RADIO MALIGNANCY
They come with smiles, in green scrubs, opening doors with soft voices, warm and friendly they come to burn. They burn me five days a week for two months. They let me go home but they burn me. They give me weekends off, yet they burn me. There is no pain but they burn me. It`s the process, it`s the process that keeps you sleepless, keeps you anxious, it’s the process and the green scrubs that keep you alive./
The process. Empty bowel, fill bladder, into scrubs, lie on machine, out of scrubs, go to toilet, go home. Easy peasy. Ha bloody ha. Squeeze ma lemon pleasy.
Number one. Number one of 37. You have to start somewhere. The waiting area is orange and bright, a three star hotel trying too hard. Reception, toilets and changing rooms act as barriers to the burning machines. I meet happy name badge Patrick, a hospital volunteer full of smiles and bonhomie. Well versed in aversion techniques, he attempts to settle my newbie nerves. He thrusts a right wing newspaper into my hand. I didn`t have the heart to tell him that I swing the other way…..he leaves me with a `Go well, go steady` which I reckon signifies that he has a good heart.
There is blood on the floor as I perform my first enema. A stark reminder of the darker side. I lie prostrate being burned, staring at a cross on the ceiling. A standard cross. Cut through the polystyrene in centimetre lines. An ominous sign. 37 times I`ll be staring at a cross. This is where I lay. Epitaph and warning. Don`t stay here too long.
I have my personal water bottle. Specifically for the process. My football teams colours radiate in sympathy. The bottle embodies the journey I am about to undertake. Thoughtfully bought on Father`s day, a week before the radiotherapy treatment. A symbol of the chasm that needs to be breached between purity and the dark malignance of cancer. I love it`s tactility, it`s deep purple vibe, streamlined shape and unadulterated, unmistakable connection with my team. An upbeat motif to buffer me from the darker forbidding moments. It`s also useful for hydration..….
On the way to No. 2 it feels like a long journey. It will be. 10 minutes to the station. 2 months before release. My mind is a jumble of numbers. 37. Not a number plucked out of the air nor a number that is applicable to only me but a staging point in radiotherapy treatment when the diagnosis is stage 4. 37 burnings. I could possibly take the 37 bus but there`s too much circularity to that thought. We will see if I view the route positively as an annoying diversion or as a destination where all the birds are singing and the sun always shines and Big Ears tells Noddy to fuck off. Him and Sweep, of Sooty and Sweep fame, should do one to la de da de da Andy Pandy land. I digress into dark animated humour avenging myself by destroying annoying puppets. Why not. I excuse myself.
37. 37 is actually a bus that is in the area that I live but travels in a different direction to the hospital. But the number, the coincidences, has stuck like a pinging pinball in my head, pulsing between buffers giving me constant replays. 37 is Buchanesque, the 37 Steps, a man on the run to a hopeful freedom. The more I dwell the more it becomes totemic, an earworm, an iconic state a prime prime. A perfect prime. An emirp. 37 is all I can think of.
I feel a flush coming on.
Today there`s a smiley face above me. A sticker one centimetre in diameter. There are six machines and I`m on number one. Today staring at this sticker I ponder it`s relevance. A mocking emoji perhaps, this is what I get for my reprehensible lifestyle. I settle on it being a thoughtful application imagining one of the therapists breaching health and safety protocols to place it there. An attempt to create light relief and humour in the process. Displacement from the reality. The green scrubs smile, manhandle and leave. I burn on my own.
37 careers around my synapses. Heinz is 20 more and the Sunset Strip, – dig that kookie out if you can – 40 more – 39 if you are thinking of trombones in the hit parade and 30 more than my so called lucky number and birth date. I ponder these cardinals. I`ve always liked numbers. I count to seven up long escalators continually going back to 1 and up to 7 again and then count the number of sevens simultaneously. There are 4,337 pieces of squashed chewing gum on my walk from home to the station…..and there are 37 burns…..this is the ball in the bagatelle as I travel up for my third bout of being prostrate for my prostate. 37 is not a lottery, they tell me.
There`s a female couple tattooed up for Glastonbury on one of the train platforms. Full of wound up energy and smiles. A heady feeling of beats and melodies. Will I ever have that overwhelming pent up joy? The feeling of letting go completely. Maybe the external reality of forced anal retentiveness has by osmosis leaked into my psyche. The need to let go is excruciating, the need to hold on is equally tough. Yes I want to be released from the trap of the 37 machine, rays and disease and this harness of water bottles and enemas. I want the numbers to release me. I want senses working overtime to be overwhelmed not undermined. Ecstasy. Someone quits the train before me. I see their life ahead as my life ebbs away. If only I could hold hands and stop my future being left behind.
