Cancer, Covid and Contracts.

I’m sure the title was a dead giveaway, but for me and many many others, 2020 was something special.

Not the kind of special that gives you the warm, duvet out of the dryer, Stephen Fry audiobook and a cup of cocoa type of feeling, more like the sensation of throwing yourself off a swing set into a sandbank and landing square and flat on your testicles.

The only upshot from that deep and protracted pain was the hope that maybe there’s ice cream at the end of it. At least that’s how it played out for me.

Anyway, this analogy is wearing rather thin.

It started like this…

Word of warning: there will be some things in here that you may find distressing so for that I apologise. I will be honest and in some instances brutally so.

In December 2019, after about 2 and a half months of badgering, Jon and I met with a new contact, Ben Hutchinson.

A bit of background, Jon’s now ex-girlfriend Georgie had met a lady who was the head of the marketing department for Barburrito. In a candid chat, she made mention that Ben, her husband, was Creative Director for Submarine Films in Manchester and they are looking to expand into full-blooded television production. Specifically, they were looking to work with some writers to develop some kind of show.

DING DONG… Hello opportunity, come on in!

So after some nice email exchanges, we arrived at the 7 Brothers Distillery at Salford to meet Ben at his staff party. We talked, we talked a lot, for 2 hours solidly and thankfully not just about work but the wide gambit of things. Kids, aspirations, the type of writing Jon and I are undertaking, work history, interests, and on and on. A good, solid, natural conversation with some killer booze to match and the conclusion of which was Ben would like to read what we had written, but the company will want to build something on their own terms.

Cancer.

I had a check-up due in January 2020. About a year prior I had seen a doctor about kidney pain on the left flank of my back. It had come and gone since 2014 when I was in the absolute thick of it on Horizon 2 but it had proceeded to get worse over time and naturally the first thought was kidney stones.

Dismissing the ominous for a second that is still true, I have them still. A parting gift from crunching in the Games industry for pennies.

In December of 2018, I woke in the night to agonising pain that made me sweat profusely. I couldn’t sleep or get comfortable, and then it stopped suddenly mid-morning. A few days later I literally couldn’t stop going to the toilet because of an overwhelming sense of pressure. Like the finger of god type of pressure.

Off to the Docs, and they thought it was a kidney stone that had passed and was now in my bladder.

A day later it did pass. Yeah…

A year on and after seeing a ‘Specialist’, they were growing more forceful to do an endoscopy.

For the uninitiated, an endoscope is a flexible telescope that they “slide” up your urethra to view your bladder. It’s invasive, uncomfortable, it can cause an infection if you are very unlucky, and mostly it’s the dead embarrassment of having a stranger shove a metal telescope into the only pleasurable part of your body God gave you.

Naturally, I declined. I declined for a year.

Now in January 2020, in the check-up, I caved reticently after repeated insistence and lack of progress on the kidney issues. Tit for tat it seemed. I was shown to a room and the doctor was a really kind lady about my age. So I enter a room to two female nurses and that lovely 30-year-old doctor in the greyist place you have ever seen. I lay down and I’m exposed to disappoint them all.

They found a tumour in my bladder within the first few minutes.

I don’t plan on sharing an image of bladder tumours because if you really fancy learning more, Google has a whole kaleidoscope of dread just waiting for you to search and click away.

I will, however, describe what I saw.

The lining of a bladder is like a Visqueen layer of white semi-transparent tissue with a texture of medical silicone gloves. Behind it is a deeper maroon tapestry of ventricles and capillaries that thread throughout. That maroon peeps out in abstract patches. The sides are smooth and curvacious. It’s pleasant to look at actually, tranquil even, reminiscent of cave diving in a morbidly fascinating kind of way.

The tumour appears as a semi-transparent cluster or collection of balloon-like cells. It’s literally like a group of sun-drying grapes stripped of colour, whitewashed, and attached to a root.

