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Don't think of pink elephants
It has been an unusually mild summer. Not one single solitary day over 40c when we normally get 4 or 5 of them
In fact I do not remember such mild weather ever since coming to Oz back in 1993
And then there was the Fringe Festival. 30 decadent days of freak shows and weirdos.
Got to see 18 shows this year. Had saved up a war chest for the occasion but kept on fringe bingeing even when it was empty. The old plastic fantastic to the rescue
But unlike previous years, barely a squeak about them because in spite of all these wonderful things, the best way to describe the last few months would be
“But apart from that Mrs Lincoln, what did you think of the play?”
Yes. There has been a giant elephant in the room. And this week it became a very bright garish shade of pink.
Early last year the Izzie ma - also known as Petunia was diagnosed with the sort of cancer that can be best described as - “the mechanics have never seen this model before”
On the one hand, the rarity meant that she got preferential status as a research subject so she got the sort of treatment that would bankrupt half a city if she had been in the USA. On the other, it meant that they were desperate to hang on to their golden goose long after it was well and truly cooked
So she had a ten hour operation followed by chemo and radiation a few months later in May last year. But the problem was that the cure soon became worse than the disease.
Within 2 weeks of chemo she would lose so much weight and become so dehydrated that she would end up having to go back to hospital again and go on drips to get fattened up.
The third time she cut the chemo short because it was getting so awful.
It was a strange merry go round. While on the chemo she would feel totally miserable and would say “Never again. Just give me a pill to end it all and get me out of here” but then a few weeks later the docs would insist she do another round and she would agree to it. I guess it is a sort of high stakes gamble or clutching at straws
But then in early January they told her that the cancer had spread from the stomach to the liver and lungs but still recommended more chemo to nuke the nasty sarcomas
Once more she agreed but again within two weeks she was back in hospital due to rapid weight loss and dehydration. That was last Sunday.
After visiting her on Monday and Tuesday she said that the Boss Doc had given up the “it’s up to you” sweet talking and basically told her that she had to have the next round of chemo and she had no say in the matter.
I asked if he had given her the numbers. Firstly I was surprised that she even agreed to the round that ended up with her being there. I said that surely they should explain that with the chemo you will probably get so much time and without it will be some other smaller number and if the difference is not ridiculously big then you are likely better not to bother because an extra few months spent feeling nauseous, nuked and totally miserable should simply not even be counted as life because it is merely existence.
So she had another CAT scan and got the results on Thursday.
All of a sudden, the Boss Doc was no longer on the scene spruiking his nukes.
He had literally given Petunia the pink slip
The results of the latest scan showed that far from the chemo actually containing the cancer, the damned thing had been on steroids. Some tumours had nearly tripled in size in only 2 months.
So she is now back at Privet Drive on palliative care. Apparently they don’t like to give time limits these days since they seem to act as self fulfilling prophecies but when the Doc was spruiking his nukes, he told her that the odds were only a few months without the next round of chemo.
So what had been a possibility since March 2017 has now become pretty much cold hard facts.
While on the one hand it was just over a year ago since the original diagnosis, so there has been plenty of time for Petunia and the rest of us to get used to this new and nasty state of affairs, it is still a bit of a shock.
Vernon Dursley is running around like a boiling bubbling pot of Polonium tea radiating his toxic aura everywhere while carrying his Martyr’s cross. Of course he is devastated by the news but the sad fact is that Petunia prefers to be in the hospital than in Number 4 Privet Drive which would be a paradise without the ever present walking toxic waste polluting the atmosphere
If he had gone first and after so many recent operations and things, the dice should have fallen that way, she would likely have lived at least another ten years quite happily as the quirky chook lady in the Garden of Eden and it would have been a fairy tale ending to a long life.
Now it seems more likely that she will be gone within the next six months and he is not likely to linger more than another six months after that.
After all those years working in the nursing home, I have seen the pattern far too often.
The women get a new lease of life once their husbands die but the men fall off the perch within a year when their wives depart this mortal coil.
In spite of all their proclamations of being indispensable, the centre of the universe and the measure of all things, the real spare ribs are the folks with the Y chromosomes.
So now begins the slow shuffling off of this mortal coil for Petunia.
She is the one who is cool and calm and almost stoic and it is just sad and pathetic that she has to deal with Vernon’s pity parties and dramas when she is the one who is actually dying.
This was the man who many years ago proclaimed that the male menopause is SO much worse than the women’s and the poor men just suffer so much.
In other words - if it does not happen to him, it does not happen. His sore toe is worse than your cancer and that is not just his opinion but everyone else should think so too.
Petunia told me last week that when he visited her in hospital, he was telling the nurse about his heart operation, his hip replacement, his recent eye surgery etc etc and she was so embarrassed that she wished the ground would swallow him up
I says to her that next time he does that - just say “Shut up. Donald”
That should put him in his box and it is such a sad twist of fate that she will be in there first.
