Swearing, Balancing, Moaning and Brian Harvey.

Wednesday 17th October was my brother’s fourth trip to the hospital, which means he is now one third of the way through his chemotherapy. The day didn’t get off to the best of starts. Neck pain, a sore throat and a thumping headache meant that I wasn’t in a great mood. My brother however, felt fine, so every cloud and all that. Once we were at the hospital, it took me half an hour to find a parking space, during which time my brother and I must have broken the world record for the amount of swear words shouted by two people inside a car over a 30 minute period. A few examples:

 

“JUST HURRY UP AND REVERSE, YOU FUCKING FUCKPIG”

“OH WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BELLEND DOING? MAKE YOUR MIND UP YOU TWAT”

“TAKE YOUR SHITTY FOUR BY FOUR WITH THE HOWLING WOLF TYRE COVER AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR FAT ARSE, YOU SLOW, INCONSIDERATE FUCK-NUGGET”.

“YOUR WIFE LOOKS LIKE MARTIN CLUNES. HAHAHA GUTTTTTED!”

 

It was quite therapeutic to shout about the terrible drivers in the car park to one another and softened the blow of getting the day off to a slow start somewhat.

“I’m going to get a ‘Cancer patient on board’ sticker for my car”, I said once I’d calmed down. “Maybe we’d get a parking space quicker.”

“Or ‘Powered by cancer dust!”, replied my brother.

“Yeah, that doesn’t really make sense, mate.”

Before my brother begins each chemo session, he has a blood test to determine if everything’s ok for it to go ahead (I didn’t hear exactly what they were looking for in the blood test results when they first explained this because I was checking Twitter on my phone). Usually it takes about 15 minutes for the results to come back. This time we were waiting for over an hour. I’m guessing that more people chose to be ill or have an accident on this particular day than before, so the hospital was busier. The inconsiderate bastards! We wanted to get home in time for the England v Poland game.

The results finally came back from the blood test and the nurse was given the go ahead to start the chemo. As usual, she had to give my brother a steroid first, which is administered through a syringe and takes about 10 minutes. Just like last time, my brother began squirming in his seat.

 

“Oh God, not again. It feels like I’m going to poo myself. I’m definitely going to. Oh no.” Apparently, it’s quite common for the steroid to have this effect on people. My brother had gone all red in the face.

I grabbed my phone and stuck it on camera mode.

“If you do, I MUST get a photo. Imagine that on the blog. You, sat there, covered in shit, with the nurse smiling awkwardly as she holds that syringe to your arm.”

I watched him wriggling about. His legs were going like Bruce Grobbelaar’s in the 1984 European cup final penalty shootout; wobbling frantically as he tried to compose himself. The nurse just looked nervously at the floor.

“I won’t be covered in shit, will I? It will be in my boxer shorts”. He sounded smug.

“I dunno? Maybe it will explode out of you? Won’t the steroid give it more power? Are you turtle-heading yet?”

“No!”

“Sure?”

“Definitely. The urge has gone again now. I’m going to be ok”. My brother sounded triumphant this time.

“Damn”. I put my phone away.

 

The chemo treatment itself also took longer than usual due to the nurses taking more time to change each drip once one had finished. I think they must have thought we were enjoying being sat in the ward so much and decided to just take their time with my brother. We ended up being in the hospital for a whopping 7 (SEVEN) hours. In fact the day was dragging so much, we discussed ways of trying to squeeze the last drip into him a bit quicker. We thought about squashing the bag between our hands.

“Put it on your seat and just sit down really hard on it!”, I suggested. “It will deflate like a whoopee cushion and squirt all the fluid into you and we can go home then”.

“Fuck off, you’re heavier than me; you sit on it”.

“I’m only heavier than you because the cancer has helped you lose weight”.

“That; and you’re also a fat bastard”.

We called this one a draw.

 

My brother and I both agreed that time seemed to drag like it hadn’t before. It was dull and boring and not much was going on. The one respite I had from the ward was lunch time. As usual, my brother got to choose from the splendid hospital menu. He opted for a tuna sandwich, a packet of Cheese and Onion crisps and a yoghurt. After experiencing the very worst that the hospital’s Costa Coffee could offer me in terms of sandwiches on our previous 3 visits, I was trying to decide whether to eat or not.