As far as tumours go in their initial growth, it wasn’t scarring or horrific to see. My initial feeling was curiosity. To the point where I actually asked outright “That looks interesting, what is it?” No one answered. They just went to work. That gave me everything I needed to know. I absolutely knew I was in trouble and I was just waiting to hear it, lying on my back, with my cold and now numb penis from the pessary applied in the procedure, in a female doctor's hand…

So we looked at each other, eye to eye, and in that, I know this is the worst part of her job and I can tell in her blue eyes, a look, a little haunted by it, longingly and lost. That gave me some comfort because despite her expert professionalism, I know she feels the emotional weight. That’s enough for me to understand the gravity of it all.

I take it well.

The tumour is small, half a centimetre, caught early which is good but the roots of the tumour are the problem, if it’s extended further back outside of the bladder wall then I’m in trouble. The tumour will be removed and the biopsy after will tell them the type and therefore the prognosis. The surgery and localised chemo will be in a couple of weeks. Best to speak to the GP and further referrals will be needed in the roll up to the procedure.

My Mother meets me in the corridor of the hospital on the walk back to the car park, I tell her on the way, she stumbles slightly in the hall. I hold her until she stops shaking.

I tell my Father as he is sat in his chair, the air leaving him. Deflating and sinking inwardly. Defeated.

I tell my Brother when he’s home, all six foot four of him, and all I can see is his face at three years old with a chin that won’t stop juddering, eyes like glass marbles. Hurt and pain.

I tell the love of my life, my Wife to be, and I can’t look anywhere else but her eyes. She remains strong and I’m proud of her but I feel like I’ve betrayed her joy when 2020 was meant to be a happy year.

A happy year.

I study everything I’ve been given and more. I cry a lot, I recognise that there’s a possibility that all the steady sacrifices may be for nothing. That I don’t own anything that can’t be replaced. That the impact on the lives of my friends may be limited. That my extended family won’t know until it’s too late if it gets bad. I need to be able to keep this quiet until it’s over or I know more from the prognosis. I say nothing, I tell no one, with a few exceptions.

I tell Jon, my writing partner and best friend. We walk to a bench at the canal we used to play around as kids. His great auntie lived a street over and we nipped in during a summer heat for pop and crisps. She’s long gone, the house remains and in good care. Good memories.

Jon cried hard, my indifferent neighbors walked past with their Spaniel halfway through. I appreciated their embarrassment, they still don’t know, I don’t plan on telling them, I imagine they wouldn’t care. A drug dealer was hanging around under the bridge wondering what we were up to and noticed Jon was crying and promptly left after half an hour of subtle exchanges. I was numb at that point, for a while at least.

Then the questions in my head would come thick and fast and overwhelm. The roll up to the actual surgery was so stressful I nearly get rushed in because my blood pressure had skyrocketed. Many mention my weight, I remind them I had then lost a stone in the year proceeding. Blood pressure meds for now until I lose enough weight to be taken off them.

Hypertension.

The constant ringing bell of BMI indexes and fat percentages. You wonder at all if anti-vaxxers exist because doctors won’t shut the fuck up about weight from time to time and it’s just petty payback of a kind. That soon changed, however.

Hazel comes with me on the day of the surgery. I wait a full day. I wait in the corridor to be shown in, to be weighed, and monitored, Hazel has to leave after the initial tests, which I hate. I change and get shown to a waiting room with one television locked to ITV and try to stay enthused with whatever daytime trash they show.

I’m sorry about that by the way, to whatever writer is working their stones off for ‘Midsummer Murders’ and the only story they can offer is a reminder I have cancer by the actor of the main villain dying of it with a posthumous thanks.

I heard the petulant diatribe of a Junior Doctor complain he hasn’t been made a fellow yet, he’s 23. A two-hour conversation with his uncle who I learn was married to the woman that the ward I’m sat in was named after. Must have been a badass, they mentioned the tragedy of her eventual dementia. Takes and takes and takes, doesn’t it?

I hear an old couple yell at each other as both have become completely deaf in dotage. Hilarious but it hurts, my mind wanders to the gravity of my own situation and the question if Hazel and I will live to senility or deafness.

