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 |   Life can be a real bitch at times, Both of us need care. |
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Frustration is Foremost August 2014 was cold and crisp, and that’s when it all started. First in the line was the annual medical check-up to be sure I am medically capable of driving for another year. That was OK, but the blood tests came back showing that I might have prostate cancer. How Nice!! I have to wait, of course, to get an appointment with a Urologist. Registration of the vehicle is due too, and this year it cost heaps to get it done. Not only the insurance, but the repairs, new windscreen, etcetera.. That will keep me poor for a while. On top of that lot a note came from the optometrist that Lis and I, yes, both of us, have cataracts on our eyes. More appointments to be arranged. Not here in our town, we are a backwater town in the middle of nowhere and quite a way from somewhere. Somewhere is where we can visit ‘specialist’ doctors. Oh well we have made appointments, two days in a row in the same town two hour’s drive from here. Neither could manage to make a change to avoid two long, tiring days. So be it. We made arrangements with the local community transport people who are there to help us out, to have a car take us down for the eye appointments and bring us back. $ 60 dollars please, for the trip. Oh well that would be better than driving too soon after having some goop put in our eyes. And, we would drive ourselves back the next day when the goop had worn off, ready for the next appointment. Wait a bit, I haven’t been let off the hook yet; my back decides to play tricks. Another visit to the local Doc and another referral to another ‘specialist’; yes in the same town. Then we get a phone call to change the first appointment from Tuesday to Wednesday, the same day as the eye appointment. I rang the Digital Image scan people and made yet another appointment for Wednesday. Now we have three appointments with three different ‘specialists’, in the same town on the same day. !0.30 am for me at the eye bloke, 11.30 for Lis at the eye bloke, then 12.15 for me at the urologist, and finally me at the CT scan place at 2.00 pm. There is only a slight problem: the eye bloke is going to mess up my sight for about three hours or so, which means we shall both have to use expensive taxis to get from one appointment to another. At least we won’t have to do that two hour each way drive any more than just one time. Just to confuse the situation a bit more I have just had a ‘lesion’ cut from the calf of my leg; walking is painful and I will still have the stitches in for the big day. The healing should be done by then and the stitches will pull, and hurt like mad. Some people are accident prone you know: Just about daylight this morning, I got out of bed to go to the toilet and stumbled over a sleeping dog. In the process I kicked my toe on the leg of the cupboard in the hallway and split my toenail from the tip of the toe right back to the roots of the toenail. Much pain, and blood on the floor to clean up. Of course, it was the other leg this time, not the one with the stitches in it. If this keeps up I may not even get to see a ‘specialist’, I might fall down the steps and end up in the local hospital instead. Anything is possible! There are still about ten days to go before the big day arrives; I wonder what I can make a mess of in that time? Perhaps I shall get things right for a few weeks and not have any more hassles. The continual frustration with weepy eyes is getting to me though, I get ‘down-in-the-dumps’ quite quickly some days, and that is no place to be. Today is Monday. Two days from now I shall be very close to having my first ‘consultation’ re cataracts. Nothing much has changed since my last entry, just more days of frustration, not knowing what will happen on Wednesday. It is so much easier to deal with the devil you know, than the one you don’t. My creative muse has jumped ship and has found a hiding place somewhere well out of the potential firing line. Maybe after the ‘consultations’ he will return. Sadly, my expectations are simply that there will be more of the same to confirm the diagnosis, and then maybe some action will be taken to solve my medical problems. I wonder how long I shall remain in my present state of continual frustration. I almost forgot that the Community Welfare people who are there to help out when needed can’t take us down on Wednesday the 12 th November; that is their Expo Day, where they expound all the help that is available to us people in remote areas. They are all too busy with their expo for anyone to do the job they say they are there to do. Wouldn’t it rot your cotton socks? We have made our own arrangements and our day will start early on the 12 th. Drop the dog off at ‘doggie day care’ for a start, then drive for the best part of two hours on the highway to Dubbo. Appointment no 1 at 10.30 will set up a busy, tiring and frustrating day. We may be better informed when we head home sometime after 4.30 pm. We sure hope so. We made it there, and back. What a kafuffle we had though. The eye bloke must be a millionaire. We got there in plenty of time for the 10.30 appointment but simply sat on uncomfortable chairs for well over an hour. I do have one very bad cataract on my right eye, and the left one, although not so bad, could be operated on right now. However, the situation is that I am now on a ‘waiting list’ for surgery. That means anytime in the next twelve months. For the actual consultation I was charged $295.00. not bad for fifteen minutes. My rough calculation makes that an income of $20.oo per minute. Oh well !!?? I was very late for my next appointment but the urologist was very good and I was put through the hoops quite quickly. It appears I do have prostate cancer and have to return on December the 3 rd for a biopsy. A quick trip in another taxi to the RSL to meet up with Lis and find out how she got on with the eye bloke, have a cup of coffee and then down the road to the Digital Imaging place to have