Episode 6: Living in the mutants’ regime

It has been just over a year now since the mutant invasion was discovered. I celebrated the anniversary with a bone marrow biopsy to see how many of the mutant beasts were still kicking around. Their numbers have dropped but they are still there and still quite effective in doing what they do.

The preferred method for the mutants to let me know they are still around is the baseball bat*. Some nights they pound my legs so that when I wake up my thighs and calves ache.  Sometimes, they take the bat to my hands and fingers.  The overall sensation is that I’ve just finished four quarters against Barry Hall. (For those who don’t follow Aussie rules, substitute thuggish player from your football code of choice). 

They also manage to whack me over the back of the head with the bat every so often, imparting a fatigue that is hard to describe. As you would expect with a baseball bat to the head, it happens suddenly. It is less like fatigue and more like some form of quick onset concussion. (Or was it Barry Hall again?) The effect is to send me to bed to sleep for an hour or so.

Cancer zaps you as a large part of your energy is going into producing the cancer. The drugs then zap the cancer. I think the zapping takes place in the bones, in the marrow, and that is why the bones hurt. I can report that those bits of me without bones generally feel okay.

Apart from that I seemed to have been spared (so far) many of the side effects I have read about or heard about from others – rashes, hot flushes, vertigo, becoming more prone to car sickness … There are some side effects that linger in the back of your mind.  Those related to heart disease sit in this category. A very small number of people have had heart failure leading to on-going death. Regular ECGs show that this isn’t an issue for me at present.

I know of people who have other diseases – non-life threatening in most cases – that, to me, have a much bigger effect on their quality of life. I can still work and I am fortunate to have an employer who will allow me time off whenever I need it. I can still go hiking and ski-ing and camping. My trips are modified a little (my Easter hike to The Fainters didn’t quite make it to all the way to The Fainters, for example, but I still managed a couple of days toting a pack around the Bogong High Plains - here's a link to some pics from that hike Hike to The Fainters - almost if you are interested).

So I continue to live pretty much as I did before but with sore legs and an occasional afternoon nap. I get sympathy because I have cancer and kind of feel guilty sometimes that maybe I should be a bit sicker than I am. I live with the sword of ‘blast phase’ hanging over my head and trust in the latest drugs to keep it from falling. I have the inconvenience of medical appointments and a weird medication regime involving fasting at stupid times of the day, like when everyone else is off to the pub for a beer.

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* Being an Australian, you would think that a cricket bat would be a more suitable weapon than a baseball bat. However, using a cricket bat in such a way is, well, just not cricket. For those who fail to understand this, I suggest you get yourself to Melbourne for an Australian Christmas of roast meat and vegies (despite the temperature being a zillion degrees) followed, of course, with backyard cricket. Boxing Day should then be spent at the MCG for sunburn and beer watching day one of the Boxing Day test.