For number 5 I wake up to a coughing bug. I self cancel, but there is no escape from the 37 box. My absence is noted and added onto the end. 38 perchance or 37A, I muse in anger at myself.
The day after the bug. Number 5 part two. Manoeuvring between the cancer consequences, the wigs, the wheelchairs, the gaunt bodies, directing me to the burn. Determined to reach the sweet smell of Chanel, I murmur `This little bladder of mine, I`m gonna let it shine.` A bit of country gospel never hurt. I keep my mind on hydration, the key to success. I`m early so I fill my time on the ground floor. Reminiscent of a bus terminus but with a decent café. On the cancer friendly menu there is no sign of caffeine, a substance that along with alcohol is a no no within the process. It’s a misnomer to call oneself a café. A decaff caf with no char or macchiato a paradox of victuals I muse. I take the lift to take on burn five. However……on the wheel of expectancy disappointment follows closely behind. I couldn`t hack the process. Look at him he`s been sent home. He couldn`t hack it. The process has a tendency to bring on a permanent paranoia. We maybe staring into space but we know when someone can`t hack it, look at him. The him is me, what an embarrassment in front of my cancerous peers. There`s always something that could go wrong. Bladders, bowels, enemas, toilets, endless water consumption. I didn`t process the process today, I hang my head and slip away. I am that decaffeinated oxymoron.
Paranoia sets in. If it takes me 8 visits to get to no. 5 that means three months not two. That means holidays up the spout. That means 60 days not 37. That means 12 weeks not 8, 3 months not 2. Sheese. I ponder this maze of numbers whilst walking on Guy`s Hospital`s birth street Great Maze Pond. The street of historical nuance and coincidence. The marshland origins permeate my thoughts and I sink into the muddy cess of unremitting process. A cancerous morass.
I sit downstairs before my allotted time. I sit to minimise my period in the cancer cocoon of Radiotherapy on floor one. The air is punctuated by the lifts automated voice repeating `Going up`. `Going up` lingers and echoes. It`s mightily difficult to relax or concentrate. There is never an equivalent `Going down`. As though there is only one way. It`s heaven or the incinerator. With three lift doors opening in unison the chorus of `going up` becomes unbearable. I surrender to the appeal for my 16:25. Three hours later, the lights are off. The waiting room is cavernously empty. There is no reception, no cleaner, no one to clap well done. Cancer is on shift work. The process is in remission. Through the relief I mentally salivate. I am Pavlov`s dog in this perverse palaver, gimme a drink why doncha. Chanel indeed smells sweet.
Did I tell you about the flushes.
By now I know every toilet from home to hospital and all environs. As a support they give you a calling card `I`ve got cancer let me use your loo`. A calling card for a cancer salesman……`look if you don`t let me in, you`ll get it too..` By the time you pull out the wallet, fiddle about with pouches and locate the calling card you`ve wet yourself. I leave it in my pocket, no tempting fate for me as I`m on my way to No.6. A memory is coughed up through a cancerous daydream. Players No.6 the beginners and poor man`s cigarette. All bright blue primaries and lies. They knew it was poison then.
I`m on a roll for number 7. I feel like the King yet my media exposure is lacking. I too have been cancelling appointments due to cancer treatment. Yet for election day he`s a busy bee with tea and scones booting out Rishi and welcoming Keir with cassis and champagne….you see what I did there.…I wonder if I`ll get a byline in the local rag, Dave has pulled out of the pub meet up due to incontinence.
Now we`re motoring. Cooking on gas onto number 10. The dark humour cloud beckons. Let me extol the non-credentials of Players No. 10. The smallest ciggy in town, the last packet in the fag machine. A nasty piece of work even when I enjoyed tabbing. The baccy scrapings off the floor infused with cancer. By the way I got on the tube the wrong way today it was four stops before I realised. I do a bit of light reading to find out that I have an excuse for my lapses it`s called ADT – Androgen Deprivation Therapy or Another Dose of Trouble.
An appropriate point to speak of flushes. It`s that ADT. They say it’s the menopause…yes yes, men can get it. The drivers of sex whether male or female are cancer opportunists and accelerators. You need something to take them out before they drive your cancer wild. ADT is the answer, but it comes with several prices. Fatigue, flushes and fat.
Another hole in my belt, another flush.
