fuck cancer

hey morbz, hope yr doing okay and things are looking up for you, too!!

also, hi everyone, thank you for yr well wishes. it is good to be back here.

Good luck, welcome back, and I'm glad things are going well.

It's been a couple of months since I gave a Casper update, here or on the blog, so here's one: https://sickmouthy.wordpress.com/2019/05/29/basically-a-normal-baby-right-now/

oof, scik, that is some difficult stuff right there. i am cheering for you and yr fam and Casper, especially, at this very moment.

it's all very senseless.

for example, yesterday i had a conversation with my surgeon's assistant who gave me a different potential timeline for surgery than all my other doctors have given me. normally, no big deal, but since i teach at a university, his dates essentially would have fucked up my fall semester and made it so that i would be without any income for half of the goddamn year. let's just say i had a total freakout meltdown, but then after contacting surgeon directly, he assured me that there were other options for pushing potential surgery up so that i'll still be able to teach come fall.

it's wild how things that seem small to a doctor can legit seem like the end of the world to the patient. it's one of the biggest takeaways from all of this, in my mind.

(that said, i'm not switchin surgeons, because the guy is one of the most highly awarded and excellent in the country for his field).

Dunno if it;'s the done thing or not, but thought I'd stick this here: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/neil-harrison30

finished radiation therapy and chemo for now!! surgery probably coming in late July. very excited to have some time off meds before the big event.

i went to the gym yesterday— yes, i had a membership to the local climbing gym lol— and can still get to the top of some pretty hard boulder problems! i climbed for about an hour before i had to stop because my wrists were getting a bit sore.

slowly but surely.

hope everyone here is doing okay. <3

mazel tov, tabes

my very best wishes to you, table. it’s nice to see you here again

so my wife's palliative care nurse has been on long term sick for nearly 2 months now. you'd think they'd assign her another one? fuck no, this is the NHS, you're just fucked. they say go to your GP. GP says GPs aren't fit to handle pain medication because as usual GPs are just totally fucking useless for anything whatsoever*. Nation Buck Passing Service in full effect.

fuck this country and fuck the NHS and fuck all "doctors" and fuck everyone who "works" in the "healthcare" "profession"

*my 80 year old grandmother has finally been diagnosed with arthritis after having to go to a different GP because her regular one refused to refer her for an x-ray saying she definitely does not have arthritis. turns out not only she does have arthritis but it's a severe case. fucking GPs. fucking scum

I forgot to include pharmacists in my list of cunts who do everything in their power to make things worse for people with terminal illnesses

Last week I took a pile of prescriptions to the pharmacist. They filled half of them and the rest were on order. Some of the owed prescriptions turned up in the post after a few days. 8 days later with 2 still outstanding my wife noticed they put the wrong name on all the pills we got 8 days ago. That's right, the incompetent fuckwits sent the outstanding pills to some other woman. I took the whole lot in and got it sorted out, but seriously what the fuck is going on with these people. Luckily they put the right name on her morphine pills! Then in the pharmacy while the pharmacist was trying to figure out how this happened, he accused a technician who denied everything saying that's not my signature, turned out she also had her name in the computer. Busted! you stupid piece of shit

How do these cunts still have jobs?

Many sympathies to everyone contending with cancer. A good friend of mine just got his second cancer diagnosis in the last two years. The first time around, surgery seemed to control it. But now he has multiple cancers, which could mean metastasis. Doctors are trying to figure out now if they need to do chemo before surgery. My friend is of course very upset, we've formed a small support network to help him, but it's a very scary thing. I've lost two friends to cancer already.

xp isn’t that a serious data breach? You should report them for that, if they’d given you someone else’s info as well as their pills, that’s pretty awful.

Sorry about having to deal with this shit.

