GOODBYE GAMMY HAND AND HELLO OLD FRIEND

1200 words / 6 minute read

PROBABLY NOT SUITABLE FOR MEALTIME READING

SURPRISE #1

You've probably noticed that I don’t do much present-tense Cancer Chronicling (since there's not much to tell really), but this week I have had two separate changes to my current physical situation, both good news, that I hope you won't mind me sharing.

First up, you will recall the Mischief I did to myself back in April this year, which resulted in the Gammy Hand (detailed here), deciding to bring my trip home forward by two months, and being installed with George II, my "Bag for Life", which really has (with no hyperbole whatsoever) changed everything for the better.

(NOTE - I know I keep promising to document that period, and I will in the very near future, you have my word!).

The Mischief‘s technical term is a “neuropraxic injury”, caused by compressing the radial nerve in my right arm while I slept, effectively severing the connection that runs from my fingers to my brain.

Thankfully, although my right arm was paralysed at first, I could tell it was on the mend from early on, though to paraphrase Queer as Folk, to say progress was a "bit slow" would be like saying Pol Pot was a "bit naughty". 

Recovery-wise, I would say "glacial" would be an accurate term to describe the speed at which I got to where I am now, since it has felt as though the nerve had to fuse itself back together from scratch.

But what of this breakthrough? Well, I had lost all strength in my arm, the muscles atrophying due to the lack of use and the complete lack of electrical impulses heading that direction. 

If I were to hold my arm out straight with the palm facing down and try to raise my hand to be in line with the rest of my limb, then my wrist wouldn't just point blank refuse to move, it was as though there was no signal being sent that way at all, leaving me with the the double indignity of being both gimpy and looking camp as a row of tents.

But suddenly I have noticed, seemingly out of the blue, that I have a fully functioning and non-gammy right hand. This, considering where we started from, is unbelievable progress, and I have regained the ability to do all of the basic things I had lost as a result of the injury. 

As well as regaining the ability to hold my arm and hand out straight like a normal person, I can also now spread my fingers and actually use them with some element of control, something that even a couple of months ago would have felt light years away in terms of recovery.

Skills as basic as typing on the keyboard, writing my name with a pen, using a mouse with my right hand and (bizarrely enough) simply being able to put things in my right pocket and retrieve them again are now back in my repertoire like a normal person.

Granted I'm not completely 100% healed, but we are nearing 95% I would say, since I can use the limb nearly normally and I'm only lacking some feeling in my fingers and need to regain the strength I've lost.

I have celebrated this leap ahead in progress by buying a 5 kg dumbbell so that I can get rid of the lop-sided puny atrophied look and start heading back to symmetrical normality, happy days!

SURPRISE #2 - NOT TO BE READ WHILE EATING!

Now onto the surprise change that I never saw coming. To reiterate what I wrote in the title please don't be eating any kind of tasty grub while reading this if you are of a sensitive disposition, I would hate to be responsible for ruining your lunch.

So back in May, the week before I was due to get on the plane to head home, I wanted to be as fit and healthy as possible on the flight, since otherwise it could be a very uncomfortable 24-hour journey (oh, the irony).

As detailed here, I had ways and means to handle such situations, but I had grown very tired of the whole cycle and actually couldn't face doing another one. 

In the past I'd had the idea of finding someone who could give me colonic irrigation - the ideal way to avoid the little green pills but still get the end result, I thought.

Unfortunately, this being a developing country (albeit one that has gyms and health spas, not to mention areas populated by hippies), I was unable to source a professional for this particular task. 

Though initially a bit frustrating, I came up with a solution: anybody who has been to this part of the world will know that toilet paper is not the done thing, and that here we use the ”bum gun” to clean and refresh after a visit to the WC (think a pistol-shaped hand-held bidet and you're on the right track).

The bum gun will pack the punch we need to clear things out but unfortunately diameter-wise is not ideal to be placed in the delicate regions that we are talking about here. I remedied this by using a long piece of hollow plastic, slightly smaller than a straw in diameter and which conveniently came in several parts with a wider end to that could accommodate the bum gun.

I had used this method before with success so I had no reason to think that this time would be any different - unfortunately having tried my best to clear things out, when I came to remove my contraption, there was no long straw-diameter piece of plastic to be seen. 

It didn't come out later that evening or the next day, which was somewhat worrying as you might imagine - in fact I spent the next 48 hours constantly hoping that the next time I visited the lav that our friend would show itself. I was also starting to feel not particularly well, which I imagine had something to do with the additional foreign body in my poor abused guts, which already had to deal with an unwanted evil murderous bitch living there rent-free.

Long story short, I caught my flight felt feeling increasingly unwell, was admitted to hospital in England the evening I arrived and within three days was installed with George.

Since, cancer-staging wise, I am quite advanced, the surgeons were fantastic - they decided not to do anything too invasive, deciding it was safe to leave the pipe in place and I returned to Cambo a happy man, albeit one that was to forever be the host to multiple foreign bodies.

That was May. Then two nights ago, I was awoken by an urgent need to pee and, while in the loo, noticed that the George bag has started to come away from the skin. 

This would leave a gap through which poo might escape, so I decided to change it rather than risk having any kind of mess in my bed later on.

Once I had peeled away the bag from myself fully, do you need three guesses to work out what was poking out of me? 

Now, my stoma is situated on the right hand side of my torso, just beneath the ribs, and the plastic straw was bent in two and sticking halfway out of the hole, having made its way all the way up the left side of of my intestines from my back passage and across to the exit point on the right. All I had to do was pull out the bugger for me to then be free of it!

It's bizarre to think that I carried on my life for 6 months while the pipe travelled the wrong way around a one-way system to then pop out of the "knife wound" in my side - and thankfully in a painless fashion. 

I realise this post is slightly more graphic than normal so I appreciate you letting me share this news with you - now, if only Olga could do something similar, that would be the icing on the cake!

Catch up soon

Stage-4-in-Sinville