Non-fiction. Too Close for comfort

“TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT”


A chapter in the life of Claire Rixon….. This is a copy of a letter my dear friend Claire wrote me after her latest drama that nearly became her last chapter…..



I know it’s ages since I wrote , but you’ve often been on my mind as always, the good friend that you are. I do have a good excuse this time for dragging the chain and it is the first time I’ve put pen to paper in about four months.
Firstly, a huge thank you for the lovely calendar and Christmas card, you’ll be surprised to hear that I received them while in hospital in Sydney. I only returned home yesterday after being away for thirteen weeks, ten of them in hospital and three weeks at my brother Graham’s place,
You will probably be shocked to hear that I had a big cancer operation, followed by five and a half weeks of radiation treatment, however I got through it all like a steam train and my biggest pest is my lack of sight which is next to nil now. However I am determined to keep the cancer away so I can’t let my eyes be a worry. I’m sure when my eyes failed drastically nearly two years ago, the gloom I got into for a few weeks then saw the onset of the cancer, I pushed all the symptoms aside, especially when my G.P. didn’t stress any importance on them. Because I didn’t have any pain I lived with the symptoms for eighteen months, one day l met a cousin who dragged me back to the Doctor in August, he sent me to a local specialist for a routine operation, he nearly fell off his chair after hearing from me the obvious symptoms for so long, of cancer in the uterus. I had an operation in Moruya Hospital next day to confirm his thoughts. I went back a few days later at the end of August for results and received the biggest shock ever although I had expected it. The doctor rang Sydney Royal Women’s Hospital and had a professor he knew line up to operate in just ten days time.
Knowing that I would be there for weeks if not months I was in a never ending spin working on leaving this old place in fair order, as well as pack suitcases and organize accounts to be paid and so on. I was lucky to get a chap to come just after I left on the 9th Sept. to clear all down the hill and demolish a heap of small trees, also organize my usual chap to keep the grass cut, neighbours to keep an eye on things – I never told anyone my reason for going away.. I went by bus to my brother’s on the 9th Sept. and his wife Margaret took me to Randwick to be admitted into the hospital where I had a nice single room with bathroom and small balcony, must say the nurses left a lot to be desired, the noise and antics of them all night was dreadful and being the opening week of the Olympics didn’t help with more T.V. watching than nursing being done. I hired a T.V. set especially to see the opening but on the day I was too doped out to see anything, when I did see it later I wasn’t impressed with the show, although most others liked it.
Before the operation, the anaesthetists told me that an epidural in my back was a better pain relief than morphine so I went along with his suggestion, what a disaster, I was at least five hours in the operating theatre and recovery, brother Graham and Margaret were there early and hung around till I got back to my room. They expected me to be laid out sleeping it off but instead I was sitting up, thrashing around in agony and all the nurses and doctors trying to hold me down. I vaguely remember some of it, like insisting they take the oxygen tubes out of my nose and them saying I needed it to breath, I don’t remember ripping them out and throwing them on the floor, Margaret said she expected the drip and everything else to be thrown around the room too. I was fed up with all the young nurses telling me to stop screaming … it seemed ages before they found out the reason …. The needle in my back to administer the pain-killing drug had come out, or as I heard them say had never been been put in properly and all the drug had leaked over my back so I got no pain relief. Then came the argument with each other whether to put it back in or give me doses of morphine. The epidural was removed in the end. I had 10 days there, a huge cut down my tummy and held together with 20 big staples, if you please !!!.
Although doped up the pain was dreadful, many people have the same type of cancer, but mine was left so long it turned out to be a rare breed. Because of this they asked me to sign an agreement before the operation as they were doing a special study into it and needed my approval for it’s use, just hope they learned something of use as I was just amazed to see so many hundreds of people with so many varied kinds of cancer and sad to see lots of kids from toddlers up and many people around thirty years old.
