A day out with the remains of the Prostate
It is a five-minute walk up the street to the station. To push the bowel out of the way of the beam and reduce complications the radiotherapists want my bladder nice and full. I have been drinking that morning as instructed. By the time I tread softly down the stairs on to the station platform and dared to look up at the board to find out how long I had to wait for the train my bladder is beginning its protest, wailing for detumescence. I always had a sensitive bladder but radiotherapy sessions seems to have made it worse. My trouser waist is elasticated, the bladder will not brook a firm belt. I knew I should have put on a pad just in case, but I resisted doing so as a test of endurance- a stubborn streak that I may come to regret in wet patches. To quell the discomfort I walked stiff-legged up and down the platform envying, resenting the apparent equanimity and poise of my fellow passengers. I recognised some of the regulars, the schoolchildren, the decorators with paint-spattered dungarees, and executives in stiff trouser suits.
I board the 0712 Southern Service to London Victoria. The ache waxes with the rocking of the train. It is worse when I sit down. If only the nephrons could feel my pain. But the millions are only doing their job and I would be the first to complain if, affronted by ingratitude, they went on industrial action.
I get off at Belmont station, cross the road with “The Californian” pub on my left. Each step I take up the hill seems to fan angry flames in my bladder, yet I cannot afford a leisurely saunter because I do not want to be late. So intense is the discomfort that I fear that any distraction would release the desperate hold I have on my levator ani and the rest of the pelvic crew. When I reach a parked car I do not dare risk twisting my tense torso to check on the traffic behind me and step off the kerb with an apologetic and warning wave of the hand. At the junction a driver hoots at me because I am not walking fast enough. Kill me then and do me a favour man, I can’t go any faster, my legs are weak and my bladder is a grenade. Opposite the row of houses that backs on to the Marsden stand thick woods. Dive in there and be done with some of this urine? But a sense of propriety restrains me. How would I like it if someone pissed on my front door? So up the hill I endure, turn left off Down’s Road, over the zebra crossing, the hospital main block, angular, functional, built in a style unlikely to become fashionable again except to those most nostalgic for the days of Stingray and Thunderbirds (look them up). But when your bladder is chucked full of burning arrows the boxy hospital assumes a form of unsurmountable beauty. If only it would come close to me. I try not to think of our consummation, of hurrying through its automatic doors, into aseptic warmth and the mingling aromas, try not to think of the final swerve left past the porters’ desk, of tinkling into an ivory urinal, try not to unzip my jacket from the bottom up yet, for any hint of relief may shrink me into embarrassing surrender.
Make it, made it, through the door. I allow myself to hurry, barge past the cleaner’s yellow trolley blocking the way, into the men’s toilet on the right, dance on the spot for control as I unzip, now how much to let out to keep enough for radiotherapy. Like the IMF or IFS or OBR and their economic forecasts, I am almost always wrong. If I let too little out, inflation soon returns, too much out and deflation when the radiotherapists take me off the table, for the walk of shame to drink some more. Wasting everybody’s time you stupid man. Could even be that little child with the tubes in its nose and everywhere else that you are holding up. Is it not the base of your penis that will suffer if you don’t get this right?
For now all that is academic. Up goes one zip, down comes the other, relief is orgiastic. With difficulty I manage the painful micturition interruptus. How much is left in the vesical tank I don’t know. Now, it is 0830. In the main outpatients department I turn a plastic cup of water in my hand. To quaff or to sip, that is the dilemma. Not sure how fast my kidneys work. On a good day it takes ten minutes from one void to the next, but depends on how hydrated you were, on what you drank the day before. I pinch the skin on the back of my hand to test for turgor. No clue. I quaff and have another cup of water and trudge up the slope to the modern, glass-tinted radiotherapy department. To reduce the sore sloshing in my bladder I make my way gingerly down two flights of stairs. By the time I get to the department the bladder feels full again. Should have let more out. I look at the clock in the reception. Are they on schedule? I check in. Receptionist is inscrutable, hands back my appointment card. Is it good that she does not say anything? It is better than weeping for you, or frowning. I am beginning to fret again. 0845. They are late. How much more can I take? The leather bucket seats look inviting but I dare not sit but shuffle back and forth. The other patients sidle into their cubicles. A sandy haired man sitting out the Juniper suite looks distant and sad. He is not glancing anxiously up at the clock on the wall or trying to see round the corner, so either it is not prostate cancer or he has a bladder made of pure asbestos.
