{STICKY} The Alien Within: 0 – Ground Zero…

Date July 26, 2015 Author By RLG Category Journal

 The Alien within… 

A personal experience of Cancer…

Introduction

In The Beginning…

It started with a cough…

Or did it?

My story began, or so we thought, after another annual bout of Man Flu around March 2015.

However, thinking back on things we have since learned and had happen, it is quite possible an earlier indicator may well have been my true blue eyes.

The Eyes Have It…

In January, six months earlier than my normal annual eye & lens check, I had occasion to attend Boots Opticians (my usual!); I was having trouble with increasingly blurred vision, no longer cured by my contact lenses.

At the time of this first visit, I was asked if I had fallen, banged my head, suffered some other trauma or had experienced a serious illness of one sort or another. Of course, my health had been excellent and I had only negative responses to all the other probing questions, which left the optician scratching her head and sending me off to a specialist ophthalmologist…

The ophthalmologist carried out further tests, asked similar questions and informed me, even though I had better than 20:20 vision, whatever that really means, in each eye when wearing corrective lenses, I was suffering from vertical double vision. I do not recall ever hearing a medical term for the condition, but I was informed it would either correct itself in six months to a year, or be permanent.

Consequently, I was advised to stop using contact lenses and had to revert to my old varifocal glasses, to which the ophthalmologist fitted a prism on one side to realign my eyes from their vertically challenged state. This worked fine, although the glasses were uncomfortable, very limited in their varifocal range and very old (being my very first pair of growing old lenses).

I eventually caved in and had to have Boots repair my better quality, more recent, goggles, fitted with another pair of arms and improved temporary prism, a thin stick on material designed to align my eyes.

The comfort and decent varifocal range provided by this better pair of glasses provides is only a half decent compromise, I do miss my contact lenses…

Man-Flu…

As inferred earlier, I had a bout of man-flu around the end of March early April this year, 2015. It knocked me back for a week or so ad left me with the usual unrelenting cough, which turned through bronchitis to a nagging, on-going, and really annoying cough.

The annoying cough went on for too long, before eventually starting to cause breathlessness as well. So off I went to see my GP, in June, to have it sorted, or so I thought…

Doctors & X-Rays…

After listening to my chest and breathing, my GP arranged for bloods to be taken by the practice nurse and suggested I attend the local(ish) Walk-In Centre, in Peterborough, for a chest X-Ray.

Bloods done, I made it to the Walk-In Centre the following Thursday and duly had my chest X-Rayed.

Friday evening my GP called fairly late on and suggested she would like to see me on the following Monday! Apparently it was quite clear I had a significant volume of fluid on my right lung. More worryingly, for her at least, there appeared to be a shadow between the top of my lungs sitting off towards my right lung.

The naughty Alien had been discovered…

During Monday’s consultation with my GP and one of the senior GPs at the practice, they made it clear a possible cause of the shadowing may be the chance of a Cancer of some description. This was the week before we headed off to Norfolk for our Annual break in Blakeney!

Holidays & CTs…

My GP referred me to Peterborough City Hospital Haematology and Oncology Unit to have another X-Ray and CT Scan…

Peterborough City Hospital called on Tuesday to confirm I was booked in for a CT scan on Tuesday, 23rd June – they were not hanging about and waiting until I came back from holiday over two weeks later to have a CT scan seemed to go against the urgency the professional were displaying.

So, Friday, 19th June 2015, we packed up and headed off to Blakeney knowing we would have to nip back home Tuesday morning so I could have the CT Scan.

Meanwhile the coughing and breathlessness continued unabated and somewhat curtailed our usual walking activities in North Norfolk. We returned home at a relaxed pace on the Tuesday morning and I popped over to PCH in the afternoon for the CT scan. We had already been given a clinic appointment for the following day, Wednesday 24th June, which was to turn out to be a date to remember.

The Alien Within – Uncovered…

During our consultation at the clinic, on Wednesday 24th June, we were informed, rather too bluntly for Jill’s liking, I did indeed have a Cancer residing in my chest cavity – The Alien Within had been uncovered.

