Half Life – 19 – radioactive
March 5th, 2021
“My dad’s radioactive!” is one of the more unusual openings for an 11-year-old starting an on-line guitar lesson. Younger Boy’s music teacher took it in his stride and, unruffled, asked why that was. Settling into his seat and getting his hands in position, Younger Boy recounted how I had driven off earlier that day to a clinic, been injected with radioactivity to see if my cancer was the right kind to have treatment there and, when I came back, he was not allowed to go near me until dinner time. His disappointment that there was no glow, fizzing, or development of even the most basic super-powers passed quickly once he learned that my does of gamma radiation emitting Gallium 68 was, in his expert words, far too low to generate any proper powers.
The first strike in the nuclear war on Nobby had been launched. In a temporary side-step away from chemo, and the normal treatment path, the exploration of a relatively new option offered the opportunity to hit the bone-invading, cell-stealing, disease in a different way. It doesn’t always work, and this first dose of radioactivity was only to find out if it might work and if it was worth taking the risk. I passed the test. Nobby has the necessary markers which the next strike can target, so the decision to move to the next wave and launch the missiles was taken. The attack, in the form of a radioactive isotope called Lutetium 177, will be pumped slowly into me sometime in mid-March. If I am one of those lucky enough to benefit from it, and only about half of those who have this treatment benefit, it will find and damage Nobby and all his little outposts scattered around my body. Media hype has pushed the idea it’s a cure. It’s not, but it is another line of attack and has fewer side effects than chemo.
Nuclear medicine is silent medicine, disturbingly silent. None of the beep-beep, ding-dong, buzz-whiz, and electronic whine that fills the air in normal hospitals. In the yellow warning-sign riddled clinic you don’t even see any doctors, their stethoscopes draped over their necks to make sure there is no risk of you mistaking them for anything less important. Corridors are hushed and empty, in every room is a patient sitting comfortably, but alone, being kept company by their intravenous drip and whatever they remembered to bring with them to read. The extra thick doors close with a prison-like clunk, revealing instructions on the inside informing you that it’s ‘hot room’ designed to hold radioactive patients and directing occupants to use only the ‘hot toilet’ next door when nature calls. As far as I can tell, hot toilets are similar to normal ones, lack windows, have radiation detectors, and get cleaned less frequently. For a private clinic, I would have expected not to have needed to navigate round the puddles of what looked like glowing yellow pee on the floors, left by my fellow ‘hot’ patients.
A cautious head, poked around the door offering yet more coffee and biscuits, was the only human contact I had until the summons for the scan came. Keeping their distance, the scanning team were relieved I didn’t need help to clamber onto the slab which carried me in and out of the sparkling clean, very new looking, donut-shaped scanner. Add a large shiny blade to the end of it, and it would have been like being fed millimetre by millimetre into a huge meat slicer. Twenty-five minutes later and I was back in the car navigating the roadworks out of Windsor and heading home. Opportunities to eat out in lockdown, however simple, should never be missed. Driving my radioactive body home, I justified the pit-stop by a failure to have lunch and that passing by without ordering the two Big Macs to eat in the drive-thru car park would have been an unnecessary act of self-deprivation. The second one, every bite thoroughly enjoyed, was an act of complete piggery, even with the calorie count carefully controlled by not having fries or even a drink. Burping gherkins and Big Mac dressing for the final few miles, nuclear war on Nobby may turn this into a repeat treat to reward myself with every time I launch a missile attack on my internal foe. If you are going to absorb lethal doses of substances usually best avoided, you might as well make a day of it and add in a Big Mac or two.
Hope is a dangerous thing. Regardless how much you read, whether scientific papers or first-hand accounts, to make sure the numbers are at the top of your head, the emotional creature deep inside insists that I won’t be one of those in the half for which this doesn’t work. It’s not just the threat of a long period of chemo which will come quickly should the coin-toss not fall my way, it’s the hope that nuclear war on Nobby will wipe out some serious quantities of his empire and push back his ambitions. In a bleak post by a sufferer further along the path than I am, he talks about how knowing the list of treatments is coming to an end makes the reality of the situation creep closer.
There are other accredited, but non-NHS, treatments to look at, maybe involving KFC or Burger King, which could equally poison and harm Nobby. Like chemo, however, those treatments may well do more harm to me than him. Beyond that lies the enormous world of the unaccredited ones, and many of these have provided improvement for some cancer patients. Every story of a cancer sufferer who fights back and wins, however they do it, is a story of hope. Stretching belief far beyond what even hope can manage, and probably sponsored by Starbucks or Costa, is one of the most commonly proposed, unaccredited, prostate cancer cures - the coffee enema. Other than failing to provide any basis for why there might therapeutic value to be gained from rear-ending my morning coffee, the instructions remain unclear. Although I have assumed it shouldn’t be de-caff, the rectal-caffeine evangelists provide no information as to whether fresh ground or instant should be used, or even say if you have it hot, cold, with milk, sugar, or as a latte.
Cyril and all his family were zapped and fucked right off ten years ago now. So hope Nobby does the same ... admire the way you are sharing this you are an inspiration
Try the Big Mac enema - you never know...