Yeah, I'm shocked by that, I always assumed (naively) that the reason there's a whole production about getting prescriptions was that they were careful about this shit for decades.

nothing should really shock me any more dealing with the NHS and it's associated services

it'd be a miracle if I encountered someone who wasn't a completely incompetent cretin

the stupid fucking pharmacist cunts were out of stock of my wife's antidepressant last Friday (after sending it to the other woman) so they said they'd order it and deliver it on Saturday. nothing turns up on Saturday. my wife now only has 2 days left, so I call them today. the stupid cunts ordered the wrong strength. the pharmacist was "meant to call us, but must've been waylaid". so they are allegedly going to deliver it this afternoon

we won't be using these arseholes again but this is at least the 3rd pharmacy we've used because they are ALL fucking incompetent morons, it's just endless mixups, delays and bullshit wherever you go

Feel like I've blown any goodwill I had on this thread by my admittedly aggressive hatred of NHS cunts but in case anyone is interested in the latest farce I feel like this is a noteworthy addition to documenting what it's actually like dealing with the absolute scum that allegedly are supposed to help sick people in our godforsaken country.

I've mentioned several times the battle getting repeat prescriptions from our GPs/pharmacies. What has actually worked and I can't quite believe this is the situation we are in, is that my wife has to beg for her prescriptions. Our GP actually told us to do this, but it works. My wife has to write a note with her prescription requests pleading for the scum that fills it to please actually accept the prescription request because she has terminal cancer. Since she started doing that we haven't had any denied. Now we just have to deal with incomplete pharmacies.

If you know anyone who claims to be a doctor, please punch them in the face and tell them it's from me

I have made an official complaint against the pharmacy that sent my wife's prescription to the wrong woman. For all the good that will do

i can only speak for myself cp but its just a gobsmacking litany and but for the terrible circumstances would be darkly comic

if understandably vexed venting helps itt then go nuts imo

I dunno it sometimes feels like the NHS is some sacred cow. I get all this oh well they're overstretched you know. Try being on my side and see how much you care if some cunt GP has to see a few more patients or some absolute leech calling themselves a surgeon is whining they aren't getting their cushy pension so they won't look at your CT scan

start a fuck the nhs thread ill back ya

It doesn't take much to get horror stories out of other people either. I was just at the pub with a friend who told me the NHS basically killed her grandpa by injecting him with dye he was allergic to. The fucking scum surgeon tried to shake her dad's hand at his funeral. They nearly electrocuted my wife last year - it's expected that no departments actually talk to each other, but this was the same department. The radiology department put metal tipped stitches in my wife's chest, then the same department were going to scan her until she mentioned she had metal stitches in her, which would have burned her, so they cancelled the scan

I don't know what can be done about this.

Hopefully obviously I want a viable socialised medical system - none of my "criticisms" such as they are are arguing against a national health service as such, that's what I want - an actual national health service, not this absolute farce that we have now.

The radiology department put metal tipped stitches in my wife's chest, then the same department were going to scan her until she mentioned she had metal stitches in her, which would have burned her

argh! ouch, wtf

sorry you're having such a bad time - I've seen some annoying doctors and found 95% of chemists (pharmacies, before an American who studied chemistry gets cross) to be utterly useless but you really seem to be repeatedly dealing with shit no matter where you turn

I was drunk and angry last night. tbh I'm angry a lot of the time, but drunk and angry is an ugly combination.

I don't really know what can be done about the state of the NHS at the moment. kinda think mass sackings of incompetent people is the only way forward, but then there would be nobody left. I don't know why the people who study medicine seem to be so terrible at actually practising it. there's something really badly wrong here

maybe some form of system encouraging skilled medical practitioners from Europe to move to the UK would help

CP, i'm so sorry this is happening to you and especially yr wife. just awful.

Got my date for surgery today.

They're going to take out my whole rectum, sew me up, and I'll have a permanent colostomy. The tumor has shrunk, and I feel great (I ate tacos at South Philly Barbacoa (the one from Chef's Table, yes) and then went to the gym for an hour and a half after the appointment today, ffs), but it's kind of sinking in how much shit is going to change beyond just feeling like garbage because of treatments.

