2007-09-26 — Newsletter — Tumour progress report

Dear All,

Was thinking about the last email I broadcast, wondering if I exaggerated for sympathy, but thought if anything it was all much worse.

This week I’m back in hospital, being fed through the nose and am starting to grumble about little things so things are definitely getting better!

Last week I could not see how it could be possible to get through the remaining treatment — this week I know I can do it with all the help I can get here.

So now the problem remains the pain in my mouth. One of the irritations is that it changes every day. Some symptoms persevere, some go away but always something new takes its place. Currently it’s my tongue bleeding.

A morphine based gel was made for me but it doesn’t seem that effective. I have to smear it on affected areas and that’s effort in itself unless I use their ‘patent’ mouthwash first.

This mouthwash has been with me from the first day — comes in enormous bottles when you get it on prescription for home. It is the only thing that seems to help. Problem is that you should take it between 3 and 9 times a day (everyone says something different) and I find it works for about an hour…

And last night’s (Tuesday’s) problem — diarrhoea. About 1:00 am and of course my underpants and pyjama bottoms affected. Not much but enough for me to plot ways of ‘getting away’ with it. I worried about getting new pyjamas, telling people — all good ‘early hours of the morning’ problems that seem immense, insoluble and very important and are of course nothing of the sort.

I was worried about this damn disease taking away my dignity, forgetting that only I can take it away.

David