“Go into town and get something to eat if you want, mate. It’s not far, I’ll be ok here on my own.”

“You sure? I don’t fancy another Costa sandwich. They’re bloody disgusting. The only choices they seem to have is that new-age shit like ‘Goats Cheese and Spaniards Pubes’, ‘Spinach, Chicken, Pesto and the Tears of a Unicorn’ or ‘Sautéed Red Pepper with Pickled Arse Chutney’. They taste like crap.”

“Go for it. Honestly, it’s fine; it won’t even take you that long”.

I asked him if he wanted anything, but he declined. I took a stroll into town and treated myself to a prawn baguette, a packet of Mexican Chilli McCoys and a Ribena. The lunch of kings.

 

Upon my return to the hospital, I found my brother having eaten his lunch and fast asleep in his chair. I sat down next to him for 5 minutes, bored and wondering what I could do to pass the time. I wanted him to wake up; just so we could be bored together in all honesty. Looking around, I noticed that no one else on the ward was paying me much attention. I then spotted three cardboard sick bowls on a table to my left, so I took the opportunity to balance them like a small trilby on top of my brother’s head. I added my car keys on top of them for effect. I had just managed to take a quick photo when one of the nurses came over.

“Erm, are you ok there?” she asked.

“Fine, thanks!” I replied politely. “He won’t mind”. I smiled and removed the sick bowl from his head. She gave me a strange look and then walked off again. Can people not balance things on a cancer patient’s head without being judged anymore?

Here is the photo that I managed to take (and this will be the first time my brother knows that this actually happened):

AN UPSIDE DOWN sick bowl, makes an excellent trilby for a skint Pete Doherty wannabee.

 

JONJO SHELVEY WATCH: 2/10. My brother still hasn’t lost any hair. It’s perhaps a little thinner on the sides but it’s hardly noticeable. He’s a long way off looking like shiny headed wonder, Jonjo Shelvey.

Talking of Shelvey, since I first mentioned him on this blog, he’s gone on to score three goals in the Europa League for Liverpool, as well as winning his first England cap, when he came off the bench to feature in their game against San Marino.

Coincidence? I think not. After this mention, he’ll probably go on to score the winning goal in the Merseyside derby at the weekend. Maybe.

 

You’ll probably notice the funky curtain in the background of that photo. They are EVERYWHERE in the hospital. I used my photography skills to get this image:

The curtain of doom.

 

Imagine waking up from a coma, and the first thing you saw was that curtain – you’d think you were dead and in a really shitty heaven . The eagle is as big as the house below it, and there seems to be people stranded in fields (I only managed to capture 2 on this photo, but there are loads of them. They’re just stood in fields, doing nothing, apart from staring at you.) Also, the water running under the bridge is pink. I’m not sure why they chose this particular design.

 

After about 40 minutes of me being sat next to my brother, discreetly poking him to try and wake him up, he did.

“This is a bit embarrassing, but you’ve had a wet dream” were my opening words to him as he looked about in a half-awake daze. That soon woke him up properly.

“WHAT?”

“Nothing. Do you remember that time Brian Harvey ate 3 baked potatoes and accidentally ran himself over?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Not sure. I just wondered if you did. What a twat”.

“Yeah; no one eats 3 baked potatoes.”

Nothing else really happened whilst we were there. Truth be told, we just moaned to each other about how long the chemo was taking, moaned that it was boring, moaned that it was raining outside, moaned about how uncomfortable the seats were, moaned about how hot it was in the ward, moaned about the design on the curtains and moaned about anything else that we weren’t particularly happy with. We must have sounded like 2 right miserable bastards.

 

Next treatment: Wednesday 31st October.

 

HOSPITAL LUNCH FOR CANCER PATIENT RATING: 3/5 (Sandwich was a safe choice but he felt the yoghurt let the overall balance to the meal down, as, in his own words, it “had the consistency of Copydex glue” It would have scored a 2/5 but the extra mark is for a carton of Ribena I generously bought him, which he still hasn’t paid me for..)

HOSPITAL LUNCH FOR GUEST RATING: 5/5 (Spot on.)

DAY HIGHLIGHT: Balancing things on my sleeping brother’s head. Also, we got home late enough to miss the England v Poland game. A blessing in disguise.

DAY LOWLIGHT: It was quite windy when I walked to the shops, so my hair got messed up a little bit.