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31 votes
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Female surgeons sexually assaulted while operating
38 votes -
More than 150 car models too big for regular UK parking spaces
51 votes -
Sweden's Vincent Norrman wins the Irish Open as Rory McIlroy blew his chances by finding water four times on the final day
4 votes -
Koan Sound - Led by Ancient Light (2023)
11 votes -
G20 leaders must hold Indian government to account for its human rights violations and political persecution
20 votes -
Novo Nordisk, the maker of weight-loss drug Wegovy has become Europe's most valuable firm, dethroning the French luxury conglomerate LVMH
20 votes -
Apple threatens to pull FaceTime and iMessage in the UK over proposed surveillance law changes
71 votes -
The billion-dollar business of ABBA: A statistical analysis
13 votes -
UK government looks to rollback sickness benefits
18 votes -
Red sky at night and other weather lore
24 votes -
Jordan Henderson: I strongly believe that me playing in Saudi Arabia is a positive thing (interview with David Ornstein and Adam Crafton of The Athletic)
7 votes -
Repeat victims of violence do not report to the police, even in cases involving serious injury and hospitalisation, a new study has found
14 votes -
London’s plan to charge drivers of polluting cars sparks protests and stirs political passions
29 votes -
Should airships make a comeback?
25 votes -
The Rhythm of the Road – Ogmios School of Zen Motoring (2020)
6 votes -
The unmaking of India: How the British impoverished the world’s richest country
21 votes -
No evidence UK grammar school systems are best for the brightest, study of 500,000 pupils reveals
14 votes -
The world’s oldest cat door has been letting working cats enter the cathedral since the 14th Century
44 votes -
Centene to sell GP clinics and hospitals in exit from UK market
14 votes -
Finnish citizens traveling with Finnair between Helsinki Airport and the UK will be able to trial Digital Travel Credentials, using them to leave and enter Finland
8 votes -
Saudi Arabia: Brother of prominent UK based scholar sentenced to death over tweets
12 votes -
France pays winemakers to rip up vines in Bordeaux while vintners in Germany and the UK expand area planted
6 votes -
Why British cities make no sense | Map Men
16 votes -
I don't feel like a cancer patient
Last year (June 2022) I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. I had surgery (which left me with a permanent stoma) and I had a bit of adjuvant chemo to kill off any remaining cells. I've been...
Last year (June 2022) I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. I had surgery (which left me with a permanent stoma) and I had a bit of adjuvant chemo to kill off any remaining cells. I've been discharged from oncology, and I've started my 5 year surveillance. Staging is complicated but my I was pT3pN2bM0 (tumour was stage three, I had lots of lymph node involvement, but no metastasis).
Alongside that I've had problems with gall stones, starting in April 2022, and ending this year when my gall bladder was removed.
When I tell people about the cancer they pull on their serious face and say things like "oh no how awful hope you're okay glad to see you're doing so well now it's good news that you're in remission", and when I tell them about the gall bladder they're kind of baffled and not at all concerned.
But here's the thing: cancer was not such a big deal. I do have a permanent stoma, but for some reason my brain has disconnected that from being a cancer thing. I had a relatively gentle chemo regimen (short, and it was CAPOX which is less rough than other meds) -- don't get me wrong, chemo SUCKED, and left me with neuropathy in my feet, but I got through it. When I compare that to repeated[1] hospitalisation for cholangitis (a gall stone stuck in a bile duct causes bile to back up and that causes pretty severe problems), well, those repeated hospitalisations were a much bigger deal for me.
English NHS hospitals tend to have dorm wards. In the ward I was on there were 6 beds to a bay, and 5 bays to the ward, and then a further 6 or 7 single occupancy rooms. Some of the bays were smaller, and had 4 beds. Once the hospital was very full, so I spent a night in a bed (proper bed, not a trolley) but in the ward corridor. I spent over 60 days in hospital for the gall bladder stuff, and just 7 as an inpatient for the cancer. (And Sartre was right, hell is other people ).
There are lots of health forums online and I always feel deeply uncomfortable in the cancer forums. I feel okay in the ostomy forums[2], but I don't use them because they're all a bit odd.
