Round One - Part One

Soon after Odysseus started his journey he encountered the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, who decided to start eating his men. Here is Odysseus getting away, whilst Polyphemus reveals that he had a serious anger-management problem. Mind you, if you only had one eye and somebody poked it out, I guess you'd be pretty pissed off too. But why couldn't they have just sat down and talked the whole thing through? Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. It surely need never have come to that.

With the diagnostics complete and a treatment plan in place, I was on calmer waters, and given a friendly berth at the Royal Marsden in Fulham Road. Believe it or not, my D-Day, when the first treatment cycle was due to begin, was D-Day! In another echo from history, it was delayed by a day, not, as in 1944, because of the weather but because of the pre-assessment data. Now the cocktail of drugs has all dripped in I have avoided both enraged giants and another Omaha Beach.

This first cocktail had to go in very slowly, so they decided to keep me in overnight. As the drugs dripped in, clever machines monitored everything my body was doing to make sure there was no adverse reaction. They measured things I never knew I had. KPI's, OKR's and all the stuff businesses use have nothing on the NHS.

The whole thing was run by nurses, with hardly a doctor in sight.

The medical profession is strictly hierarchical. There was even a poster in the ward explaining the ranks of nurses and how to recognise them from their uniforms. I have no idea why the powers that be thought that patients would be interested in this. As far as I am concerned there are five levels of medical staff to be found in hospitals.

At the bottom are people who pull trolleys and bring things to you. Slightly above them are ones who push trolleys. I think they rank higher because they can sometimes be seen pushing beds with people on them and they take them to any part of the hospital they need to go to without using google maps, a feat second only to taxi drivers learning 'the knowledge'.

Then there are the nurses who control equipment, and stick sharp things in you, always with a delightful smile as they say 'sharp scratch'. They all wear coloured uniforms and some are even striped, which must be of great significance, but whatever it is is lost on me.

Finally, there are the White Coats, a colour clearly chosen to reflect their higher level of spirituality. There appear to be two orders of White Coat. There are file bearers, who follow around members of the second order carrying brown files. Then there are members of the second order who carry nothing at all. Their renunciation of all physical encumberments shows them to be the most ethereal, and indeed they seem to be at the top of the hierarchy. They don't actually do anything but they do talk a bit, sometimes to each other and sometimes to patients. They occasionally nod at a file bearer who then with due deference hands them a paper from their brown folder.

However, in a hospital stay, the most important people in my life are the humble trolly-pullers, because they bring you nice things like food, and the nurses of whatever rank who, though they mortify your flesh with sharp things, subsequently put things into you that actually make you better. Watching their angelic smiles as they stab me, I think salva me, fons pietatis.

The key person for me though is Leni, a Clinical Nurse Specialist. Of course they turn that into CNS so that nobody knows what it means. I would translate it as 'guardian angel'. Leni specialises in lymphoma full-time, unlike most of the staff who are generalists, and works directly with Professor David Cunningham who is the guy ultimately in charge. So she has enormous depth and breadth of knowledge and direct access to power which enables her to make things happen. She is not just a nurse but a fixer, and my first port of call about anything that matters. She even answers the phone, which is a rare quality. She is worth a whole clutch of White Coats.

Back to the chemo. Some hours after the cocktail had been administered a couple of White Coats suddenly appeared , and decided they wanted to keep me in not just overnight but over the weekend, just to be sure. White Coats tend to do this sort of thing. Nurses assure you that they are doing their rounds and will 'be along in just a minute', but nothing happens. Then they appear a few hours later out of the blue, file bearers in tow, with the rushing of a mighty wind. Each is truly a rex temendae majestatis. As a result of their edict, Kam had to rush over to Peter Jones to buy some fresh underwear and t-shirts for me. It was Monday evening before we were allowed to leave.

Then the fun began.