Nill by mouth all day. By 16:00 I’d kill someone for a sip of tea.

I meet the young female doctor again, she remembers me and reassures me. She’ll be in the surgery which brings me some comfort, I think of her from time to time, I wonder how she’s doing, she was kind.

The best bit of the day was meeting my ‘Anaesthetist’. The type of man I miss from the games industry, a man who is comfortable with the knowledge and skills he has and in good humour often because of it. He asks if I have any questions and all I can think to say is I never thought I’d be having a conversation with an anaesthetist so all I can offer is, good luck and smooth sailing. He likes the sentiment.

I get knocked out within the hour, the last thing I remember was talking about something I didn’t like on Netflix. What it was, has completely escaped me.

I wake up, wheeled to new nurses through a corridor in January with no heating. It went well, the surgery, removed all of it, no complications, I need to lose weight…

I have a catheter in me, it’s draining fluid but the three-way valve is gargantuan and uncomfortable, my bladder keeps trying to push it out. Absolutely unbearable but it turns out I have a relatively high pain threshold, the more you know.

The new nurses talk me through what’s next. They are going to administer the chemo through the catheter. It’s the colour of Welches Grape Juice where I imagined some kind of fluorescent e-number yellow/green. After unraveling five wrappers worth protecting the contents, the contents now going into my newly cauterised bladder. I’m given codeine for the pain, it helps but I keep imagining my inner bladder peeling like an onion.

That image didn’t help.

Two hours later I’m on my feet, I piss needles and blood, another half an hour I’m home to the most amazing Irish stew and dumplings I’ve ever had and then I hope and pray it’s all over.

Yeah, alright…

I went into ‘Retention’. My bladder closed shut like a local bank branch and began filling gradually to its maximum capacity with no way to drain.

Back to the hospital, it was.

There is an upshot to chemo no one ever tells you about. You get seen immediately, no fuss, no bother, you go in and you get sorted.

I met my first ‘Phlebotomist’ there at A&E. She became frustrated that my veins had become hard after both arms had been tapped thoroughly from the procedures I had the day prior and the days prior to that. There are photos but I won’t share them, too painful. I was black and blue, I had red abrasions all over my upper arms from the tape holding drips and cotton wool and this miscreant goblin could only complain of the lack of blood in me less than 24 hours after a procedure and chemo.

The duty nurse made mention that I would be using a catheter for a few weeks. To pour some more salt on that, the blood witch regaled me with a story of a patient with dementia she had treated who’d recently ripped theirs out.

This was before I was about to have mine reinserted…

I often hope that the needle crone drove home that night and missed her turning then plowed into a manure factory, in the subsequent fire couldn’t be identified, only for her ashes to become the fertilizer for someone’s third rate marrow, but life’s too short to hold grudges they say.

I had a catheter in for the better part of a month. I wouldn’t wish it on my enemy. Maybe a special kind of ‘Phlebotomist’.

You can’t sleep, especially for side sleepers, hygiene is a constant factor, the changing of the bags is uncomfortable. You weep fluid, in the presence of water your bladder spasms. Your bladder lining goes into the bag, it looks like red cotton thread. You can’t get to the toilet in any way without being in agony. I was struggling to walk, to shower. I hated being alive and worst of all, spontaneous night erections to waking agony.

I will forever respect those that live through this for years. I don’t think I could.

Then it all stopped in February. The catheter was removed, I urinated like a font, and like that it dissipated like a bad dream.

I got the all-clear in May, Type 1A Cancer is the best kind to have and the chance of recurrence is very low. I have routine check-ups for the next few years.

The lasting comment was “A shame to have Cancer so young.”

I’m now described as one of the lucky ones. I fully believe I am.

Lockdown

I’m now classed as ‘clinically vulnerable’ and most of last year was literally in the four walls of my family home by governmental decree. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten…

I felt glad to be alive. I still do.

