WFH with Cancer — Part 1
This was definitely not a bi-product of working from home that I was expecting, but here it is in writing, I have cancer. Myeloma to be precise. I was diagnosed in June, and have started my treatment of weekly injections under the wonderful team at St James’ Hospital in Dublin, but yes, its cancer.
So how did this start, well back in January I felt a muscle pulled in my arm. A little twinge that started small but just would not go away after a few days, so being a man and being Irish, I did what every Irish male would do, and ignored it. My local chemist gave me anti-inflamitories and that for about a week did the trick. So in February I continued to ignore it and thanks to the persistence of my wife in March contacted a physio.
Now, I am not going to mention names, companies etc, but lets just say that experience was not what I was expecting. It was basically (thanks to Covid) a short phone call (not a video call) and the outcome was an email with strength training exercises to get the muscles back working again. 2 weeks later, had another short phone call for a review, and then was emailed more exercises. A few weeks later with no changes to strength etc, was then told I needed to see a physio, so booked a visit to their physio and one Saturday morning was reverted back to an exercise program that would fix the lack of movement in the arm first, and then we would be able to look at getting strength back. At this stage (its now April) I was asked if I had got the arm scanned and I had not even considered it at that point, and there was no recommendation coming to get it done, so moved on.
A week later, we had movement and the exercises were working, so more exercises and a review in 2 weeks time. I left thinking great, its getting fixed…
Then the bank holiday weekend in May happened. On the Monday night I had what I can only describe as a vivid dream in which a cat jumped down off a wall in front of my wife, son and I and I lashed my arm out and moved it on. What I woke up to was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. I was in tears, had my wife in tears, and spent 2 hours unable to even move the arm slightly away from my body. The arm had completely locked in place and there was no chance of moving it. It twinged, spasmed, and hurt like hell. Even standing up was hard at that stage. At 9am I called the physio (it was a Tuesday) and was told that they had no emergency appointments but could see me the following week. I called my wife's physio and got an appointment for 2pm that day.
My new Physio looked at me, watched me struggle to remove my t-shirt, and was not happy at all. I gave him the history, the exercise program I was given (which was reviewed with a lot of confusion) and given a single exercise to do for the week to get some level of movement back in the arm so that I could at least move the arm way from my body. Anti-inflammatories were given again, and a week later was back in for a review with movement in the arm (though somewhat limited). Again he looked at me, and wrote me a letter to my healthcare clinic to get an MRI as there was just something not right at all.
The clinic gave me a sling, and an appointment for the following Monday for an MRI. The review would be on the Tuesday. And the review is where I will start the next part of this story….
