Breakfast in bed

I'm going to try to piece together the last few hours of my life; a fairly typical early morning here. Some of it gets graphic, I guess - you can avoid those bits.

7.30, wake up call, with temperature and blood pressure checks. 7.45, breakfast appears - a piece of cheese and a tilleul de tisane (lime infusion?). Immediately after, or possibly before, some time around then, nurse appears with day's medication and nutrition pack, and sets it all up for me. I discuss chamomile tisane with her, because the hospital dentist said it's good for mucite (inflammation of the mucal membrane).

Because I presently have an abominable mucite in my mouth and throat, eating or drinking is not possible without help (yeah great - had JUST got back to normal-ish eating capacity, really looking forward to my meal, when wallop, intense pain cuts in trying to swallow; this was from yesterday lunch time. God has a really bad sense of humour). And in any case, when I wake up my mouth is dry as the bottom of a clean parrot cage, since the saliva-circuit no longer functions properly. So, before taking advantage of breakfast, I have some health routines to go through.

- Pills in water to be disolving while do rest - 5 pills, seems such a lot
- Anti-constipation stuff ditto
- Mouth wash - 50ml with a mix of bicarb of soda 1.4%, aspirin and xylocaine, anasthetic for mouth. Swill and gargle. Gargling is an art, since I have to be careful not to choke, and also not to gag. More on this issue in a minute.
- 2 teaspoons of xylocaine gel, this increases the mouth anasthetic and above all anaesthetises the throat; plus because it's a gel, it sticks and stays while you eat/drink.
- Cream on thigh and wrist graft scars to help them heal
- Cream on face and neck to help the affects from the radiotherapy

Really doesn't sound much, does it? You'd be amazed how long it all takes.

Panick moment when I leave the bathroom, standing upright - you can start avoiding this paragraph now if you like. I find that I have a real issue with something (either gel or mucas) trying to go down the wrong way. Since the op., I have lost the 'hawk' reflex in the 'hawk and spit' bit. I cannot clear mucas or food that is at the back of my throat, you know, just where it runs when you have a cold; where the nose joins the throat. Being unable to hawk, but really needing to clear the threat to prevent choking, my body's reaction is to gag. I also try taking tiny tiny sips of water, to swallow and encourage whatever it is to go down the right way - a somewhat risky action, since it is extremely easy to choke on water; the anaesthetised throat at this point is unhelpful, because I am not really in touch with what's going on. But I am really concerned not to let the gagging become actual vomiting, I've just spent a week getting my system back to normal non-vomit state.

This takes several unpleasant minutes to clear, but I sort it.

Back to the pills and anti-constipation stuff. Manage to tip half the anti-constipation stuff over my bed - first time I've done that. Very irritating, rather wet. Still, have a syringe-full, that's a start.

It is now 8.15. My tisane is cold, but it doesn't matter, I am so used to eating and drinking cold things now. I dig in to my cheese - not literally, of course; it is plastic cheese in a plastic pack, so first of all I battle with actually getting access to it at all. It is a sort of mimolette. At 8.30, they come to take the tray away, but I hang on to my cup of tisane, which I won't actually finish until 9.00; at some point I wake up with it in my lap, not tipped over but my tendency to fall asleep unexpectedly can have consequences!

At last I have finished it, so I finally plug myself into my goo machine, and go in quest of dry sheets. The lovely ladies are just in the corridor, and agree to do my bed immediately, provided I pay them weekend overtime rates :). They also let me know that they will have chamomile tisane available as of lunch time, which is excellent.

I pop down to the nurse's office to see if she thinks I should take another pack of anti-constipation stuff, because I'd lost half the dose, she agrees. Back to my room - oh, all this popping around is a big adventure for me, generally, because I am attached to drips and the goo, dragging my stand around with me, I honestly don't move much. The goo pump has a certain battery life, but frankly it is ante-deluvian technology (there's this little fly-wheel on the outside that sends the dose through the tube), and it is big and lumpy and generally a pain to trundle around with. My one at home is dinky. So - back to my room, and quickly do my careful tooth hygiene before the ladies have finished changing the bed, so they can get in and clean the bathroom. Get onto the bed to be out of their way, enjoying their good-natured banter. They fetch me the hair-dryer so I can do my full toilette including hair when they've gone.

Re-do the additional dose of anti-constipation stuff, without accident, and contemplate where to get more water; I am on my pre-chemo special protocol, where I have to take 3 packs of experimental powder a day; the powder is to assist in protecting the mouth/throat from the worst of the radiation affects, and I think it is doing a damn good job, or I'm just lucky. I take them mid-morning, mid-afternoon and after dinner; because I don't have a food processor handy here, I have to tip the packet of extremely greasy powder into half a bottle of water and do a cocktail mix as best I can; I generally don't have too much left over in lumps, but certainly the consistency of the powder really needs some work before they commercialise this product!

Decide to write this up - offline initially, to save my precious online time! (I'm on a key, buy hours up front - I managed to use 6 out of 8 hours yesterday!!). It is now 10.16. Amazing, where did my morning go???