Although the Alien was a definite Cancer, the doctor was unable to inform us what planet it was from or any other details about the shadowy being that had been hiding in my chest. One thing was certain, it was a fairly significant shadow and needed further swift investigations. I had been nurturing the beast for months, possibly a year, before it had started to make its presence felt.

After the news from the clinic, we were walked around to the ACU (Ambulatory Care Unit), conveniently situated next door to the Oncology Unit, in order to have the fluid drained from my lung. We waited hours in the ACU, having a further chest X-Ray, before eventually being taken to a consultation room for the draining procedure.

A load of local anaesthetic, huge long needles and tubes and an hour or so later, nearly 2l of fluid ha been drained from my right side, which had been sitting between my lung and its outer lining pushing my lung upwards and, together with the Alien pushing in from the top, had significantly constricted the air intake on that side.

Instant relief from breathlessness and a feeling of well-being returned – all was right with the World.

Except for the sinister little Alien Within…

Referrals, Needles & Procedures…

Peterborough City Hospital referred me to Papworth Hospital for a biopsy procedure intended to find out what was the nature of the Alien Within.

The next day we received a call from Papworth with an appointment for Tuesday, 30th June (we were still on holiday in Blakeney). The intention was to admit me to their Day Ward and perform a biopsy procedure under local anaesthetic and send me home the same day – A CT Guided Needle Biopsy, which is supposed to do exactly what it says on the tin. A needle inserted into my chest, guided all the while by a CT Scanner, into the tumour in order to extract some samples for pathology.

The first attempt failed, the needle hit something deep inside, well about 3.5cm, which was so painful they abandoned the procedure.

After three or four hours for me to recover, they were still keen to take the biopsy that day, so I was again wheeled to the CT Scanner in the p.m.

The radiologist decided to perform the procedure through my back this time and, aside from the anticipated discomfort, the procedure went well and four samples were successfully extracted through the needle.

After waiting a week for the results from the biopsy, we were supposed to attend on the following Thursday for a further consultation and explanation of the outcome. Wednesday afternoon I received a call from the Nurse Specialist at Papworth to inform me the appointment should still go ahead, but I should come prepared with an overnight bag – the biopsy results were inconclusive and a different procedure was necessitated.

Mediastinoscopy…

Thursday, 09th July and we are again at Papworth and under the now obligatory Bloods and Chest X-Ray procedures before being admitted to one of their wards to await the next biopsy procedure – a Mediastinoscopy. Following the needle biopsy procedure failure, Papworth specialists decided the only way to improve the chances of a taking a viable biopsy sample was to be a little more invasive.

A camera, with a light and grabby tool was to be inserted at my throat to travel down behind my breast bone and deep into the Alien Within from above. A small incision was required in my throat, this time under a General Anaesthetic. A procedure that would normally take an hour and a half tops.

I was admitted Thursday to be first on the table 0830hrs, Friday morning, July 10th.

Over three hours and around 75 samples later, I was in recovery feeling rather nauseous, which is entirely us for me. The consultant works alongside an attendant pathologist during the procedure, whose job it is to confirm whether the biopsy samples are viable, good enough, to provide them with every chance to determine the constituent parts of the Alien Within. The samples being removed were, time after time, declared as non-viable by the pathologist.

They finally found viable material after 70 or so attempts and the pathologist was confident of determining the nature of the beast. So I was released from Papworth the following day, Saturday, 11th July 2015, with the results to be expected in four or five days.

The Alien Within – Identified…

We returned to Papworth, to hear the results of the Mediastinoscpy, on Thursday, 16th July.

The Alien Within is, wait for it, a;

High Grade, B Cell, non Hodgkins Lymphoma…

This is actually good news!

Although this strain of Lymphoma is aggressive, as denoted by the High Grade, it is eminently treatable and the prognosis for success in the treatment is very high.

The not so good news, the treatment is Chemotherapy followed by Radiotherapy!  And that starts Monday, 27th July 2015…

Relief and trepidation, but at least we know what we are dealing with and the treatment plan is in place.

Here endeth the Introduction – apologies for the distinctly un-introduction like introduction length, but a lot has gone on in a few very short, but equally very hectic weeks!

From finding out I have a pet Alien Within to discovering precisely what it was and knowing what the prognosis is, was just a month…

NEXT = Preparing for Treatment…