get one bit upset at being called a fat white bald cunt.

I guess we’re all a little sensitive in certain things but I reckon it’s better to keep any of that shit for things that are worth worrying about like, you know, having my cook fucked up with cancer. Yeah, that’s what I’m sensitive to, as I’m sure most of you reading this are too. It’s difficult sometimes to do that daily but in our family we try our best not to sweat the small things. The bigger things in life cause enough grief to cover the smaller things too, believe me.

Not quite sure how I ended up on that rant but anyway, I can’t say what Mrs Winslow gunna be like when she comes back from that ERP thing but she’s actually been in pretty good spirits, considering.

The main things we’ve been dealing with in the forefront is pain and fatigue. They’ve mostly got that sorted in hospital with some decent drug concoctions that knock off most of the pain. If the right spell is used, it can also help with the fatigue side by countering some of the downers.

Last night though the first wife woke up about 1am in agony and had to get some extra feel good happening. It’s probably the worst thing, having to watch the one ya love suffer in pain. Cunt of a thing really but we aren’t the first, won’t be the last and by no means are we the worst off so continually remind ourselves exactly that. I/we feel for young children affected by serious shit like this. That shit just ain’t right.

One of many pics taken by Miriam Ackroyd at Lifeisbeautiful.com.au

Over the last few months we’ve been making a point of appreciating the moments we go to sleep together and also wake up together. With rugby tours, shift work and yeah, maybe the odd party when she goes to bed before me and I wake up after her, this hasn’t always been the case but they are moments to enjoy. If she was a pain in the ass cunt, then I wouldn’t mind so much but I do quite like my first wife.

The issue with going to sleep together lately though, is that both of us end up having a cunt of a sleep because Marjana wakes up in pain and cries in agony. She rolls around on the bed trying to ease the pain but it ain’t a fly she can just swat away. I usually end up rubbing her back as that tends to help for some reason. So when she told me this morning she was in massive pain overnight I actually felt a little guilty for feeling good that she was in hospital and not at home. It didn’t stop me from taking the piss though.

Quote of the Day:

Me: Did you sleep well last night ljubavi?

Marjana: At first yes, but then I woke up in so much pain.

Me: Oh good. Now they know what we deal with every night aye.

Nurse laughed and I think it was in response to that, quote of the day two is born…

Doctor: Sometimes you only wake up because of the pain.

Me: Oh, so it’s like a marriage then.

Well the above took me two hours to write and I know that because my banana skin looking partner went down for her ERCP two hours ago and the surgeon just came in and briefed me on how it went.

Just on him though, my first wife phoned me after I got home last night saying she’d met the liver surgeon who was very clear in his explanation, was very informative, had a good vibe and made her feel a lot better because of it. Was nice to hear that she didn’t loathe the person trying to save her life as much as she loathes Coldplay.

He said it was a successful procedure and that he’d put one stent in the main part that the bile was building up in, she will be in pain and that hopefully over the couple of days, Little Miss Tweety Bird coloured person’s original colour should hopefully return. From there our oncologist who I’m not allowed to call a gnome even though he looks like one will hopefully have treatment options available, unlike recently due to this liver shit taking immediate precedence.

She’ll be sleepy as fuck for a while. If I wasn’t sick of The Wiggles, I’d go back to the Purple Wiggle likening, but this time from sleeping and not her colour. Instead, I’ll go with her being sleepy as fuck similar to how we feel when we watch all these fucked tv shows about bachelors, bachelorettes, farmers wanting wives, marrying at first sight, masterchiefs, someone’s kitchen ruling and some cunts surviving out of their comfort zones. Re that last one, follow these blogs and you’ll see some cunts surviving our of their comfort zones in the real world.

Get back to y’all once I got more to say I guess but for now, we’re in as good a spot as we can be.

I’ll leave you with the last quote of the day, courtesy of our surgeon Peter:

Peter: With that stent working, we will get some good time.

Fuck yeah!

(Marjana usually proof reads my blogs but she’s still in recovery from op so she can read this one just like you fellas)

One of many pics taken by Miriam Ackroyd at Lifeisbeautiful.com.au