Hospital tests

Earlier this week I had to have a hospital test that was new to me. In order to find out why food stays in my stomach more than the normal 3 to 5 hours  (gastroscopies and ultrasound have shown it to be there for over 16 hours after I have fasted), I was urged to have a Delayed Gastric Emptying Study (DGES). I am pretty sure the culprit will be the pyloric valve damaged at the base of my stomach by the operation I had ten years ago (see here), but this test was just to make sure there was no other reason for the hold-up.

So last week, I made my way to the Nuclear Medicine Department of Guy's Hospital near London Bridge for my appointment there. The word "Nuclear" is scary enough. Would I glow in the dark afterwards? I had to present myself fasting and that included drinking no water either. Having to negotiate the hour-long journey from home to London Bridge - in morning rush-hour on busy trains without breakfast and not even a sip of water - was hard.

On arriving at the Nuclear Medicine Department, I was eventually ushered into this room to a seat in the corner, from where the photo was eventually taken. This is where I was to spend the next 2 and a half hours.

I was asked to wear a plastic apron and gloves to avoid any radioactive spillage on me. In front of me was a trolley with 5 small paper cups. In each was about 2 inches (5 cm) of a beige milky-like substance with radioactive content. I had to swallow the contents of cup 1 and then a nurse timed me to wait 2 minutes before I drank the 2nd cup, then timed 2 minutes until I drank the 3rd cup and so on, until all 5 cupfuls had been consumed. I was then asked to stand between the two upright plates you see in the photo, while they adjusted them to get my stomach visible on the adjacent computer screen, seen to the right near the ceiling on the photo. When I was in the correct position, with arms raised out of the way, they pressed a button on the computer screen and it timed 30 seconds to take the picture. I was then told to sit down again and the radiographer disappeared into the office next door to kill time. 

Five minutes later I was asked to stand in front of the plates again and repeat the process of filming for 30 seconds. This happened every 5 minutes over the next half hour. Luckily I had brought a book with me and, despite the loud humming of the equipment and hardness of the chair, not to mention the frequent interruptions every 5 minutes to ask me to stand in front of the x-ray plates, the time passed reasonably quickly. However, then we had to repeat all of this every 10 minutes for the next hour and every 15 minutes for the next half hour. I was in that room for two and a half hours in all. 

I did ask why they had got me to drink liquids, as I would imagine they trickle through that awkward valve quite easily and my consultant had expressly said that solids in the stomach behave differently from liquids which is why she wanted this test done using solids rather than a Barium meal x-ray . The staff seemed perplexed by my question and said, in that case, the test may have to be done again at a later date with porridge instead of the drink. In the meantime they would send their report to my consultant and see what she says. It is obvious something got lost in translation between my consultant and the Nuclear Medicine Department. We shall have to see whether the test was conclusive or absolutely pointless.

(S)NO(W) JOKE

This week, Kay has been in France skiing with her husband and in-laws. They had return flights to Geneva and hired a car to drive over the border to France. There were six of them -  Kay, Darcy, Darcy's parents, Darcy's sister and her boyfriend. The boyfriend is an excellent skier and has been teaching everyone else, first on the nursery slopes and then graduating to the steeper more complicated ones.  Kay did some skiing in France with her school when she was about 14, but to be fair that was a long time ago, so she needed some refreshing. To start with it was good news coming in and an amazing video of Kay doing a ten-minute ski down a very steep slope. Unfortunately it coincided with the news that the US Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn had had a terrible accident doing her Olympic downhill ski-racing and was airlifted to hospital with multiple leg fractures. 

The next day Kay texted me to say she was having a coffee in a cafe as she had taken a few tumbles and it had shaken her confidence. I could not wait for the week to finish and hear that they were flying home again. A mother never stops worrying, no matter how old their child is.

Clash of antlers

This week, I had a very unusual encounter with a stranger. 

I had popped into our local hypermarket to buy something for Kay's birthday, which is not until July, but we had visited this store together recently and she had shown an interest in something that gave me an idea for a present. It is very difficult nowadays to gauge presents for her. Living apart and rarely seeing her means I no longer know what her taste in clothes or homeware is, so to be given a strong clue was an advantage I couldn't miss.

I had taken a trolley so I could also buy some food as well, but had one of those trolleys where the wheels have a mind of their own and steering it was difficult. I had grabbed the present for Kay and a few food items and had just rounded the corner from one aisle and was about to turn into the next aisle, when a woman coming in the opposite direction did the same. We literally came face to face. She didn't have a trolley, just a carry basket, and of course my trolley was difficult to manoeuvre. So I half expected her to do a circle round me to get past. Instead, she stood her ground and glared at me. I was so flummoxed by her attitude that I was speechless. "I want to go there" she said angrily, pointing to behind me. "But I want to go there" I said, pointing to behind her. Still she glared at me and I could see that we were going to be there all day unless someone gave way. Which of course was me. I had to back up a bit to get the trolley to move forward and round her, whereupon she effortlessly went on her way with her carry basket, still glaring at me. I wouldn't care, but she was at least two decades younger than me and in no way disabled. There's no accounting for people sometimes. 

