I wasn’t going to bother writing a note about every single visit I might make to a medical practitioner, but seeing as I’ve logged on and found a number of messages, I can only presume that enquiring minds want to know, so here follows the tale of my trip to the arse drill.

Now, as I’ve noted before, this isn’t my first time with the good old bone marrow gear, so I was looking forward to this about as much as a person with no anticipation of having a good time, who is about to have a very bad time. Nevertheless I arrived in Ward 7 promptly. There’s a nice waiting room for day clinic people (like me) and a ward full of in-patients. Additionally all the rooms which form part of the ward seem to be dedicated to various individuals. I can’t remember the actual names, but it wasn’t the waiting room, it was the Fred Bloggs waiting room and there was the John Smith counselling room and so on. I couldn’t work out if it the names were those of charitable donors, or the deceased. I chose not to enquire.

 After a short while I saw a guy, who looked nurse-ish wearing a smart blue uniform and a white pvc apron. Being as I was wandering about looking lost (and I was, pretty much) he asked if he could help me. I informed him why I was here and who I was. He said he would “let them know” and said I should take a seat in the waiting room.

 And so I did. I could observe across the corridor into the main ward opposite where there was what looked like a reception desk (with nobody there). Various other staff did start to appear, however wandering back and forth. I saw Dr Williams (my other haematologist, I’m collecting a set) walk by and even caught a glimpse of Dr Lisa. Eventually as I continued to sit, waiting, one of the nurses sort of looked at me with a smile, which managed to communicate the sentiment “who the fuck are you and why are you here?”. I therefore got up and asked if anyone had told her I was here.

 “Are you Stefan?”

“Yes”

“No, nobody has told us, but I know now, take a seat and it shouldn’t be long.”

 Well, thanks a bunch PVC apron guy. I guess your reason for existence must be to wander about randomly and pretend to do some work. All you need is a cup of coffee and we can call you Wally.

 So I go and sit back down and in between levels of ‘refraction’ on my phone I watch the world go by. I am disturbed by the presence of chip factory woman wandering about with some files, but I am beginning to think she is admin staff and nothing for me to worry about. A kindly nurse offers me a sandwich, which I politely refuse and another offers a cup of tea, which I gratefully accept.

 Just as my tea arrives, so does a doctor who shows me into a treatment room – I bring the cuppa, I think I’m going to need it. He explains that he is Doctor Sundul. Now, I can see quite blatantly from his name tag, that he is, in fact, Doctor Sundulyianama. I guess he is pretty fed up of people being uanble to pronounce it properly. I choose to remain silent upon the issue, not wishing to upset a gentleman who is shortly to be attacking my arse with spikey pieces of metal. He starts to explain the procedure and I inform him it’s not my first time. He nods in acceptance of this and gives me the consent form to sign.

 I won’t bore you with the details. Some amount of unpleasantness and pain followed. When the job was done, they brought me a second cup of tea. I needed it.

 At this point Dr Newton (Lisa J) appeared wanting to talk to me about my surgery. Well, one of my friends had made the excellent suggestion that I tell them if they want a lymph gland, they should whip out the one which is causing me all the shoulder pain. So I was pleased to hear that they wanted to ultrasound my neck as there’s a good looking candidate up there which didn’t quite get fully mapped on my recent CT scan. Imagine my disappointment when it turned out that they are looking on the OTHER SIDE FROM THE PAIN. They gave a variety of answers as to why they didn’t want to go into my already painful shoulder – but let me assure you all, dear readers, that this discussion is far from over and I will be having further words upon the subject.

So I just got back from the hospital. I should start by noting the excellent decor in the “Outpatients West” department of Bradford Royal Infirmary. I’ve been there for all kinds of stuff over the past years and it used to be utterly loathly and wholly depressing in there, but they’ve redesigned, rebuilt and redecorated and it’s now actually quite a pleasant environment. Of course, I wasn’t there to introduce “Changing Rooms” or to flounce about like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen so, realistically I didn’t much care. It would have been nice, mind you, if the TV hadn’t been tuned to CBBC, being as the average age in the room was probably somewhere north of 40 – but at least they had put the subtitles on, so even from the back, we could all see and understand the horrors that Rachel (age 9) was putting her poor suffering father through.