In fact I do not remember such mild weather ever since coming to Oz back in 1993
And then there was the Fringe Festival. 30 decadent days of freak shows and weirdos.
Got to see 18 shows this year. Had saved up a war chest for the occasion but kept on fringe bingeing even when it was empty. The old plastic fantastic to the rescue
But unlike previous years, barely a squeak about them because in spite of all these wonderful things, the best way to describe the last few months would be
“But apart from that Mrs Lincoln, what did you think of the play?”
Yes. There has been a giant elephant in the room. And this week it became a very bright garish shade of pink.
Early last year the Izzie ma - also known as Petunia was diagnosed with the sort of cancer that can be best described as - “the mechanics have never seen this model before”
On the one hand, the rarity meant that she got preferential status as a research subject so she got the sort of treatment that would bankrupt half a city if she had been in the USA. On the other, it meant that they were desperate to hang on to their golden goose long after it was well and truly cooked
So she had a ten hour operation followed by chemo and radiation a few months later in May last year. But the problem was that the cure soon became worse than the disease.
Within 2 weeks of chemo she would lose so much weight and become so dehydrated that she would end up having to go back to hospital again and go on drips to get fattened up.
The third time she cut the chemo short because it was getting so awful.
It was a strange merry go round. While on the chemo she would feel totally miserable and would say “Never again. Just give me a pill to end it all and get me out of here” but then a few weeks later the docs would insist she do another round and she would agree to it. I guess it is a sort of high stakes gamble or clutching at straws
But then in early January they told her that the cancer had spread from the stomach to the liver and lungs but still recommended more chemo to nuke the nasty sarcomas
Once more she agreed but again within two weeks she was back in hospital due to rapid weight loss and dehydration. That was last Sunday.
After visiting her on Monday and Tuesday she said that the Boss Doc had given up the “it’s up to you” sweet talking and basically told her that she had to have the next round of chemo and she had no say in the matter.
I asked if he had given her the numbers. Firstly I was surprised that she even agreed to the round that ended up with her being there. I said that surely they should explain that with the chemo you will probably get so much time and without it will be some other smaller number and if the difference is not ridiculously big then you are likely better not to bother because an extra few months spent feeling nauseous, nuked and totally miserable should simply not even be counted as life because it is merely existence.
So she had another CAT scan and got the results on Thursday.
All of a sudden, the Boss Doc was no longer on the scene spruiking his nukes.
He had literally given Petunia the pink slip
The results of the latest scan showed that far from the chemo actually containing the cancer, the damned thing had been on steroids. Some tumours had nearly tripled in size in only 2 months.
So she is now back at Privet Drive on palliative care. Apparently they don’t like to give time limits these days since they seem to act as self fulfilling prophecies but when the Doc was spruiking his nukes, he told her that the odds were only a few months without the next round of chemo.
So what had been a possibility since March 2017 has now become pretty much cold hard facts.
While on the one hand it was just over a year ago since the original diagnosis, so there has been plenty of time for Petunia and the rest of us to get used to this new and nasty state of affairs, it is still a bit of a shock.
Vernon Dursley is running around like a boiling bubbling pot of Polonium tea radiating his toxic aura everywhere while carrying his Martyr’s cross. Of course he is devastated by the news but the sad fact is that Petunia prefers to be in the hospital than in Number 4 Privet Drive which would be a paradise without the ever present walking toxic waste polluting the atmosphere
If he had gone first and after so many recent operations and things, the dice should have fallen that way, she would likely have lived at least another ten years quite happily as the quirky chook lady in the Garden of Eden and it would have been a fairy tale ending to a long life.
Now it seems more likely that she will be gone within the next six months and he is not likely to linger more than another six months after that.
After all those years working in the nursing home, I have seen the pattern far too often.
The women get a new lease of life once their husbands die but the men fall off the perch within a year when their wives depart this mortal coil.
In spite of all their proclamations of being indispensable, the centre of the universe and the measure of all things, the real spare ribs are the folks with the Y chromosomes.
So now begins the slow shuffling off of this mortal coil for Petunia.
She is the one who is cool and calm and almost stoic and it is just sad and pathetic that she has to deal with Vernon’s pity parties and dramas when she is the one who is actually dying.
This was the man who many years ago proclaimed that the male menopause is SO much worse than the women’s and the poor men just suffer so much.
In other words - if it does not happen to him, it does not happen. His sore toe is worse than your cancer and that is not just his opinion but everyone else should think so too.
Petunia told me last week that when he visited her in hospital, he was telling the nurse about his heart operation, his hip replacement, his recent eye surgery etc etc and she was so embarrassed that she wished the ground would swallow him up
I says to her that next time he does that - just say “Shut up. Donald”
That should put him in his box and it is such a sad twist of fate that she will be in there first.