my back checked out. Lis does not have as many eye problems as she thought, but has very long sight. According to the eye bloke that means she will always have some problems with nearby objects, she looks past them or something, but they don’t register as well as objects in the distance. The scan business was good even though the end result was really a non event and I will have to have another type of scan to check exactly what my spinal cord is doing, or not doing, as the case may be. I have had the stitches out of my leg now, where the lesion was cut out, and it has healed up well. Now it’s a matter of waiting for the 3rd Dec and see what comes from the next consultation. This all started in early August and it is now 15th November. You couldn’t say things have progressed quickly, could you? Today is the 1st December, two more days to wait for the biopsy. My mind is in a bit of a mess now as I wonder what the result will be. My creative muse is still hiding out of sight somewhere or other and I sit and wonder what I will have to deal with in the near future. What a kafuffle!!! Only two more days until the biopsy and then – I wait for the results and the next ‘ consultation’. There are times when I wonder if all the hassles are worth the effort and stress they cause. Wednesday the 3rd of December. WE made it there, and back. Lis drove home because I was not in tip top shape after the biopsy. She did a great job of it too, especially since our vehicle is a manual utility. That means a ‘work truck’. The biopsy was very invasive, very uncomfortable but they say it’s necessary to get the right information to progress to the next step. Because it is the festive season, I must now wait till mid January to get the results from pathology. No wonder the hospitals are full of people with mental disorders, the medical ‘professionals’ can’t give anyone a straight answer because they don’t know the answers themselves. My frustration carries on until at least the middle of January 2015. In the meantime – I wait. [ I wonder where my writing muse is – I could use him to help disperse the frustration? ] It’s the 7th Dec now and a phone call from the Urologists reception gives me an appointment for 20 th January, 2015 at 12.15 pm. The receptionist was a nice lady but could not say whether my biopsy was positive or not; and the Doctor was not available to come to the phone. I am still in the dark, wondering if there is any light at the end of the tunnel. [If there is, I can’t see it ] It’s the 14th December now. Nothing new to add really, except that I am as weak as a kitten. I set out to mow the grass at the back of the house this morning. It’s not a massive patch, but I ran out of puff and called it quits when halfway through. Tomorrow is another day and I’ll do the other half. At this rate it will take me five days to do what I used to do in a few hours. My legs turn to jelly after a while and I think it is better to quit and walk back inside and sit for a while rather than collapse in a heap outside. It is rather frustrating though, I can’t do much when I am inside, but Lis doesn’t have to keep checking to see if I’m still vertical or not. I shall be extremely pleased when this period of my life passes into history. Another year has arrived and still no changes to my situation. The darn grass needs mowing, the garden weeds need removing, the leaves from the gum trees need cleaning up, I need to write something creative and readable, but none of the above get any priority in my mind. Cancer is a killer and it is sitting there in my abdomen, waiting for the right time to strike – or is it just another hypothetical set of indicators which the doctors haven’t yet sorted out. The 20th January is a way off yet and the frustration I feel is mind boggling. Maybe that is why my writing muse decamped for parts unknown, maybe he wanted out, away from the boggled mind. I wait, wonder, worry, and try to keep in touch with friends and associates on two writing sites. If the cataracts could just be done right now, I would be content; I could see what I’m doing. Today is the 20th January and I have returned from another trip to the Urologist. I do have prostate cancer, grade 7. That means it is relatively small at this time. Treatment could be radiation therapy, which is quite successful, and is recommended by the Urologist. However. Nothing is simple or straightforward in the health system. I must have a bone scan to see if the cancer is present anywhere else before I can have the radiation treatment. Yet another trip to visit a radiologist; two hours driving each way, of course. After that I wait for the results to be given to the treating doctor so I can progress to the next step in the process. The Scan may be a blessing as it will also check out the strangled spinal cord in my back. Of course the cataracts are still there and will be a real drawback to anything I may want to do until the surgeon who will do the operation is available to do my cataracts. I have no idea when that will happen, but it could be anytime this year. I will get a week’s notice when I am required to present myself. And the saga continues. Another trip to the City of Dubbo on Wednesday next week, then I will have to travel to Tamworth, two and a half hours drive in the opposite direction to Dubbo. Why? Because the radiation treatment recommended is not available in Dubbo, and Tamworth is the closest centre to where I live. I could be a long time getting back to normal, whatever that is. Radiation therapy takes eight weeks to complete, but only twenty minutes per day. I can’t see me driving two and a half hours each way for twenty minutes treatment. Therefore I may be staying in Tamworth. So much is undecided yet and time marches on. And those cataracts prevent me from using my “idle” time productively. It is kind of remote out here in Coonabarabran where I live. Of course, if the cancer is present elsewhere in my body, it is only a matter of time until I stop writing altogether. Frustration is a real pest. To be continued |
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