I had, as I’ve said, had two calls from the hospital yesterday. One of them turned out to be from “this is Dr Newton’s secretary” to tell me not to bother turning up for my 2pm appointment because they were going to be busy and I’d be sitting about for ages, so should turn up around 4pm instead. Complying with this excellent advice I arrived at around 3:45pm and presented myself to the receptionist. She looked at her computer screen and her list and the screen and her list and finally asked me if I had changed my appointment. I explained that I had spoken to the secretary yesterday and after some nodding, was told to take a seat. As I turned away, I saw her cross out “DNA” (did not attend) from next to my name and tick me off instead. Nobody had bothered to actually change anything on the computers.

A nurse appeared and took my height and weight. As it turns out I am both tall and fat, which will come as no surprise to anyone. What I don’t get is why they always seem to task the shortest nurse with measuring my height. One day I will be allocated a tall nurse to measure me. On that day it will be an easy task for the short nurse, as I will have fainted with the shock and she will be able to use a tape measure before reviving me.

As I then waited, watching Rachel (age 9) pick out a holiday full of things her Dad hated, I noticed a very large woman appearing and disappearing from the rooms at the back of Outpatients West, carrying files. Now I know I’m a big lad, but clearly this woman had been involved in some kind of terrible accident in a chip factory and had to eat her way out. I checked my appointment letter “blah bla … Dr Lisa J Newton …” I now had the unnatural fear that chip factory woman was going to be the doctor. I’m sorry, I know it’s not cool and I know it’s not nice, but I didn’t want her anywhere near me.

 Shortly after I was relieved to be shown into the office to find that Lisa J was in fact, not the chip factory woman and in fact a perfectly average peroxide blonde with no special intimidating features of any kind. We talked for a while about all the events leading up to my attendance at “Haemotology and Oncology Clinic” this afternoon and then discussed what we would be doing next. She gave me a good poking about in my neck and groin looking for the enlarged lymph nodes (and not finding them) then said that she would need some other tests.

 Firstly she wants a bone marrow test. I’ve had one of those before and if you can just try to imagine someone using a core drill on your pelvis bone, well it feels exactly like that. This is because it is exactly like that.  As you can imagine I’m very much looking forward to Tuesday lunchtime when I get the repeat performance. I’m saving up the vouchers, 2 more and I will be able to get a set of fake crystal wine glasses.

 For today though she just wanted a load of blood tests, liver, kidneys, blood count, LDH (look it up) and oh… do you mind if we test for Hepatitis B, C and HIV as chemotherapy will tend to make them flare up.

 Right well… ok then. Let’s hope that I don’t have Hep B, Hep C or HIV, as I’ve got enough to worry about, thanks.

 Anyway, she tells me, by the time you come in for your bone marrow on Tuesday, we should know when we can get you booked in for your surgery.

 Ok… Wait! What?!!

 Yes, we need a biopsy of a lymph gland so we can do tests and see what’s precisely going on and decide what to do about it. Right, so you’ll what, stick some kind of needle in and get a little sample?

 Oh no… we’d like a whole gland if possible…

 The only plus side to all of this is that the time it will take them to mess me about will lead nicely into me not being ill with any kind of horrible chemo until *after* the St Leger Races works day out. I am making big plans for that day which involve best efforts to drink the free bar dry. Wish me luck!

Note: Some of these earliest postings were originally posted to facebook, at the time all this stuff was happening. Nice to have it copied to here.

It might seem a bit crappy posting this to facebook, but I really can’t face the thought of ringing all my mates individually and going over the same conversation umpty bazillion times. So here it is, so that everyone knows what is happening.

I’ve been having some pain in my shoulder recently and had a number of tests, x-rays, ultrasounds and so on trying to find out what on earth has been going on. When I had my ultrasound, the doctor wanted to get some standard chest x-rays just as a precaution. From there, I was called into have a CT scan, which has revealed a number of enlarged lymph nodes in my chest and this is almost certainly what has been causing my shoulder pain. The upshot of this is that I have now been fast-tracked to get treatment for cancer, with a diagnosis of lymphoma.

Quite how bad this is I don’t yet know. Lymphoma (so they tell me) is one of the least bad types of cancer and there are excellent treatments now available. Basically at this stage, I will be needing to see what the specialist says after further testing including a biopsy and similar.

Right now it’s not feeling very real. Cancer is something that happens to other people and not to me, so I sort of feel like I have this mate who is ill and it’s not really me. Also I’m completely focused on the possibility of chemotherapy leading to hair loss, and I’m sure I have better things to worry about.

So, that’s my news. Feel free to pass it along.