19 March 2007

I’m feeling less certain now than for some considerable time. In parallel with getting the MS diagnosed, I had investigations for haemorrhoids. Ok, not the most pleasant of things, but it’s fairly common and has to be dealt with. So they stick a flexible sigmoidoscope in to have look around and take a few biopsy samples. Not a great experience in all honesty, nor one of the worst. Watching the journey up my rectum on TV was surreal, to say the least. Whilst the blowing air in to open the passage up was painful.

Visually, all appeared normal, apparently. So I got the follow up appointment, and it’s on the same day as my next neurologist appointment. So far so good. Then the appointment is in the Chartwell Unit at the PRUH. Curious as to what this unit might be – or even why it has a name when outpatient appointments are held in places like ‘Zone C’ at the PRUH – I decide to look it up on their website. And it’s the cancer unit.

So now I have ten days of waiting to find out what they found and how bad the news is, and what they plan to do about it. I’m trying (as the words of a friend are still ringing in my ears when I first got hit with the MS symptoms) not to get ahead of myself, but it’s pretty hard when you find out that all they do in this unit is work on cancer cases and that first appointments for newly diagnosed cases are held on Thursday mornings; my appointment is 9.30 on Thursday morning.

So, given the lack of any visual problems (assuming what I was looking at on the screen was the inside of my colon and not a pre-recording of somebody else – which, conceptually, would be pretty revolting) perhaps the biopsy showed pre-cancerous cells. Ok ok, time to stop the speculation and just wait and see.

Actually, I’m quite keen to know what they’re going to do about the haemorrhoids, to be perfectly honest. That was sold to me as such a simple thing to deal with…