I had a warm, clean, place to live, and work. The bills are paid and none of it thanks to me.

I have all my creature comforts, I have family and friends who love me, care for me, look out for me. I have computer games, streaming services, Spotify without adverts, Ocado, Amazon Prime, Podcasts, and on and on it goes in grand and small ways altogether.

It made me grateful in small and focused ways and I felt grateful to feel grateful.

I just enjoyed being here, a kind of singular peace.

This is while most were losing their jobs, being furloughed, or worse. My family and friends were doing alright. COVID never came calling. Lucky.

We cleared the debt and working from home became more common, we could plan and we did. We never lost sight of getting married by year’s end.

I however have felt guilty. About finding the illness so early, being treated well, and recovering quickly. I was ill and I needed help and I received it, but I now was having daily reminders of how much luck is involved and also the privilege we have in our NHS. A hard-won treasure.

That my family can be self-sufficient with one retired member and another with mobile working being the norm before COVID. A brother in the same industry as me and a partner who works in the NHS itself. I felt nurtured and it made me grateful and guilty at the same time, it still does. It’s been a tricky feeling to manage.

Reminding myself often, I’m one of the lucky ones.

The dips came with the daily dose of disaster on the news and Reddit, which became the norm, but I never felt hopeless. I hoped our scientific community would pull together, that our government would get out of the way of the people who can do something about COVID and our friends in America could turn the tide and they did, but the worst is far from over.

I never lost hope but some days it was harder to see than others, but this overwhelming peace was just there. I felt sure and glad of it. Glad to be here. Lucky.

Throughout all of that, Jon and I kept writing and thinking and improving. This year, thankfully, we have something to show for it.

A few things in fact, but let’s keep to one.

The brand spanking new commission.

A show within a show.

Ben read what we had and now we have a forever fan. From this, we started to figure out what we could all do together.

Unsuitable is the project Jon and I have developed with Ben Hutchinson. We could argue it’s the most protracted development we’ve ever undertaken (thank you COVID) and a massively difficult writing challenge but in Ben, we have found a collaborator that we like and appreciate.

It’s been really positive as far as a writing experience can go.

On the subject of the project, the show is a 6 episode, half-hour, fly on the wall sitcom. Set within the studio of BBC Children’s on the longest-running kid’s tv series ‘Yondering Wilds’.

The creator Anderson Fry dies suddenly and the cast, crew, and management now find themselves in the middle of production, with no creative director, and must struggle to find the purpose of the show and avoid it being cut entirely.

In Ben, we have someone with first-hand experience of being on a children’s television production and it’s surprisingly cut-throat and toxic in the behind-the-scenes shenanigans. Maybe I should have found that less surprising but, naivety can be a virtue for the curious.

Additionally, it’s been fun taking a stroll down memory lane to children’s television that had an impact on us in creating the show within the show of Yondering Wilds, and thankfully we’ve landed on a plausible hook that nods to our influences. Pretty proud of that.

However, for us, the development of our characters has been the real fun part. Especially given the darkness of the year. Writing a comedy has been a saving grace.

A reminder, you are lucky.

It’s still ongoing and naturally, I won’t go into excruciating detail, too early. I will say however the cast of characters is the most varied that we’ve ever created and I’m looking forward to seeing the situations they will find themselves in, over our six episodes.

One final plug, our opening is blistering, watch this space.

Also, we have an actual fucking CONTRACT!

One final thing…

I know my year has been different than most but I would be amiss to say that the end of it was one of the greatest I ever had.

I have a contract doing something I love, I’m healthy (mostly), COVID vaccinations are on the horizon and the world is figuring out how to pull us out of this situation.

I’m glad to be here, glad to be doing what I do, I feel lucky, I feel guilty but I feel humbled by it and I’m proud of those who have helped me in this year despite the circumstances, despite their own circumstances.

My final and everlasting memory of the end of 2020, the longest damnable year, will be marrying the love of my life and my best friend on her birthday and honeymooning in a writer’s paradise.

I’ll take that.