I spent the ten days in hospital with non-stop vomiting and diarrhoea – didn’t help that the food was totally wrong for me. A big shortage of beds so they were ready to kick me out after eight days but they had to call the doctor in late at night so I wasn’t in tip-top form. With Graham and Margaret both working and a very good friend of mine not too well herself it wasn’t right for me to be on my own. The hospital social worker got me into a lovely private hospital for two weeks, respite care, I actually stayed 16 days as Graham was really ill with a bug for a week and couldn’t come and collect me. It cost me only $25 a day with all fresh home cooked meals and lovely goodies in between, plus trained nursing staff 24 hours a day and a couple of doctors who visited . The lovely old three storied house was right on a hill at Darling Point, just above the yacht club and a prime spot or Sydney Harbour. The place was set up to only take cancer patients, mostly from the country who have to stay weeks for radiation and chemo treatment.. There are only beds for a couple of dozen people so I was lucky to get in. A hospital bus takes everyone daily to and from the hospital for free. An Occupational Therapist came a few days to keep people busy, she was from N.Z. and l was the only blind person they had had there so she took me for a few walks up the road and one day took four of us on a lovely bus ride to Watson Bay where we had a couple of beers at a local Pub and then on to Bondi Beach. I had a nice twin room on the ground floor, there was a nice garden area to roam in and most people were well enough to go to the city at will and with no treatment. Weekend many went home or out to stay a day or two with friends. You could almost reach out and touch the Harbour Bridge and Opera House and I couldn’t believe I was in such a place for so little money in the middle of the Olympics. All the big liners and yachts from around the world were moored down below us. There was a lovely lounge and dining room with all the old silverware.I was indulged in breakfast in bed on my first week there. Our Street was blocked off for a couple of days during the Marathon race and the Olympic sailing races, which we could view .. The highlight was being face on with the Harbour Bridge for the closing fireworks display for the games. Doctors and their families came onto our balconies for a fantastic view, not to mention folk from the streets into the gardens. Lots of shouting in between drinks with partygoers in the nearby houses. I had calls in hospital from friends in Hamilton . N.Z. and also my nieces daughter Jessica, she had planned for months for her 21st birthday party in Rotorua mid October and had invitations out, she intended coming over to live with me later in the year and I was looking forward to that. On the phone she was full of coming over then and there, I had not intended to tell any of them about me being in Hospital till I returned home, but my brother Graham had phoned them , since I knew that I would be weeks with treatment I thought I’d talked Jessica out of her rush idea to forgo her party and she could come over when I returned to the Bay.
A big surprise , my first day at Grahams where I had to fill in two weeks before starting radiation at yet another hospital, the Prince of Wales , a huge complex, next door to the one I had the operation at, Jessica had just arrived in Sydney with bags packed ready to stay for good. She was staying in a house with some Kiwi friends, some distance away and they asked her to stay a week to mind their two year old son while they worked, so a week later we went and collected her and she stayed with me at Grahams house. I took her shopping for her birthday present and on the Saturday night with a group of Margaret’s relations we went to Blacktown Workers Club… it’s open 24 hours a day, had a nice meal and saw a show of German singers. Margaret’s niece spent a few days with Jessica where they went raging in the city.
I should have been in the third Hospital for 6 ½ weeks for radiation , but it turned out that I only had the planning one day ( where they tattoo the area to be zapped) and one day for of treatment so rather than take up a bed for a week I opted to stay at Grahams place, Jessica took me in on the train and bus for the planning. To save vital stomach and bowel organs they mostly do all radiation through ones back, however, I had to be one of the few being a bad claustrophobia, I couldn’t put my head in a hole face down. The specialist was a real card and nice chap so they did my planning face up, then he told me I would be dreadfully ill from the radiation. Most people are just day patience for treatment but because of my eyesight problem and no outside support it was the doctor’s decision to admit me full time to the hospital. I had to have 25 daily treatments and dreaded the ideas I’d heard about the effects and it seems many at the private hospital were very ill and wanting to sleep lots after the treatment, however I gritted my teeth and said a few prayers each time and was amazed the treatment only took a couple of minutes each time. There were four of us in a ward, only 12 beds in total in the Oncology department. A lovely lot of young nurses, most were on working holidays from Ireland, England, heaps from Asia and a lovely one training from Ethiopia, hardly any Australians, there was also a nice registrar doctor called Andrew. I was the only one in the whole place who got up and dressed every day. I got out and met a lot of people and walked dozens of times up and down a long internal walkway, which connected two streets. I could have gone outside or even had weekend leave if only my eyesight would have allowed me to, so fresh air was my number one wish.
It was sad to see a couple of people in the ward go out to die, one was a lovely lady of 82 who hadn’t been able to eat in weeks and could barely talk, she used to cling around my neck and could hardly say my name and say she was so hungry yet they never tried to feed her, a couple of nights after her operation which was not a success the staff were with her all night trying to clear her throat, a dreadful sound so nobody slept.. Another young Tongan women was given no hope either and more than a dozen family and church people were there all day and most nights with her praying and singing in Tongan and drove the rest of us around the twist, even the patient was exhausted from it. They never closed our ward to visitors, I sure learned plenty in those few weeks, mostly patience. One of the woman I got to know well, only 68, a former divorce solicitor , quite rich, she told me she had only a few months to live as her cancer had spread to her bones. She gave us lots of laughs though and took it very well. She would go many times a day down the stairs and out the door to have a smoke, even with lung cancer the doctors never discouraged it, a visitor told her she was killing herself and knocked the packet of cigarettes to the floor, Hazel looked like death warmed up, but hit the woman over the face and told her when she had to pay for her smokes she could tell her what to do. As she said the damage was already done so she may as well enjoy her life as usual.