Meanwhile I returned to my usual gym classes this week for the first time in nine weeks. I had stopped going since the end of November because of my stomach problem flare-up. I half expected the energetic classes to kill me, but can vouch that not only did I survive, but I  kept up with all that was asked of me. And no aches and pains the following day. 

Dance with my Father

I make no apologies for repeating this post, as 1 February is a date I can never ever forget. This year sees the 25th anniversary. In some ways it seems like yesterday - how can it be 25 years? We are singing Dance with My Father for our choir summer concert and that is difficult to sing especially with a day like today.

I suspect, should I ever die and they need to perform a post-mortem on me, they'll find the First of February 2001 etched in my brain like a stick of Brighton rock.  It is a date I shall never ever forget.

In mid December 2000, I had been told I needed an urgent hysterectomy operation. I had developed a large mass in my womb. If I lay face-down on a hard floor playing a board game or doing a jigsaw with Kay, I could feel it digging in to me. The consultant gynaecologist I went to see was fairly hopeful it was a benign fibroid but because of its large size, could not rule out it was something malignant. He needed to open me up and see for sure, but did not want to leave it too long. However, with the Christmas and New Year period in the way and therefore an obstacle both from my and the NHS point of view, my operation, although urgent,  was fixed for the 2 February 2001, some six weeks away.

However over Christmas, it became apparent my father was very ill. I have written before about how special he was to me, how close we were and how upset I was when he died, untimely ripped from our lives by leukaemia and (cruelly) to have two kinds of the disease at the same time: one which he could have lived with for many many years and, apart from the occasional blood transfusions, would have caused no problem, but the second type was more aggressive and by mid-January 2001 revealed the diagnosis that he had but a few months if not weeks to live and he was too weak for chemotherapy. Not certain when exactly he would die, I was nervous to go ahead with my operation, but my father begged me to carry on, as it was much needed and he would not be happy if I postponed it.  He argued that I still had my life in front of me and would be recuperating by the time he grew worse, so we stuck to the schedule.

A few days before my operation, Greg, a nine-year-old Kay and I drove the sixty-odd miles to stay with my parents for the weekend. We visited my father who was by now very weak and in hospital. The consultant haematologist told us that Dad was rapidly fading and that his blood was showing more of the killer leukaemia cells day by day. Again I protested that I ought to cancel my operation, but again my father insisted I should go ahead and be all the more stronger to deal with what would happen to him later. At our parting, I hugged and kissed him and could not bear to let go or turn the corner out of view from his bed in the ward, all the time trying to keep a brave front for Kay who did not really understand or suspect what was going on.

A few days later, it was Thursday 1 February 2001: the day before my operation. I had been told to report to the ward at about mid-afternoon. I was to have a bath at home beforehand and to have brought a case full of stuff to last me a week in hospital. The hysterectomy and removal of the "mass" would take place on the Friday morning. I was at home busy preparing myself and making sure that Greg and Kay would have enough to be fed and watered during my 7-day absence. I was also packing a case and getting ready to have a bath after lunch.

At about 12:50pm the telephone rang. It was my mother in floods of tears. My father had suddenly passed away ten minutes before. I froze. Now what to do?   I was all for rushing to be with my mother but Greg wanted me to have that op so badly as he was nervous it could be bad news and to postpone it was madness. However I could not leave my mother to cope with Dad's funeral on her own and in any case I did not want to be incapacitated for it either. I decided to cancel the operation. I rang the hospital and left a message with the consultant's secretary. I rang around my circle of friends and relatives telling them the grave news.

I was in a daze. I could not think straight. There were a million and one things to think about, not least of which was how we were going to break the news to Kay. The phone kept ringing.  Then in the late afternoon my consultant rang me back. He said he sympathised with my position, but he would seriously urge me to reconsider the operation for the next morning. "Your father can no longer be saved, but YOU can", he said. He also said he could not guarantee that putting it off for a few weeks would have a good outcome if the mass was malignant. He begged me to think about it and ring him back with my decision. Meanwhile people were ringing me saying much the same thing, that my father would want me to go ahead with the operation. My mother even rang to say she had been taken by close friends to collect the death certificate and the funeral could be arranged for three weeks hence, by which time I would have recuperated. There was nothing else for me to help her with, so even she said I should go ahead with the op.

Thus it came to pass that on the evening of 1 February 2001, Greg delivered me to the hospital and then rushed off to collect Kay who had gone back to a friend's house since leaving school that afternoon. I found myself sitting up in a bed in a large old Victorian  gynaecological ward of twenty beds or more, ten down one side and ten down the the opposite side. I sat listening to people laughing with and chatting to their visitors, while the tears rolled down my cheeks. My beloved father had just died;  I sat all alone surrounded by people; and I faced major surgery the next morning. A day I would never ever forget.

Twenty-five years on, I still miss him.