Cancerous Capers: 'Chemotherapy is more beneficial to my health than my student lifestyle ever was'

Published on Wednesday 28 January 2009 20:55

When Jamie Ross, a 19-year-old student, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, he decided to write a blog, just for a laugh. He called it Cancerous Capers and this week we are reprinting extracts of his funny and insightful writing

Part Seven

IT'S BEEN somewhat of a bumper week in terms of hospital visits for your intrepid cancerous reporter. It has been filled with a veritable cocktail of hospitalising adventures, including passing the halfway milestone in my treatment, getting a CT scan and, finally, following my recent terrifying discovery of a lump on my left testicle, undergoing the altogether degrading spectacle of a testicular ultrasound scan.

The main outcome of all this is that I'm growing tired of ageing men gazing upon my naked form. It's got to the stage when I'd rather they just sent me to Nuts magazine for a risqu photoshoot of me in various playful poses, and then distributed copies to various members of my medical team.

At the hospital I was beckoned through to a small, darkened room by a rather dour-looking Frenchman and told to lay down on the slab. It was only upon turning around that I realised, to my utter horror, that there were a further two people in the room looking on – both of them reasonably attractive nurses only slightly older than me. What the purpose of them being there except to make me feel incredibly self-conscious about my genitalia still, to this moment, remains a mystery.

When I find myself in situations that unnerve me, I tend to try and make funny jokes. More often than not, these jokes just come out as an indecipherable noise and people shuffle about uncomfortably to pretend that they didn't hear it. However, on this occasion, I had prepared a cracking line for my testicular ultrasound man and was absolutely certain that it would be a resounding success. With a little confident chuckle in my voice as he moved his ultrasound stick around my spanglers, I quipped: "So, do I get a little picture to take home and show my family like pregnant women who get ultrasounds do?"

At worst, I expected this to be greeted with a sympathetic smirk considering that I was an inoffensive, 19-year-old, cancer-ridden boy undergoing possibly the most embarrassing medical procedure imaginable. What I got was a straightforward and steely "no". A cold silence plagued the rest of the procedure as the two nurses, who were still inexplicably in the room, looked on.

The procedure took about 20 horribly uncomfortable minutes in total. Happily for me, it was just a little cyst and should require no further action. Sadly for you, cancer fans, this means that my testicular adventures at hospital are perhaps at an end – but it was fun while it lasted, wasn't it? And it must be borne in mind that this is a serious medical journal which will almost definitely be passed down through the ages to millions of cancer patients, and I can't sully it by talking about my balls all of the time. I'll leave that kind of crude filth down to Lance Armstrong, nemesis of Cancerous Capers, whose woeful book is called It's Not About The Bike – a fact that should probably be followed up with "Because it's actually all about my filthy bollocks" in small print. When will the corrupting influence of this smutmonger be stopped?

Part Eight

I RECEIVED my CT scan results today, and I think they can only really be described as CT-rrific. I've already used that pun as my Facebook status, but it made me laugh so much that I had little choice but to use it again.

I read all of my blog entries from start to finish earlier on this week because I am a vastly egotistical man and can think of no better way to spend my time than laughing at words that have been written exclusively by me. Shockingly, I realised that I've never actually told you what Hodgkin's lymphoma is or where about in my body it was affecting me.

Lymphoma is a blood cancer, which manifests itself in the lymph nodes, small organs that you have all over your body that produce white blood cells to fight infection. It slowly but surely spreads from lymph node to lymph node through your blood and, by the time I was diagnosed, I was affected in four areas of my body, putting me at a slightly alarming stage three of a possible four. If I had waited much longer it very well could have moved on to my lungs or my bone marrow and made my recovery a much less likely prospect. As it happens, however, things are looking rosy and the doctor expects my final chemotherapy session at the end of the six months to be the last I'll hear from the disease. Because my CT results were CT-rrific.

I'm feeling healthier than I have done for ages, which I think confirms what everyone knew all along – having cancer and undergoing an intensive chemotherapy regime is far more beneficial to my everyday health than my student lifestyle ever was. However, my place in student history is now assured – the fable of 'the fresher who partied so hard that he got cancer' will surely be passed down as a cautionary tale to all fresh-faced 18-year-olds who think that it's either big or clever to drink Somerfield's own-brand whisky in pint form and only clean their en-suite toilet twice in a nine-month spell.

One thing I'll definitely miss when I'm cured are the fantastically awkward situations that having cancer conjures up almost daily. Almost everyone seems desperate not to offend me, to the extent that grown men can be reduced to the human equivalent to one of those cowering, spindly dogs you see on RSPCA adverts. Amazingly, earlier this week I received a begging call from Cancer Research. Now, call me silly, but if there were one organisation that I would expect to come in frequent contact with cancer patients it would be one called Cancer Research. However, this appears not to be the case. "Mr Ross, do you have any personal experience of cancer?" "Well, mate, now that you mention it…" The man literally gasped, stumbled over the simplest of words, apologised at least seven times and then comfortingly proclaimed that "fewer people die of cancer now than ever". Needless to say, I slept soundly that night with this nugget of information in mind.

It's not just him either. At the hospital recently a bumbling nurse led me to the changing room and told me to remove my clothing and replace it with a hospital gown. "Can I keep my hat on?" I asked. I'm not bald by anyone's standards, but my hair is certainly getting very thin and, being an incredibly vain man, I now tend to keep it concealed underneath a black Led Zeppelin hat in public. "Why, are you cold?" she replied.

Yes, that's exactly it. You've got it in one. It's not as if I'm here for a scan to check upon the effects of three months of intensive chemotherapy which has made me slightly self-conscious about my hair at all. She then no doubt went off to ask a woman in a wheelchair if she was feeling a bit lazy today and reassure a child in the burns unit that at least they'll get a nice tan when the scarring heals. You could say that her people skills were anything but CT-rrific.

&#149 Tomorrow: Discover how Jamie got on at what he hopes will be his final chemotherapy session

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