12 is a well rounded number, I like a dozen, it smacks of curvature, roundness, eggs and ovoids. Twos, threes, fours and sixes are all within its grasp. It`s the end of the week and there are hints of nirvanic light. I get ahead of myself. I break the rules. An experiment with alcohol causes a lapse in anal composure. An ornithological meandering to see a rare transatlantic drifter, a Franklins Gull, was lost. A chance to alleviate the feelings of underachievement gone in a whisper of wine. The flicker nothing but a low spark. I need to put some spunk back in this hunk. Testicular extra curricular. Satire don`t you just love it.
Ah another flush.
Yesterday was No. 13 a bakers dozen of being cooked. 13 it stares at me, 1/3, a third way through or 2/3 two thirds to go, a cup half empty a cup half full. I swing between the two, the yin and yang of therapy. Peppermint tea was a surprise addition to the therapeutic techniques advanced by the burners. The machine knows it all. It sees through you. You can`t hide from it or its keepers. The burners stare at their screens at inexplicable interior views of my nether regions. In their radiation proof booth they see I need to evacuate. I leave the room and sup my tea. I find a corridor of other evacuators sipping tea and strolling with purpose. With nowhere to go. Trapped by their machine. Up and down the corridor we travel, silent with the occasional nod. We may be in it together but this is a very personal thing.
At Number 14, I have started writing again. An interesting time in my `real` history, my pre-cancer history. A stream of historical consciousness hits me in waves to when all the hormones were flowing, pre-pubescent to pubescent, when life changing judgements were made without the tools of intellect and knowledge. The thoughts are prefaced by `If I `ad my time again..` and for some reason in a Northern accent. Well ofcourse I would have written a book, walked around the world, written another book on my way to stardom. I`m in that bagatelle again, a steel ball careering off lifestage buffers on a bouncy trip to nowhere.
I pick up my well thumbed novel to avert the gaze. The gaze is a metaphor for numbness. The gaze still gazes under closed lids. There is no end to the gaze for some. Lost in space the gaze becomes a depressive vortex, a middle distance mindfuck. There in front of me is another starer with an empty gaze, the stare is not for me, the stare is to cut off thought. This is no bonfire, this is no fountain, this is no firework, this otherworld gaze has no mindfulness, this gaze is like a cancer gnawing slowly at the soul. The gaze tells me to never forget my book.
No. 15. In this discourse I deliberately avoid direct mention of toilet incidents and accidents. Well only in broad terms. There is enough humour and darkness without this recourse. There are moments where self respect disappears and practicalities dominate. The memory of such undermines any respect that I have for myself. Even now. Suffice to say that this was not a good day for retention. We are not halfway through and there is another variable to consider. Yet more contingency plans created. I feel like a Trump cartoon, today I dress like a big baby.
Off to 16, and it`s rounded essence gives me a lift. That`s a satisfying double to out on. Another number full of other numbers; 2`s, 4`s and 8`s. Nice and rounded. Bizzy Lizzy flowers on reception. There`s always one. She struts determinedly between the cancer consumers. She takes no prisoners and is highly respected. Her voice cuts through the air of gazers, `Oi Marfa` she cries. `Your names on the screen, go `n get changed`. Marfa replies in an earthy East end tease `And what would you like me to change into?……a perfectly healthy person?`. A ripple of smiles spontaneously echoes from gazer to gazer. Marfa has terminal cancer. What strength she has. Marfa has shown us all something special. Life should be smiles. Little things do matter. And hats off to Lizzy for treating a cancer prisoner as an escapee.
Yesterday evening, procrastinating on bodily functions, I get to appreciate my tattooed left thigh. If I had ever wanted a tattoo I always perceived them to be minimal and hidden away. Well my dream has come true. I now have three tattoos. All free on the NHS. Be careful what you wish for….the cost is the cancer. One on each thigh and a central one hidden by pubic hairs. A crosshairs for the burning beam. That one offers lots of problems particularly for newbie burners. Life and death at the crossroads.
Before 17 my waking dreams sees my life unravelling. It is a positive scene where a young youthful me comes in first in a cross-country race, absolutely annihilating the competition. I start gazing and thoughts quickly change into a winners and losers debate between the shoulder monkeys. This dichotomous battle becomes a war of attrition. You don`t want that as there`s only one winner. The mardy one. I strengthen my resolve by being lost in my book as I prepare within the process. The usual social code is respected by compatriots. A nod, a wink and a cursory chat about football results is enough to satisfy our empathies. We steer clear of drawn out conversations and go back to gazing or the escape of the written word. A large vocal American approaches me in a state of scrubs. My heart immediately sinks. I can tell that he is going to cross all manner of unwritten protocols. His opening gambit reinforces my fears `Hey I wish I`d had the op now, what about you?` Fuck off out of my space and fuck off for being so intimate….I contain. He continues `What about you`. I strike him off with a curt `I didn`t get the option`. Yankee Doodle Dandy I have my eyes on you.
