It’s harder to write a blog when you are not well. One of the reasons for my writing this blog was to provide an insight for newly diagnosed people and for my friends that wouldn’t be as alarming as some of the results that appear when you search for metastatic melanoma online. Writing with this incentive becomes more difficult when you have spent the majority of the last two months ill in hospital.
I am now much better, but I had a pretty bad dose of the infamous IPI colitis that rendered me confined to a hospital bed for much of the lead-up to Christmas and made me lose over a stone in weight. In the end the steroids that they normally give you for IPI colitis stopped working, and I had to be given two separate doses of Infliximab (Remicade) that worked almost instantaneously. It is an incredible drug. My gastroenterologist described it as: “The L’Oreal of medicines, because you’re worth it.” It’s so expensive that they only administer it when they really have to. I got out on Christmas Eve and spent the whole of the Christmas period at home, which was excellent.
Early on Wednesday morning of this week however, in my attempts at getting back to normal, I was getting ready to pick up a really good friend from the airport when I leaned over and something in my back “popped.” It was a real Miranda (Sex and the City) moment – you know that one where she does her back in in the shower and she’s lying naked on the floor? That was pretty much me. Two nights in hospital, many strong painkillers and an MRI later, the doctors think I snapped a ligament in my spine – the area already weakened by the melanoma in my second lumbar vertebra. This now means that I have to be extremely careful with my back, because basically I’m at high risk of vertebral fracture now – so no jumping around for me!
I’m sure many of you have already made New Years resolutions, stuck to them, grappled with them, and perhaps started all over again. New Years is an interesting time, because some people love it and put all their energies into dancing headily into the night, whilst others would rather bury their heads into the pillow until the fateful hours pass into a new dawn. This new dawn, however, is the beginning of a blank page for a whole new year. I think it shows a lot about people as to how they react to this blank page before them – do they become excited by the possibilities of a fresh start, or do they wish it were all over so that they can go back to the comfort of the ‘determined norm’ for the rest of the year?
For me, this New Years was a strange one. From August when I started treatment up until now, the plan was certain: four treatments with IPI, see how it goes, and then scan at the end of treatment. Now, however, I won’t be getting my fourth batch of treatment, because of the severity of the colitis I had from it. Instead, I will be having a PET scan at the end of January, and after that – uncertainty. This year really is a blank page for me. I have no clue what I will be doing in May, in September, or even in February for that matter. It all depends on the results of this scan, which is slightly unnerving.
I think New Years resolutions can be a way to put a level of certainty and planning on that blank page that is a new year. The New Year can be daunting, scary and sobering, but it can be ‘tamed’ using a series of sentences that allow the person in advance to neatly write their first new page. These hopes and ideals allow those people with their heads under the pillow to come out again and breath the fresh air of the new (not-so-blank) page.
My New Years resolution is to do more of those silly things that scare me and I therefore never do – e.g. diving into pools, going on roller-coasters, white-water rafting… Perhaps the decision to do more of those daunting things that I would normally say no to will conversely make everything else that is uncertain and frightening about this year seem a little less so.
All I know is that having great friends around you makes all this uncertainty a little less daunting, and luckily that’s what I have.
Battling Against Melanoma 