Now I don't know how many people who are reading this have had an MRI scan, I'm guessing if you have had cancer you probably have but if you haven't let me try and describe it to you. I'm not a small bloke, in fact I'm a big one. The MRI tube is not exactly spacious, in fact when I looked at it and looked at myself the engineer in me laughed and said in my head "where's the one they are putting me in?" They are also very loud, very loud so they give you headphones if you want them to try and take your mind off things. I chose Paul Weller for my session, he was another favourite artist of mine and I love this song. It has always relaxed me, made me feel calm and that's what I needed as I was pushed into the tube. The MRI came after a CT Scan of my chest and abdomen, apparently this would give a more detailed picture than the x-ray and would be a double check on the chance of there being any mets in my chest or stomach. The CT scan was easy, sitting in the waiting room as an old man with cancer for the third time told me all about it was not. I hated being around people with cancer, they all seemed to be really positive and brave yet I couldn't be like them. I still had dark moments, more of that in a bit, but they all seemed that it was easy you just thought positive all the time. I know now that it isn't always the case and people act that way because people expect you to act that way. It's bad enough that you have cancer and some people don't want to talk to you because they don't know what to say to you but to then also have to deal with you in your dark places as well, well that takes a very special kind of friend and person. I'm blessed I do have people like that who love me and help me through it. That was another anxious day waiting for that result, little sleep and food was becoming the routine after any scan whilst I waited for results, it wasn't as bad as the initial x-ray wait because I had already been told that I should be ok after that but it was still uncomfortable. Then I received another letter saying I needed a full body MRI Scan to confirm that I did indeed only have the one tumour. The build up to this one was bad, panic and anxiety were again my companions most days, my worry was that yes my chest and stomach were clear but what if it had gone to my brain? Did sarcoma go there? Maybe I'll look it up, no I won't if I see it does I'll convince myself and I did have that headache last week. It's amazing the hurt and pain that our own minds put on us sometimes and because it's our own minds it's even more convincing. So the build up was a nightmare and the thought of being completely in that tube for 90 minutes, the expected length of scan it said in the letter, was not helping either. Scan day came, off I went in my shorts and t-shirt, there is no metal allowed in the tube, I picked my music, laid on the bed and after being squeezed in to the tube I tried to relax to take my brain away from where I was. What I didn’t tell anyone and never have until now is that during the scan I planned my funeral, I laid crammed into the MRI tube, arms pinned by my side, headphone cable across my throat, fear building inside me and I planned it all. I wanted something simple, nothing big but it had to be a celebration of my life and all that it had involved. Music has always been a big part of me and who I am, I attach songs to memories and people, places and times and this was to be no different. I picked 3 songs that were to be played and in what order they were to be played in. They were… Oasis “Stop crying your heart out”, I wanted this as people came in, I didn’t want tears I wanted smiles, old friends and family seeing each other again and smiling. No tears were needed, I say in my bio page on this blog that I have lived a truly great life, I honestly believe that and no matter what my future holds I will not lie down and regret a thing. Every place, time, person is a memory a point in my life where it connected with something else and that is for always. Frank Turner “I knew Prufrock before he was famous”, there is a verse in this song that has always spoken to me, when I first heard it it spoke to the very core of me. Those words are “Life is about love, last minutes and lost evenings, about fire in our bellies and furtive little feelings, the aching amplitudes that get our needles all a flickering, they help us to remember that the only thing that’s left to do is live, the only thing that’s left to do is live.” And that just about summed it up, that is what life is about all those precious moments and memories that I have just mentioned, and that even if I wasn’t there I wanted everyone to go and live, I wanted my children to know that life was there to be lived, experienced, enjoyed. They were to go and light the fire in themselves and create their own last minutes and lost evenings. The final song was the one I used earlier in this blog, Frank Turner again, “Long live the queen.” I hope you’ve clicked on it and listened, if you haven’t please go and do it now, it’s somewhere below on this page. And then just take from it one line “we lived to dance another day, it’s just we have to dance, for one more of us.” If you have lost someone close to you, then go and dance for them, go and dance like no one is watching because I’m sure that they want to see you dancing and living life for yourself and for them because that way they never left. And that’s what I thought about for 90 minutes in that tube, I tried to go away, to concentrate on the song at the top of the page but it didn’t work. As soon as the scan finished I got out of the building as soon as I could movement and activity took my brain away from the funeral and back into the now and the next wait for the next set of results. These were the next big ones, one tumour meant a big positive step, a huge one, one that would give me a massive lift ready to start treatment. Another 2 days and then the call came, I had one tumour in my body, one, in my leg, yes it was a decent sized one but it was one just one and now they had a plan to treat it. That plan was now a definite plan with a definite time frame, I needed one planning scan on my leg for the radiotherapy and then radiotherapy would begin within 2 weeks. 25 doses over a 5 week period followed by 4 weeks rest before surgery to finally cut this thing out of me. So there we were, the tests were over the doctors had made their plans and if that didn't work, well I'd made mine too.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Darren EvansOn Feb 11th 2013 my life changed forever when I was diagnosed with a myxoid liposarcoma of the right thigh. This is my version of my life since then. Archives
June 2018
Categories
All
|