Half Life - 58 - a mix up

Half Life – 58 – a mix up

December 10th, 2021

It’s Lorraine we felt sorry for. When she called to arrange the appointment with Dr T, her boss and my oncologist, we asked if she was absolutely certain it was this Monday, as it was not in the usual plan. She was sure, so we confirmed and assumed he had a very good reason to have an early follow up on the last session of chemo. It had gone better than the previous round so there was plenty to chat to him about and you don’t turn down a meeting with the consultant whatever the reason.

Arriving early, as is usual for me and The Wife, we sat in the car park chatting and wondering how the owner of the car in the disabled bay next to ours felt about not showing a blue badge. A break in the rain signalled the right moment to hobble to the door, go through the hand sanitising and mask wearing rituals, and announce our arrival into the excessively hot building.  We joined the half-dozen other patients socially scattered around the room, together with the huge tropical plants who must have found it more comfortable than the roasting humans.

Dr T is great. A positive, glass half-full, doctor he is the miracle worker who did all my initial treatment back in 2019. Back then, within a few short weeks, his treatments had been transformational, removing almost all the pain that had had me in screaming agony, and drove back Nobby with a combination of radiotherapy, steroids, and chemo to a point where proper life and living were returned, if only for a while. Factual and realistic he has been open, honest, and reassuringly blunt the entire three years I have known him.  He’s never tried to pretend the cancer is not terminal, or even skirted around the topic, but has combined that brutal reality with a positive approach to how we push the final event as far into the future as possible.

It took only a few moments for us all to work out Lorraine’s mistake. Although I like being a little early for appointments, I don’t think I have ever been a week early. However, there was lots to talk about and, with Dr T only showing the slightest and momentary irritation at the booking error, we ran through the current side-effects and all the various cancer aches and pains. Importantly, next week will include the all-important scans to find out if all the pain, diarrhoea, and sleepless nights were worth it. It will be very annoying if all the suffering turned out to be for nothing and Nobby has managed to pull off yet another of his crafty escapes.

Part of the trust placed in Dr T is his good taste. By the second time we’d met, all those years ago in 2019, we discovered an interest and shared passion in wine. As a result, some of our consultation time usually gets distracted to away from cancer and into the more interesting and joyous world of wine. Like many medics he drinks too little and, when very busy, almost nothing. This has driven questions about how best to keep opened wines and the benefits of smaller bottles, all of which I have been happy to advise him on.

“What to drink when on chemo?” is probably not a book the medical establishment will embrace, but there are certainly better and worse options. There are a few days in the three-week cycle when a drink helps provide a temporary sense of normality. Neat spirits cut through the furry mouth problems but are too harsh on delicate stomachs. Red wines need to wait patiently for the post-chemo days (I am looking forward to mid 2022 and have already started to think about which ones to open first), as the drugs make them all taste like sucking metal. Whites are better, but not by much, and although sweet wines work, you need to be in the mood for them.

Taking inspiration from my consultations with Dr T, whisky and ginger ale has turned out to be a winner. The smoothing effect of the ginger helps calm the hotness of the whisky, while at the same time not making it feel you are drinking an alcopop. Further research into combinations might be needed to match different phases of chemo; rum and coke might help with the nausea, and the therapeutic powers of gin and tonic could go beyond protecting against malaria. Dr T’s bigger whisky problem is harder to solve; he is given dozens of expensive bottles every year by grateful patients, but he doesn’t like whisky much. Other than offering to take it off his hands, which he politely declined, he was keen to try some options with mixers which might make it more palatable. I doubt, however, he is going to make much of a dent in his ever-growing ‘whisky lake’. Maybe Lorraine would like a bottle or two as a Christmas present?