Anxiety induces a flush.
Off to 18 and these variables keep mounting up. UK Grim, Stick it in the Bin, is my subconscious mantra courtesy of the mighty Sleaford Mods. Man nappies and stress, seven urinations during the so called sleeping hours. My lucky number has lucked out. The monkeys approach and discuss the whys and wherefores of getting on with ones life versus pulling out of commitments. You guessed it, I`m going nowhere after the burn.
In 19 I realise there has to be an honourable mention for the information screens. They act as a prompt, a reminder of when to scrub up and cross the Styx and face the machine. Although their immediacy is a concern. That’s the trouble with digital. Analogue would gradually bring me to my senses. Digital keeps you on edge, it appears, but how long has it been there? After all that`s what your there for, your waiting for the call………lost seconds are precious when the process is in the balance. The dark humour returns when I see `Maria Black` being namechecked. Maria Black to G2, they`ve come to take her away, haha hehe. Later Barry White appears his doppelganger namecheck seems to love the machines `ah the first, the last, my everything. My thoughts are enveloped in Americana, I`m half[DC1] way there living on a prayer; the revolution starts now.
At 22 I lose one of my favourite manipulators, a sweet gawky 6`4” gay gentle giant of a man. Sri Lankan descent with an improbable Brummy accent. `ow r yow my dear` `yow all right today` he softly hushes. I press him with card and chocolates and he immediately blubs. These wonderful humans strive to keep me alive. I love them dearly and take a leaf out of their communal book. He was a G3 burner the room where I habitually now appear. G3 the Carnation room the flower of love. They know me, they know how to place me, vocalising digits as they tuck, untuck and slide my body with tattoos firmly in mind. I`m glad I`m not a habitual Daisy (G1) resident, I`m hardly innocent. Bye bye sweet man.
At 23 I`m chalking off the imaginary sticks. 22 done 15 to go. 37 rings in again and in an improbable mathematical collide I remind myself that my body temperature is 37 degrees and that DNA contains 37 genes. So perhaps there is medical logic to this oncological number. Then the other monkey chirps up….pick a random number between 1 and 100 and guess what, we chose 37 more than any other. My thoughts turn to the 37 slots on a roulette wheel and lottery numbers. This burning lark sounds a bit too hit and miss to me.
24. What a number all 2`s, 4`s, 8`s n 12`s, luverly stuff. I luxuriate within its roundedness. These numbers interlock, divide and multiply with amazing dexterity. A Klien bottle of Escheresque outcomes. Our changing cubicle with two inward and outward doors can also bemuse and amuse, especially during the process. There is a continual unlocking, opening and locking and closing of doors as we clients scrub up and scrub down. A Brian Rix farce. He of the lenseless specs with the remorseless Hattie Jacques forever comically appearing from revolving doors. Nude people escaping from the machines wandering unthinkingly into the waiting room. The plastic basket for our clothes adds to the zany humour, a supermarket sweep of shirts, socks and undies.
Jacanapes reminds me there are 13 burns to go….party pooper. A flush arrives.
Oh oh here comes trouble. At 27 I see a doodle dandy in my midst. The linear accelerator shoots electrons at our malignancy and its efficiency and our safety is dependent on the bladder being full. After 60% your fine but at this point you think your going to explode and that`s what your keepers are aiming for. It`s a delicate balance between an unfortunate release and a successful burn. Behind a screen you lift your scrubs to be discreetly coated in a thick jelly to test your fullness. In your already parlous mental state an application of a cold lube is not what you really want. It tests your mental strength and often promotes another start of the process. From behind his lube pasting screen I overhear that Mr. Doodledandy needs to increase his hydration, he is only 250 mls full. By my reckoning that means he has a bladder twice as big as mine. It`s amazing how much you can loath somebody because of the size of their bladder. A bladder concomitantly big n boisterous. Yankee doodle bladderjack.
30. Ahh seven more burnings, I flush with another dose of trouble, I flush the toilet seven times a night.
32 a week to go after this one. Martin the Colombian leaves today for his holiday and thus my emotional crutch disappears. A crutch throughout the 32 burns. He attempts to buoy my mental state with a gentle cajole, a word in my ear, a pat on the back, an assertive physical shove or factual information, his pragmatic and emotional advice has been important for my mental wellbeing. It can be lonely out there. The leader of the G3 machine I am in awe of his presence, I find it difficult to think of a more selfless person. In middle age he ditched his well paid engineering profession to study radiology at university when his wife contracted cancer. I deliver his leaving chianti and fall apart. He reacts in the only way he knows with warmth, he understands that within this showing of emotion lies a man`s embarrassment. What a person. He will never be forgotten.