It was a drag hanging around waiting for a porter to take me in a wheel chair for treatment as being on hand I never new what time they would come so all the writing l was going to do got put on the shelf.
The hospital was very noisy mainly from nurses chit chat and out at the internal walking school kids and hundreds of others using it to get to the buses and shops. The usual every morning we were kicked out of bed, while they were made we had to use that time to shower, then it was the pill trolley, cleaners, breakfasts, all by 8 am. Then doctor’s rounds started. Many people used the social worker, physio or psychologist etc. so the days passed quickly, the nights were long for me. The morphine affected one nice lady across from me and she couldn’t remember where she was, even thought one night that l was trying to kill her.
My blood pressure was high before going to Sydney so I was put on tablets, but once I got over the operation it became stable on 110 which is nice and low. The doctors couldn’t believe I needed no more tablets, except a nausea one just before treatment just in case, all the other patience had morphine every four hours, plus oxygen masks often. After two weeks of treatment the specialist said I should have the planning redone so they could the radiation from the back, I wasn’t keen but was prepared to try it as he said otherwise it would knock me to bits. As I was having no affects whatsoever he even asked if they were turning the machine on, no more was said about it, so I took it all “on the belly”, which meant I had to remake all of my good cells instead of just a few. Only in the fourth week for a few days I followed all the others to the toilet more often, plus I started to feel tired straight after treatment, but not enough to make me sleep and after a short time I was up and out of the ward. The doctors kept saying I was fantastic and hardly bothered to call on me and they had a good laugh into the fifth week when I told them I had deteriorated over the weekend while they were not there. I had a real sore patch on my seat and dreadful itch, it was the expected radiation burn which goes through the body and has to exit, not at all comfortable to sit or sleep on and much like bad sunburn.After a few more sleepless nights it cleared up. The food was very good and I ate everything. One day I snuck into a staff barby and got a sausage sandwhich. The treatment area often had left over cakes from meetings , I often took some back to the ward. One night the specialist sent up a big tray of melons and grapes. I made good friends with a Maori girl living in Bondi, she was from Gisborne, 30 years old , she had a cyst on her brain which paralized he left arm and leg and affected her speech a bit, they also found a spot of cancer on her lungs. She had a great bunch of Maori visitors and she shared her home made yoghurt , chocolates etc. with me mostly around midnight. She and I went around the hospital like a pair of kids singing which diverted peoples thoughts . I had to help her a lot changing her clothes and since I couldn’t see it got hilarious at times when her head ended up in an armhole and we had to spend half an hour to remedy it. She came out of brain surgery after a four-hour operation long after midnight, as they were so busy. I was amazed she went home a week later., we spent a lot of time together and she helped me around places I couldn’t see and I supported her bad arm and got her into long walks, still a bit of weakness in her arm but next to a full recovery. She came back to see me a few times and since she had to give up work for a while she may visit the Bay. She starts Chemo on her head and her hair will fall out, in the New Year she will have radiation for her lung. I was down in the dumps when the doctor said I had to have a further three treatments as I thought something was wrong, when I asked them about it they said they were so proud of me the way I handled it all they were giving me three boosters as every one after twenty-five was a bonus to give the best results possible to ensure it wouldn’t return.
I organised it for the Wednesday morning so Margaret could pick me up after work. I felt like I was getting out of prison after just on ten weeks in Hospital. Before I had finished packing my things they had my bed made for another woman who had been on a trolley bed for three days in emergency waiting for a bed. They had to close emergency that day and divert ambulances . I had to wait seven hours for the bed when I was admitted.
One and a half weeks was a long drawn out time at Grahams with them working and they are not real easy to get on with. Margaret took me to Paramatta shops last Thursday, but with such a busy Xmas crowd I was glad to leave after a couple of hours so I will probably get what I want in the Bay.
My girlfriend Julia had a birthday so she picked me up last Friday and I went to their place for a nice lunch.
Graham and Margaret drove me home on Saturday, got here around 2.30 after nearly five hours driving, I was really glad to be home after 13 weeks. Since I had heaps of shopping to stock up on they drove me to the supermarket, I was ready for a good sleep. They went home the following day.
It will take a while to settle in again, if Jessica doesn’t come and stay l will have to have home help, I wont like it having strangers poking around , I still have it in the back of my mind to move. However, over the next two years I have tests here every alterative three months and visit Sydney to see the Radiologist and professor in May and November. They don’t have clinics on the same day although they are next door to each other I’ll have to see them on different days. I’ll probably have to get the blind society to help me get around.
Well, Jim I can back on you to keep your fingers crossed for me and just hope all will go well in the future, sorry about the scribble all over the place, it is hard to write properly now.
Hope you haven’t been too bored with hospital talk.
Love ….. CLAIRE.