Beep beep beep goes one machine in the near distance. They’ve started. Another machine responds. My stomach knots. Should I let another bit or urine out or wait? I recognise a radiotherapist. She nods. I nod back. They call me. Phew. If I’d gone I might have been too urine light and wasted their time. I tear off my clothes and into the gown, open at the back. I am in boots for the walk back but bending over to take them off fans the bladder flames. They knock, call my name. I follow. How are you today, good I say, as in good to bursting. Do you want a towel underneath? No. They shouldn’t have asked because the hint of relief may undermine my resolve. I say I will manage. I know from the pain that my bladder is full, an impression confirmed by the satisfied air of the radiotherapists as they set me up on the couch and in one slick movement whip off gown and replace it with a towel. They check the markers on my skin, wriggle me on the couch, I end up slightly more on to a left sacral prominence, probably because I twisted my spine once when I fell on the stairs. Dry bare feet on the stairs can kill, so watch that.
Figures are whispered, 1.9 then something that sounds like 787, a satisfied grunt, tap on keyboards and they flee the room. Then, a scrunching noise as the couch jerks into position. They put on some music, easy listening but not easy to hear when you are concentrating on strangling your short bladder neck with your pelvic muscles. Bladder itches and tickles. This is no laughing matter. Hope boys will not have this, but can’t go on saying don’t want the boys to have this, don’t want the boys to have that, everybody gets something. Ok, have something but not too bad and let the cure be much simpler than this.
We are off. I think of innervation of the bladder. Now how do I seize back control of the parasympathetic and sympathetic nerves, take control of its borders and its subjects as the politicians will say? I bite my lower lip. That does not work. All I get is a groove in it, so I try the other lip, even more useless. Cannot even wriggle my body, or squirm, but I risk a toe, far away from the area of interest. I close my eyes, sense the radiotherapy tube whine in its first sweep in a semicircle arc from right to left. Beep beep beep. It stops at the end of its travel. They input more figures. That brief stop, perhaps for half a minute feels like an hour, waiting outside the gates of will they let me in or not to 2019, 2020, 2021 and beyond – is that not what this is all about, eking out a few more years? Or, will it all be in vain. The radiotherapists calculate. You wait. You still have to keep your form, tighten muscles, stop this sawn off bladder exploding over the couch. That would be gross, grown man, heart specialist wetting the bed. Pathetic. It is quiet. What if the numbers are wrong, the chief is tired or is a bully and will not take correction from the junior, what if there is nothing coming out of that turret or there is too much? But from the way my bowel explodes first thing in the morning there must be something coming out of that tube. Since this treatment started, no time even to grab a magazine, as is my practice – it is go go go, run or you know what. One Wednesday caught short again, I had to swing the car into the New Malden branch of Sainsbury’s and dive into the toilet. No number of explanatory leaflets can warn you about that.
The couch jerks a tiny bit. A new position, crucially, infinitesimally different from the previous spot, but precise I believe. Bladder protests at the jolt. Hang on, not long now. Where on earth did I get this cystic viscus from? Off again we go. Left to right goes the turret, and back this time without a break. It clicks into place. A kind voice peels over the intercom. You can tell if they are happy with the readings. All done, made it, I don’t move until they say so, because the couch is so high above the floor. Once or twice had to wait whilst they replaced the stickers over the markers, but after they let me go, see you tomorrow, thank you, I am so full I don’t get changed out of the gown but race across the waiting area to the toilets holding my gown round my back. The man in the next cubicle shouts out in awe at the sound of my urine thundering down. Freedom to do as you wish with your pelvis, should be the test of any civilization and whilst we are at it, access to world-class treatment without having to produce a credit card.
After the session comes the best part of the day, the walk home with time and body back in your hands. Could even say worth the torment for this bit? I get dressed, take time set up Bluetooth headphones, Radio 3 for a blissful walk home, but if I want to bop along across the Downs, Fela’s Afro-beat or the newer lot, Stefflon Don and the rest. I walk rather than take the train. It is not always straightforward because of the wild animals. In Surrey? Yes, once, over the sound coming from my headphones I heard this menacing barking, turned. A large black dog came charging down the hill, out of the sun as Messerschmitt’s used to in WWII comics. Blinded, I made a visor with my hand. The dog crouched, circled me, growling looking as if it was about to pounce. Nearby, golfers suspended strokes. Paralysed I wished the owner would turn up. Which part to protect, balls as footballers do in a free-kick wall, or what? I half turn away and see the owner jogging down the hill. He gasps out an apology and retrieves his beastly pet. Why man cannot walk home after his radiotherapy in peace only dogs know. Maybe they smell prostatic decay.
I generally get home at about ten to find Mau having a cup of tea ready for her show called “Homes under the hammer.” Even if we were in the Bahamas, on the moon, she would still tune in. Maybe she has a secret property portfolio. I tell her how I got on. If it is a Friday I feel demob happy. Two days off, but must keep my figure or the rays may miss the remnants.
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