34 and release is getting close. Yet the worry stuff only gets worse. What`s your problem I hear you say. I should be walking on air only 4 away from freedom. So why am I wading through a dark mire of anxious existential sludge. Archaic torments break the surface with ghastly reptilian heads. The physical pain is real and the subconscious anxiety biting. The burners warned of the pain at this stage and the overwhelming fatigue. The machine lies inert and innocent all bright white and flicking neon. Guiltless and sterile its accuracy has left an echo of hurt. Today was also notable for the third injection of the dreaded but necessary ADT `Remember Pratina it is on the left side, opposite to last time` Nurse Pratina responds with `Yes that`s right I`ve seen it in my notes`…..as she swabs an anaesthetic on my right side. I politely point to my left side. Her nervousness is translated to the tip of the needle and I know, for this big baby, it`s gonna hurt. And it does.
Anxiety becomes reality. As I thought might happen the process for 35 becomes well sketchy. I`m called in late for a 6.00 p.m. I`m the last one in and subsequently out. The loneliness shrouded in the darkness of my thoughts and the nights encroachment. The loneliness gets to me. I apron up and am in a silent queue behind three other bladder victime. A queue for the machine means the process is out of synch. This will lead to us emptying, hydrating, emptying hydrating until the queue becomes one. One of the three is sent home. His frustration clearly showing, marked lines with a grey face, he looks at us distraught. His disillusionment may mean that he doesn`t come back. Some don`t. You think that`s crazy. Some guys don`t tell their partners. Some guys don`t tell their work. That`s what cancer does. It makes people deranged, denial for some is a way out. Others face their demons and wish for the inevitable. My fears ebb away into the darkness on my journey home. I am thankful for the stability of my family.
At 36 I look out the window and the craziness continues. There is madness and there is madness and then there`s this guy that I have witnessed not an hour before in the waiting room. I view a perfect pub scene, the sun is shining with drinkers outside welcoming the rays with clinking chatter. And there he is again only this time hooked up to some mobile medical device with fag and a pint. I could not make this up. A one way street to lifes exit sign. This enactment bizarrely spurs some comfort from tomorrow`s last burning. His dark shadowcast reflects a positive future.
The 37th and I search for the relief. The warnings are stark, the next two weeks will be the worst, there will be pain, blood and miscarriages and these are the easy bits. What they don`t tell you is that you are now on your own. 37 indeed is sadness, the cards and presents are distributed and as with any achievement a hollowness ensues. I feel tormented and empty. The realisation dawns, I am indeed on my own. It is me now, there is no visible support. The hospital had become a second home. The waiting room was not bright and garish but cosy and warm full of cancerous brothers. Where are my numbers to carry me through. Where are my manipulators, my burners, where is my comfort zone.
The emptiness is here to, within this text, there is no denouement in this writing. If you have managed to reach this point, there is no end simply a process we are in together. I hope I have not let you down. I do not do this purposely. The epilogue is the process and I drink to you in water and life and friends and people. 37 a number for life. An emptiness to be filled.
Yet. And it is a big yet. Without the 37 there would be no more. And there the scales lie in balance. 37 traumas to save me 37 times. Despite the overwhelming dominance of this prime, its weighty prescence ubiquitous in my conscious and subconscious thoughts, it has saved me. A weighty double digit saviour has delivered lightness and relief.
37 times burnt. 37 times healed. 37 times reminded that humanity is wonderful. Cancer gave me this, gave me an inkling of the light that compassion offers, gave me faith in other people. Gave me faith that life is not big cars, cigars, Farages, Trumps and oil drills. I needed cancer`s darkness to shine a light on a world that had been veiled by an evil neanderthal culture of alpha males all boastful liars and charlatans. The Martins, the Lizzies, the Marfas, the nurses, radiotherapists, the oncologists and doctors, all these wonderful people. Selfless counter-culture long may it shine.
Finally a word about those shoulder scamps. In any packed commuter train carriage, in any street scene, in any crowded room, in any bar of your fancy, there will be at least one person carrying cancer monkeys. Cheeky buggers they maybe, but sometimes you have to let them get on with it to achieve the balance.
Oh and a footnote:
Any three-digit number with identical digits is divisible by 37 = 111.222.333. Well fancy that.
Daves thoughts 