I dunno what the point of this post is. Maybe it's "sometimes cancer is treatable and the person isn't particularly bothered by it", or maybe "people with cancer want support, but sometimes that support won't have anything to do with cancer".
[1] When a stone gets stuck they need to do some emergency work to stabilise you and remove the stone. And if you keep getting stones stuck they want to remove your gall bladder. There's some discussion about when to take the gall bladder out. Hypothetical Bob has a stone stuck - you stabilise him, so do you take the gall bladder out then (when he's still recovering) and then monitor him for a few days and discharge him home to fully recover? Or do you stabilise him, then discharge him home to recover, and call him back for planned surgery to remove the gall bladder? Evidence is inconclusive about which is best, so there's a bit of a lottery depending where you are in England. My local hospital took the later approach. The problem was that i) I had cancer, ii) My gall bladder was very active in kicking stones out and iii) we had several Covid pandemic waves causing huge disruption. These meant that by the time I had recovered enough to have the surgery, and they had a space on their surgical list for me, my gall bladder had kicked out another stone and that reset the whole thing again. They gave up this year and took my gallbladder out.
[2] Online health forums can have this really weird dynamic. English speaking forums are usually dominated by Americans, and Americans fall into 2 groups: 1) People with bad or no insurance and 2) People with good insurance. When someone says "I'm having this problem" the replies from the first group will all be along the lines of "go the the vet and buy this fish medicine" and the second group will be "here's a huge list of tests and products to use".
EDIT: I forgot to mention, I am in England, and so I am very fortunate because all treatment is free and a cancer diagnosis opens up quite a lot of support.
37 votes -
British cooks try Filipino food and cooking methods
7 votes -
Zen Motoring to Glastonbury Festival
7 votes -
The highest-ranking penguin in the world, Sir Nils Olav III, has been promoted to Major General by the Norwegian King's Guard
41 votes -
Spaghetti bolognese - same ingredients, different techniques
6 votes -
260 year old Crooked House pub catches fire and is demolished days after purchase by developer
53 votes -
Microsoft to sell off Activision cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft in bid for UK approval
25 votes -
Vegan brand wins four times at International Cheese And Dairy Awards
24 votes -
Long barrows are Neolithic constructions that might have been churches, or graveyards, or landmarks. And some are being built again: for the first time in recorded history.
15 votes -
Finding Kloos - a game created by the UK Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)
20 votes -
Manchester United’s Mason Greenwood return plan included list of ‘hostile’ figures
6 votes -
Neonatal nurse Lucy Letby found guilty of seven counts of murder, and seven counts of attempted murder in the UK
24 votes -
Three-Michelin-star restaurant relocates from Copenhagen to London for one day – Noma looks to a future without its celebrated Danish restaurant
10 votes -
Bank of England outage hits key payments systems processing billions
10 votes -
We need to raise a lot more in tax from the wealthy but that does not convince me that we need a wealth tax
39 votes -
Arsenal removed ‘mental block’ with win over Manchester City, claims Aaron Ramsdale
7 votes -
Anthony Joshua took out Robert Helenius in the seventh round at the O2 Arena – Helenius had stepped in at short notice to fight former heavyweight champion
6 votes -
Ren - Murderer (2023)
5 votes -
Five minutes after fighting last week, Robert Helenius agreed to replace Dillian Whyte against Anthony Joshua on seven days' notice
5 votes -
Man bitten by stray cat contracts infection unknown to science
63 votes -
Volvo estate owners reminisce about Swedish workhorse before its withdrawal from UK market
20 votes -
Historian finds evidence for use of y'all in London from 1600s
69 votes -
Climate activist Greta Thunberg has pulled out of an appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival over its links to the fossil fuel industry
27 votes -
Why do so many Scots cling to a false affinity with Norway?
10 votes -
Douglas Adams - Hyperland | A fantastical guided look at the future of the internet as imagined by Douglas Adams in the 1990s
24 votes -
UK vendors started boycotting the Etsy platform over its payment reserves system
18 votes