Gonna get TMI for a sec, but as many of you know, I'm gay...and not being able to have anal penetrative sex again again is really getting me down. I've had a good run of dicks in my ass, but it's still an enormous bummer, and I'm not sure how my husband and I are going to deal with it.

That’s unimaginable.

I mean everything on this thread is to me, frankly, I don’t know why that struck me as more uff da than anything else.

<3 you table

thanks y'all.

it's pretty...yeah, hard to think about. but so is dying, which i'm not quite ready for, so i'm taking what i can get.

I'm not really sure if people just think I'm a dick or if they just don't know what to say. I spent about 15 minutes ranting about how literally everybody is failing us to my therapist yesterday and he just said I suppose that must be difficult to deal with. This week my wife's oncologist "forgot" to put her anti-nausea meds on her chart so when she got an injection that causes nausea the chemo nurse refused to give her anti-nausea medication. If she had a non-jobsworth cunt nurse they would just give it to her anyway, but this nurse just said sorry not on the chart fuck you. Her palliative care nurse is back from sick leave. Tbf she had a reason to be off sick, some fucking scumbag set fire to the hospice 4 years ago and she had PTSD from it. The cunt died before he could be charged but killed 3 people on his way out. So that's good I suppose. She had a scan yesterday which will determine if she continues chemo or just stops treatment and we see what happens

Try not to get ill, nobody will help you

in terms of in the thread at least (imo), its so genuinely hard to know how to respond that wouldnt seem so totally inadequate CP

thats no excuse not to acknowledge the horrific situation you're in and what a shambles it all seems and how nightmarish it has to be for you

im so sorry youve to deal with this, any of this, all of this, and i hope that the venting helps even an iota, you deserve any outlet and relief you can get

^^^This is very well said. No one does or at least should begrudge you feeling the way you do. I would likely feel the same way. I wish you and your wife any momentary relief you can get.

CP, been thinking of you and yr wife.

Indeed so. And you as well, table. What a collective misery.

yeah, it's pretty awful!

i'm looking at the bright side, which is that now i get to get another cheeky tattoo: "Rectum? I nearly killed him!"

(one friend i said this to was like, "that's horrible!" and i couldn't really make them understand that the joy of a dumb but true joke like that is what keeps me going )

Thinking of you, table.

sorry, and thanks everyone

table, what's happening to you is also horrible and I do feel for you, and everyone else going through this

Good thoughts to you and your wife CP, the amount of shit you have to endure is staggering.

Table, please be well <3

<3 CP and table.

Yeah both of you <3

Same here.

<3 to cp and your wife, and also to table (i completely appreciate the joy of the joke)

cancer is such an asshole

Indeed it is.

https://sickmouthy.wordpress.com/2019/07/20/12-months-of-childhood-cancer/

Damn, Nick. Brutal. But also I'm so so glad things are - at the moment - ok. ish.
Arrival's on telly on Tuesday, btw.
How's Em - going back to work is a big deal.?

Nick that was so powerful and hits on so many feelings I'm also experiencing - suicidal urges, anger at religious sentiments. our situations are quite different but so much is the same. I am OK, mostly, too, it might not seem like it on here sometimes and on those occasions I'm not OK, I am trying though.

love to the Colonel and table

so we got the scan results today, and they were bad. been kind of expecting it because they are always bad, but you always hope something might work. further progression in the liver, this chemo not working either.

we had some good news, or at least not totally awful news, though. the previous useless wanker of an oncologist told us that was it, if that chemo didn't work then it was spending hours in a chemo ward on a daily basis or nothing. but the new oncologist (I hadn't met him before, my wife saw him once a few weeks ago before the scan) seems OK and he says there is another tablet chemo we can try, although if that doesn't work, then it really is IV chemo or nothing. my wife is pretty sure she won't do the IV chemo because she'd have no quality of life. she'd be in a hospital ward for hours per day and feel like shit all the time. life expectancy if she comes off chemo is 6-12 months.